Weekly report

Here is what we got done this week:

Math:

We finally found a place in Ellie's mathbook for her to begin working. She's been working on adding with decimals and changing decimals to fractions and vice versa. We are still working through Kara's math trying to find something challenging. We are already 1/2 way through her math book so it looks like I'll need to order a new math book for her sooner than I had anticipated.

English:

We didn't get as much accomplished this week as I had planned. Ellie only did 3 lessons, instead of 4. And Kara didn't get her English done on Thursday--it was such a beautiful day that we went to the park instead. We've got to take advantage of the nice weather before the weather turns sub-arctic. :-)

Latin:

Ellie finally finished her Latin for this week today. For some reason, there wasn't as much time on Thursday to get everthing done. Ellie likes Latin but says that she wishes she could ask her teacher some questions (she uses the accompanying DVDs to LC1). I am going to need to learn Latin along with her I think so I can help her with questions. We also have a Latin teacher that goes to our church so I may need to hit him up with a few questions.

Science:

We did an experiment to learn about radar and began reading about the earth--God's most special planet. One thing the girls thought was funny was that if the earth had more mass, and therefore had more gravity, daddy's stinky toots would never dissipate!!! They got the giggles over that one. :-)

Handwriting:

Kara has finished her handwriting book so now I need to make some copywork pages for her. I doubt that will get done this week as we will have Dan's grandma's funeral this week.

Spelling:

Kara did a few lessons in her book this week and passed with flying colors (except for the word "fill"--she kept forgetting the double l). We are still working on the same spelling list for Ellie. I finally found a spelling list that is challenging for her so this week she has been working on words with "ie" and "ei" spellings.

Bible:

Ellie is still working on Genesis and we have been doing the 10 commandments study that our church is doing. It is from John Piper's organization Children Desiring God. It has been a great study and the kids are really liking it.

Read Aloud:

We finished The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. We had planned on starting the next book in the series but didn't get to it on Wed or Thurs. We'll start on Monday. We are usually a few chapters ahead anyway since the kids love the stories and are always begging for more chapters.

Reading:

Kara is continuing to read readers from the library. Ellie is working A String in the Harp, a Newberry award winner from 1977. She says she likes it so far but hasn't figured out why they named the book the way they did.

History:

We finished another chapter in SOTW and the girls did a writing assignment. They were given the same first 2 sentences and had to write a story about why the cities of Mohenjo-Daro were abandoned in ancienty Egypt. Here are their stories:

Kara's:

It was a dark and windy night as the town of Mohenjo-Daro slept. Little did anyone know that this was their last night. An army was coming!

The army surprised them, split up and went into people's houses. They took everything they liked. The people of the army smelled something just as they were about to leave. It was their favorite meal! They said, "Where is that coming from?" They looked under the bed and found it. They slammed the door shut.

Year after year the army came back and they could smell that smell. And then one year they came back and didn't smell that smell because nobody was living there.

Ellie's:

It was a dark and windy night as the town of Mohenjo-Daro slept. Little did anyone know that this was their last night. After eating a big feast, they all went to bed. But it was their last time getting into bed becasue that night they all died. They feast that they had eaten was poisened.

You'll notice that Ellie's story is much shorter. Ellie usually isn't too keen on writing projects unless it is one that she comes up with on her own. She got her Clubhouse magazine in the mail the other day and there is a story in there that needs an ending. There is also a monetary prize for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place and the endings will be published. She is excited about writing an ending to it and we are going to be working on that for the next few weeks.

No art or music this week. Ellie and Kara went on a field trip Friday to the County Historical Society. The girls had a blast and learned about sorghum, weaving, removing the bark from wood and other things. The whole History Day was outside and the weather was absolutely perfect for it. Emily stopped at McDonald's on the way home and got them all ice cream cones. :-)

Also, Ellie has been wanting to start making supper periodically. So she will begin making supper once a month. Her cooking day will be at the end of October and today she picked out her menu since I will be doing my monthly grocery shopping trip next week. She is making Dilled Ham Balls over pasta, Summer Strawberry Jello Salad and a Butterfinger cheesecake.

Health Nut Muffins

I was looking for a recipe for muffins for lunch today, found one, then modified it. Darin asked if I could please make them again once they were all gone.

