Week in the Life {Conservation Dept, Reading, Audio Books + More}

We kicked off our week by staying up late on Sunday, Feb 2nd, to watch the Kansas City Chiefs WIN the Super Bowl!
At Mike's urging, I played the role of fun mom, and laid out a Super Bowl spread for our troops.

Z made a cookie sandwich...so proud.

The game got intense and Xavier got the anxieties.

Watching the game made for a late Sunday night, which isn't how we like to start our week but it was worth it.

Monday started slow.  The children actually started the day by filling out their Valentines and working on Valentine boxes, with schooling interspersed throughout.

Zayden has been expressing a need for some individual attention from dad and me, so he got to stay up on his own to work on his Valentine box with Daddy.  Daddy says he's such a good cutter!!

In school, Ameliya is manipulating words, blending, segmenting, changing sounds, and as been working her way through her very first reader.  She's excited to read it on camera for all you friends next week.  We're proud of the effort this girl is putting into her school work.  Her goal is to get to have a Bible reading curriculum like her older siblings - she thinks theirs' looks really great.

Mia is reviewing days of the week, continuing addition, and counting by 10s in her math curriculum.

Mia also came to me and told me she's learning this that Miss Maggie at the Oskaloosa church is teaching her.  My heart!

The big kids are working on money and fractions in math and we're heading through the 1860s and 70s in history.  We're talking about the growth of the nation, mail order catalogs, go-getters, and department stores.  In reading, Natalee is learning about rhyme, rhythm, point of view, and all those things that make good writing nice to read.  Xavier is working through the Old Testament in his reading curriculum and working on reading for comprehension, dictionary skills, writing outlines, and learning a lot of Bible knowledge along the way.  In fact, Mike and I were discussing a book and Mike said something regarding a Bible fact - Xavier challenged his statement and found the information in the Bible to prove himself correct.  I love those moments!

Zayden is practicing obedience, especially obedience without whining.  He's also enjoying his Montesorri "science" book, cutting, and gluing.  We got a new game that everyone is able to play and it's been good for a lot of giggles and time together.

One of our goals with the move was to try to get out with the kids for activities more individual to their ages, needs, interests, desires, etc. (vs me taking everyone to everything).  Wednesday I took these two to Knee High Naturalists (for ages 5 and under) at the conservation department and we made bird food to hang in the tree.

Natalee came along and read a book, while Xavier wet to Dad's office and worked on school while Mike did paperwork.

On Thursday, Mike planned his lunch break to take the older two kids to a class on building molecules with Legos at the conservation department.  It was nice for them to be able to go somewhere without all the younger ones along.

As a family, we listened the the audiobook The One and Only Ivan.  It was lovely and incidentally fit in with our science unit on ecosystems and biomes (the gorilla and elephants were living in small cages...lot of ways to compare and contrast that life vs a life at a good zoo or in the wild).  

Mia made these with therapy putty while listening and came and got my phone to take pictures of them.

Pretty nails for Ameliya and me.

On Friday, we had a Valentine party with our friends from Missouri and it was good to see everyone.

Evie worked this week on pushing up, scooching, and no cry sleep training.