Week 27- Snails, Puppy Dog Tails, and....Shrimp???

- February 09, 2019

I really want to complain about how cold it has been, and we haven't gotten even a single snow flurry....but I'm not going to. Every time I think about it, I remember how blessed we are that we are not further north and experiencing those super low temperatures and too much snow and ice!

We really have had a great week. On an unseasonably warm day we saw these signs of spring. As a dear friend says, "It's just around the corner!"

I can't believe we only have one more week and we will be finished with our 4th, 6 week term. Then we will only have 2 more terms to go before summer break.

This week in school:

Bible: We finished up our Bible History book. We started on "The Gospels" by Drive Thru History. We are big fans of Dave Stotts and his Drive Thru History DVD's. We haven't watched any that we did not learn a ton and laugh a lot.

Science: We finished up our short introduction study on Physics and our Kitchen Chemistry curriculum. This week we started watching some Endangered Species DVD's that a friend gave us. They are a little heavy on the evolution for my liking, but we are learning a lot about these animals' habitats. We didn't want to start a new curriculum with just one more week left. So, biology is a favorite science for everyone and we had the DVDs.

History: Once again, we finished our Bible History book which was counting as both Bible and History. We did not want to start another big study, so I found this short study of our first 4 presidents in my stack of save for later that I'm trying to use up. It is called "Cooking up History." This week we learned some interesting facts about George Washington and made a cherry pie. Even though he didn't really cut down the famous cherry tree, cherry pie was one of his favorite desserts.

Math: While I was looking for a quick History to use in my stack of save for later, I came across this Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Math set. It is quite wonderful. We spent Monday going over and reviewing everything in it. The rest of the week we just worked on through our next lessons.

Language Arts: Nothing new to report here. Everyone is diligently working through their curriculum.

Computer Science: Well, Logan has had to pretty much stop on both of his computer courses. We have figured out we are going to have to do some major updating in the tech department. We need to update hardware, software, and internet capabilities before he can continue these courses.

Art:. We did some origami this week. This is not a strength for any of us! But we did finally get some decent finished products, we will do some more next week.

In other activities this week:

Monday was music night and taekwondo. Logan still really enjoys Monday nights, he looks forward to it. Lillian is kinda in a slump right now with taekwondo. She has to continue through her next belt testing, then she can make a choice on whether she wants to continue or not.

Tuesday we were gone all day to Little Rock. It was a super long day, but hopefully we got some answers we needed for Logan and we can move forward in a better direction with his AFO and prosthetic.

Wednesday we stayed home. We were all completely wiped out from Tuesday and just needed to rest. We did a little yard work.

Thursday night we went to a Valentine's party. The kids had a great time. I didn't take any pictures, but they had a bouncy house, cupcake decorating table, games, box decorating competition, basketball, and lots of socializing.

Friday Shane and Logan went to Jacksonville to pick up our trap supplies. Us girls stayed home! Friday night Logan had a teen game night in Texarkana. Once again, no pictures. He had a good time. They ate, played some games, and sat around a fire. While he was there, we took the girls to IJump. It is an indoor trampoline fun house type place. They loved it. There was a ninja course, basketball, dodge ball, and lots of trampolines. It was not as crowded as I had feared, not many people there at all.

Now to snails, puppy dog tails, and shrimp. We brought home some snails from Grandview back at the beginning of school. They were from our class on macroinvertebrates. They have thrived in our fish tank. I really thought they would die, but they are reproducing and we are getting quite a collection of freshwater snails. This week while we were doing some outside work the girls found a stash of land snails. They really enjoyed watching them come out of their shells and move around.

Lillian dressed her puppy, Buddy, up as a king one day. He was supper cute, doesn't he look like royalty!

We tried hatching some brine shrimp this week. Once again, this was something I had and we are just using up. They didn't hatch. I think the water got too cold. So it was a failed science experiment. We will try again when it warms up.