3 bananas, mashed
2 eggs
2 T canola oil
2 cups sour milk
1 T vanilla (about, I never measure vanilla, just put in a few squirts)
3/4 cup chopped dates
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup blueberries
2 apples, peeled, cored, finely chopped
2 t cinnamon
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup oat bran
1/2 cup quick oats
1/2 cup wheat germ
2 t baking powder
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt

Mix wet ingredients in large bowl. In separate bowl, mix together dry ingredients. Add to wet ingredients and mix until just moistened. Fill greased muffin tin mostly full. Bake at 350 for 15-22 minutes, depending on the size of the muffin. I made 12 jumbo muffins with this recipe and bakes them for 21-22 minutes.

Quote from Ellie

We were at the Dr's office yesterday to pick up Ellie's immunization schedule which I needed to submit with our intent to homeschool form. There was a woman who had her 2 young children (probably around 3yo) with her and the children were continually misbehaving--kept running for the door, etc.

After we walked out, Ellie said, "You're a better mother than she is, mom. You discipline us and you'd never let us act like that."

Now, I'm not saying I am a better mom--you never know the underlying circumstances. But at least she appreciates being disciplined--at least until I am disciplining her. :-)

Week in review

Here is what we got accomplished last week for school:

(There are several classical homeschoolers that are posting their weekly progress reports online and I thought it was a good idea--hopefully I will keep it up)

Math

Kara--we're still working on finding a spot in her math book where she is learing something, so we are still doing 5-10 math lessons a day

Ellie--she took 2 math tests daily and we have now found a starting point for her. She skipped around 30 lessons total.

English

Kara--Ordinary Parents--4 lessons, soft/hard g and c sounds

Ellie--R&S ch 2 test, 3 lessons

Spelling

Kara-she worked ahead so instead of the 2 lessons per week she normally does, she did 4

Ellie--I found a 6th grade spelling list online since she had been bored with what I had for her earlier. This was week 2 of that list.

Latin

Ellie--lesson 6, first declension

Reading

Ellie--she finished up A Wrinkle in Time along with several other books she was reading on her own

Kara--no assigned books for Kara at this point. She gets readers from the library and reads those along with any packages, magazines, etc we have lying around

Read-Aloud

We are currently reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and the kids are loving it!

History

SOTW ch 8--they learned about the Assyrians and the story of gilgamesh. They also made crowns from the era and wore ancient egyptian clothing. Here they are in all their glory.

I finally have a new dishwasher!!!!

Yeah! We finally bought a new dishwasher! As many of you know, we have been without a functioning dishwasher for 2-3 months and before that its ability to get things clean was spotty (pun intended). So we have been watching the Sears sales since we wanted a particular Kenmore and decided that they weren't going to go on sale for any more that what they currently are. So we bought one!!

Then I decided that I didn't want to pay someone to install it--how hard can it really be? Not that hard, as I found out. However, it wasn't exactly a completely smooth process. I had removed the old dishwasher last week and removed the 90 degree angle fitting and the power cord since I would need it for the new dishwasher. And the kids enjoyed playing in the space (after I cleaned it out) where the dishwasher was. So the new dishwasher arrived yesterday and I immediately got to work installing it.

After I got the top of the box off, I tipped the dishwasher over so I could put the 90 degree fitting on and wire the power cord. As soon as I tipped it over, I noticed there was water all over the floor!! I don't know if they run the d/w through a test cycle before they package it up or what, but I hadn't been expecting a brand new d/w to have water in it!!

The other thing that made things a bit tricky was the length of the hot water supply hose. With the old dishwasher, I didn't have any trouble pulling the d/w out of the cabinet, tipping it over, then disconnecting it. On the new d/w I think the connection is a little more towards the front of the d/w so it took some very careful maneuvering to get the d/w under the cabinet while connected. I didn't want to disconnect the water line from the main line since I knew I already had a good seal there and it is very difficult to use a wrench when you basically have no clearance so I wanted it connected before I tipped it upright.

Of course, the whole time I am attempting to get this beast installed, the kids are driving me crazy!! They are asking a million questions (though not necessarily about the d/w) and asking me to do several things at once. Now I can multitask, but generally not while installing an appliance!!

At one time, I had to tip the d/w back over to tighten the hot water supply since I hadn't gotten it quite tight enough. So once again, I had water on the floor. Ellie, with her keen sense of the obvious says, "Mom, there's water on the floor." Does she do anything about it? NOOOO! She just stands there!

