Homeschool. Umm...What week is it??

I have completely lost count of what week we are on in school.  And if I am being completely honest, I don't have the energy to think back and try to figure it out.  Between birthday parties, trips out of town to visit family, family visiting us, holidays, and field trips, it has been a whirlwind month.  But we are pressing on and working hard, AND we are having fun along the way.  One thing we love about homeschool is the freedom that comes along with it.

Here are some highlights from our last few weeks:

This was a cool experiment we did to learn about animal adaptations.

L made the Eiffel tower out of spaghetti noodles I had spray painted silver.

Cory may have mentioned to L that we might build a house in the next few years.  And that may have been a big mistake.  She quickly became obsessed with the idea of a new house and begin searching through magazines to find everything she wanted in our new house.  She was asking me day and night what kind of door, bricks, stairs, bathroom, pavers (for crying out loud) I wanted in our new house.  It became such an obsession, it was cutting into school time.  Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?  Benefit to homeschooling?  I can customize school assignments to fit my little learner.  I decided to allow her to make a design board.  She would have to use her phonics skills to label each room. She would also have to use some math skills to take measurements and determine what can fit into each room.  Her next step is to browse magazines and pinterest to decide all the interior and exterior elements for her dream home.  

We were excited to get to surprise PawPaw for his birthday this year.  He got to celebrate with all his grandkids this year!

And we had some special guests for a few days!!  Aunt Z and Mason!

Silly Aunt Z :)

To celebrate the first day of fall we made pretty fall trees with colored water

We let Cooper use watercolors

We spent some time at GiGi and PawPaws

 But we brought school with us.  Here is a project we did at GiGi and PawPaws to practice using ordinal numbers.

At the end, we had a smash cake so I could take Coop's 1-year-old pictures.  Beautiful.

I also introduced the kids to pastels

 They love the bold colors and they enjoy blending them

Mommy made an oops and had too many days in September, so the kiddos had to set up October for me.  They loved it and it gave them extra practice.  I meant to do that. ;)

For science one week, we learned about the different kinds of stars.  I thought it would be fun make hot chocolate and go star gazing.

Fun....But short-lived. (Someone was afraid a tornado would come out of the clear night and get us)

We went on a field trip with our PE buddies to the pumpkin patch.  I'm pretty sure my kids would live there if they could.

The rolling hill!!!  I actually went down myself and I'm pretty sure someone might have a blackmail picture of me now....

This one is for you, Jena!

Mommy's little clown

Coop has become a horticulturalist lately.  He is GREAT at watering the dirt!

And he also has a new love for oranges

Another week in science, we learned the parts of the sun.  I broke out play dough and did a little experiment to show the layers.

 Worked like a charm!!  You can clearly see the 4 different layers and it gave her a much better understanding the sun.

At the pumpkin patch, each kid gets to take home a pumpkin.  While I enjoy carving pumpkins, I am not very good at it and I don't like how fast the pumpkins rot after you carve them.  Also, I wanted my kids to think "outside the box" to come up with a completely original idea for their pumpkins.  They came up with Bubble Guppies!

 Now I did not know exactly how to pull this off.  I was thinking yarn and pipe cleaners for the hair and painting the faces on.  However, my resourceful 5-year-old suggested we just print pictures of the characters and glue the pieces onto the pumpkins.  Smartie Pants!

 Back to our sun unit....

I looked online for an art project we could do.  I found this art piece and thought it would serve as excellent inspiration.

So I drew a basic sun for each of the kids and gave them free reign to design their sun however they'd like.  Lan chose lots of different patterns for her sun rays and a happy face with long eyelashes of course.  Eli chose to use lots of bold and beautiful colors.  I love how they both came out!

I liked them so much, I framed them and hung them in our breakfast area

This week, we hosted a Halloween Party. 

 If you have ever been one of our youth, you have played the food grab bag game!  SO much fun!  Don't worry.  We were gentle to the little ones and used only yummy foods.  No sardines or vienna sausages. LOL

 And we played the mummy game!!

We made monsters....

And mummies....

Lastly, the kiddos each popped a balloon to get a special treat!

FUN FUN FUN!