So I told her to get a towel or some paper towels or something. Her response, "Well, how many?" I don't care. Just get some and mop it up!

Of course, this is after Darin has decided that he should hit Natalie (he was sent to bed) and Natalie thought it would be a great idea to ask me the same question over and over and over and over (she got put in bed for a little bit too!).

So I finally got it installed and I needed to run a test cycle to make sure I didn't have any leaks anywhere. So I pushed the button for the shortest cycle and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing was happening.

Turns out you need to push the start button too. Now while you are falling off your chair laughing, you must realize that on our old d/w, there was no start button. You just pushed the button for the cycle you wanted and then it started.

I have now run 2 loads of dishes and I am happy to say that it doesn't leak and the dishes are sparkly clean!!!!

At the park today

We went to the park this afternoon since the weather is just about perfect. I was pushing Natalie in the swing and was thinking about how cute she looked with her hair being swept back by the wind and she swung forward. I was lamenting that I didn't have my camera along when I remembered that I did have the cell phone which has a camera, albeit only 1.3 mp. It was a bit tricky trying to get a pic of her because you have have to push the button about 1-2 seconds before you actually wanted to take the picture. This was the best I could come up with.

Kielbasa Split Pea Soup

I am posting this since there was a request for the recipe.

2 celery ribs, thinly sliced
1 medium onion, chopped
1 package (16 oz) dried green split peas
9 cups water, divided
1 pound smoked turkey kielbasa, halved and sliced
4 medium carrots, halved and thinly sliced
2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 T minced fresh parsley
1 t dried basil
1 1/2 t salt
1/2 t pepper

In a large Dutch oven coated with nonstick cooking spray, cook celery and onion til tender. Stir in split peas and 6 cups water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

Stir in remaining ingredients (including 3 cups water). Return to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until peas and veggies are tender.

Whole Wheat Buns

I made these for lunch and supper today. They turned out really well and thought I'd share the recipe.

1 cup water, warmed
1 cup milk, warmed
2 eggs
2 T yeast
1/2 cup butter, melted
1/2 cup sugar
3 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups white flour (plus more for kneading)
1 1/2 t salt

Place milk, water and yeast in bowl. Stir. Add butter and whole wheat flour. Stir, then add the eggs. Add remaining ingredients. Knead until elastic, adding more white flour until dough is no longer sticky. Place in greased bowl and let rise till double. Punch down and form into buns. Let rise till double. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes. Makes 24 buns.


Another recipe I made late last week that the kids are still raving about is the Kielbasa Split Pea Soup. It is from the October 2006 Light & Tasty magazine. If you don't get the magazine and are interested in the recipe, just let me know and I'll email it to you.

Ahh. . . such a sweet boy

Darin is doing my dishes for me today. What a sweet boy he is. :-)

Kara's front tooth is finally out!!! and other drama

As most of you know, Kara's front tooth has been hanging on by just a thread for quite some time but she has refused to pull it out. So Saturday I decided that I was going to pull it out. Good grief!! You would have thought that I was torturing the child!! I told her to get me a paper towel and come over so I could pull it out. As I am getting ready to grab the tooth and pull it out, Kara decides that this would be prime time to let her acting abilities shine through. She begins to cry. Loudly. I managed to pull it out in one yank (and not a very hard one at that) then gave her the paper towel to hold to her mouth for a bit since it was bleeding just a little. She assumed that I was going back in her mouth to attempt to pull it out as she didn't realize that I had already gotten the tooth out and began crying louder. So I showed her the tooth. She stopped crying immediately.

On another note, Darin threw a world-class fit in Fleet Farm this weekend. Dan had to go to FF to get some softener salt and I was working so he took along all 4 kids. The arguing began at the front of the store about who would sit in the cart and who would walk. So Dan forewent the cart (not thinking that he might need the cart to haul the 40-lb bags of softener) and told all the kids that they could walk. Well, Darin, having not slept during naptime, begins to wail that he wants to stand on the end of the cart. Dan ignores him and keeps walking, not looking at him since he can hear him trailing behind him. Dan continues walking and Darin continues to wail, eliciting a few smirks from passersby. Then, after about 2 minutes of the wailing and Dan not paying any attention to him, he suddenly stops throwing his fit and acts as if it never happened!! He was the model child after that. But of course, the drama doesn't end there.

Once Dan got to the softener salt, he realized that he didn't have a cart to put it in so he picks up 2 bags, 1 in each hand. Ellie and Kara are determined that they are going to help and together pick up one bag and begin carrying it to the front of the store. Now keep in mind that the front of the store is a very long ways away. So they begin to walk, very, very slowly. And Dan didn't really want 3 bags of salt but he was in no mood to argue with them. Thankfully, a nice woman came along and carried the 3rd bag of salt for the girls. She told Dan that she had 6 children but she was shopping alone and would gladly help them out.

Dan has decided that it is going to have to be dire circumstances for him to go shopping with all 4 kids without me. :-)

Kara and math

So I am starting to realize that I don't have to do everything by the book, i.e. Kara doesn't have to always do both sides of her math worksheets. She's been complaining that she hasn't been learning anything in math so we have been doing her math lessons orally and skipping a few parts (like counting to 100 everyday which she has no problems with). Today I decided that we would just do as many lessons as she could tolerate or until we ran out of time. We got through 5 lessons and then we needed to do some reading. She learned a couple of math facts (which she picked up on right away) but pretty much nothing else. I told her we would do 5 more math lessons on Monday. Eventually we'll get to a lesson where she learns something new. I think math might be one of her strong subjects.

Ellie is also lamenting that her math is too easy so I need to figure out a way for her to skip ahead too.

On another note, I replaced the batteries in the toy kitchen so the kids have been having a blast playing with it. Now the burners on the play stove make noise and light up. Even Ellie has been playing with it since she was done with school already at 10:15. Ellie tells me that they have been playing McDonald's. Ellie has a notebook and she writes down the orders while the others cook the meal on the stove. Since it was lunchtime, they pretended that they were eating at McDonald's and I was serving them except we had mac 'n cheese, crackers, carrots and smoothies. They asked me how much their lunch was. I said, "$4.50."

Here is what they left me:

I even got a $0.50 tip from each child (minus Natalie). Darin's $5 bill is the one on the bottom right. :-)

Ahhh...the flexibility of homeschooling

We went camping this past weekend with my family (Mom, Dad, Laurie, Sean, John, Erika and kids) for our annual camping trip to Chester Woods Park. This park is only 7 minutes from our house so it's a great location for when the weather is less than wonderful. . . this weekend, for example. Several times it rained and 1 morning we had breakfast here. Of course, the morning we were supposed to pack up it was also raining. So we all hung out here for awhile, then just packed up wet.

So. . . the camping stuff had been sitting in our garage since we came home on Monday. The tents and the canopy still needed to be dried out and nothing else had been put away. Needless to say, the chaos was driving me crazy. As Dan says, A crazy wife is no good.

So about 9am this morning I decided that I couldn't effectively do school with a house that was a complete disaster. And now I am feeling much more calm. I've been fighting this nasty cold so I haven't really felt like doing much, but I decided that we had to clean today. I work this weekend too and didn't want to go to work with a messy house since it would invariably be much worse by Monday morning.

I assigned the girls to the task of cleaning their room and the family room. They also vacuumed the kitchen and the living room. I deep cleaned our bedroom and picked up Natalie and Darin's room. I have also packed up the 2 tents and the monstrosa of a canopy and then mowed the lawn. I also managed to take a 2 hour nap (much needed with this cold I have). I just have the kitchen left to do and then I can chill.

Since I haven't had much of an appetite due to a constant diet of post-nasal drip and since Dan wasn't home for supper tonight, I told the kids that I would make them smoothies if they would agree to cereal for supper. They all agreed--even Ellie who abhors cereal. I tried out a new recipe I found in a Light & Tasty magazine and it was surprisingly good. It has tofu in it so I was a bit skeptical, but it was actually quite good. (Tofu is made from soymilk which has lots of great health benefits)

Here is the recipe for any of you who may want to try it.
2 1/4 cups orange juice
3 cups frozen strawberries, unsweetened
2 bananas (I was out so I substituted plums)
12 ounces reduced fat silken tofu
1 T sugar

Put all in blender and blend. It barely fit in my blender so you may only want to make 1/2 a recipe at a time.

Well...gotta put the kids to bed and start cleaning the kitchen.

Ellie's new haircut

Pics of Darin's ear

And the end table won

Well, just as Dan has been predicting ever since we've had children--someone would end up in the ER due to a run-in with the end tables Grandpa Hoogeveen made for us for our wedding. That poor child was Darin.

I had asked Dan to grab my wallet as I was leaving for work tonight so that I could stop and get gas in the morning since Dan has to drive to LaCrosse Tuesday for work. So Dan asked Ellie to get it for me and Darin thought that he should get it. So he took off at lightening speed. At some point he must have tripped and fallen, hitting his head on the corner of the end table. Nobody saw it happen. Dan came back in the house and saw Darin standing there screaming. He immediately thought to himself, "This is one tired boy." Then he saw the blood. Miraculously, he (Dan) didn't pass out (or if he did, he didn't admit to it). So when I got to work, there was a message to call home. Dan explained the situation and I told him to bring him up here for me to look at so we could determine if he needed stitches or not. Poor Natalie was already tucked in for the night and sleeping. But Dan got all the kids and brought them along. I looked at it and sent them to the ER.

Dan and the kids had to wait in the waiting room for over an hour until they could be seen. Once they were in a room, I had someone cover for me so I could go down. It wouldn't have been pretty for Dan to try to hold Darin and take care of a very tired Natalie at the same time. Plus Dan doesn't do well with needles, blood, etc. Darin screamed when they put the Lidocaine in but was calm after that. They didn't need to use any sort of sedation and they were all quite impressed with how well he behaved. He was the talk of the ER for sure.

After they numbed his ear (that's the point of impact with the table), they had to irrigate it. He thought it tickled and giggled uncontrollably. We were all laughing. I just love it when he laughs like that. They had a child life specialist come in and talk to him about what tools the doctor would be using. He got to hold them and play with them for a bit so he thought that was pretty cool. Then they had him lie down on the bed and the ENT doc got to work stitching him up. It took almost the entire movie of Toy Story for him to get it done. He needed 3 deep stitches and somewhere around 22 superficial stitches to sew him back together. He had 3 different spots that needed stitches.

So when I go home in the morning, I'll have to attempt to clean the blood out of the carpet, get his antibiotic filled (precautionary since he tore his cartilage) and go buy him a toy at Target. I'll try to post some pics too.

A fairly productive weekend so far . . .

Overall, I'm pretty happy with what I've gotten accomplished without anyone repeatedly saying, "mommy, mommy, mommy." Last night I got September's menu planned and made my grocery list. So this morning I got up early intending to go for a run, but my knees were a bit sore from yesterday's run so I decided not to go. Instead I got an early start on my errands. I went to the farmer's market and got some green beans, green onions and some plums. Then I went to Panera to stop and get some breakfast (an asiago cheese bagel, no cream cheese) and ran over to Target--one of the few places that actually opens at 8am. Good grief. I have never understood the retail industry and why nobody opens until 10am, 9am at the earliest. I'd prefer it if stores were open by 6 or 7. But I guess I'm not in the majority.

Anyway, onto my list of where I went. After Target, I went to the bank to get this month's cash out. Of course, they don't open till 9 so I sat in the drive-thru for 10-15 minutes just waiting for them. After that, I went to Aldi to pick up what groceries I could. One of their produce specials this week was a 1 pound bag of carrots for 49 cents. Since these are a great snack, I stocked up and bought 8 bags (I think). It'll probably only last us a week and a half but my fridge is only so big.

Then I went to Hy-Vee to pick up the rest of the groceries. Thankfully it wasn't too busy yet at 9:30. And I didn't have 4 kids to keep track of so it was a relatively painless experience. I prefer to rush around the store a little faster, but that only works when the store is pretty much empty. I'd hate to run over some little old lady with my cart. I've been run over before and it doesn't feel good.

After that I ran down to Shopko to get some frames for the Antiquities pictures we had taken in the spring and haven't hung up yet. They had frames for 50% off so I went to check it out. I bought three. When I got home, I realized that I had bought three 8x10 frames (I did know this in the store) but I have only 2 8x10 photos and 1 11x14 photo. Arghh!! So after my nap I went back to the store and picked out another frame. It doesn't exactly fit since it is slightly larger than 11x14 (it is actually a collage frame for 5 4x6 photos) and it has a scratch that I didn't notice before. So, I'll probably end up taking all three back and looking somewhere else for matching frames. Oh well.

After I got those errands run, I came home and school planned for the next 6 weeks. I've got most of it done so between shifts this weekend I should be able to get it finished. And hopefully I can get a few more closets organized.