Spring/Eeaster break not school but just as important

The eggs we took to grandma and grandpa's :)

the boys checking out the cool lego sticker book caiden got for Easter

the egg hunt and the goodies :)

Peyton men(minus the little man) by a fire...enough said :)

these are the moments I live for :)

These three have been friends almost since birth!

this is my garden...to early to plant so might as well dig :)

ahhhh tornado :) and all our other work 4/5/2012

We went through our regular classes with speed today :) the boy was excited about something new we purchased. I bought it on a garage sale site and it had to be meant for us because we had been talking about all the tornadoes in the south and what caused them and also how they worked. I will be posting our day backwards because this is more fun :D and now for pics.!

A tornado maker!! It came with a DVD that explained what tornadoes are, and also has 3 episodes of the show storm chasers. We had a blast. Caiden said the small red rectangles "debre" were semis and the yellow balls were cows. That's an Iowa boy for you :)

And now on to daily school work: language arts was lesson 3.6 past-tense verbs: was,were

math exercise 49  telling time. example the time is 10:40a.m. 3 hours later,it would be_______?

I like the ones that make him think LOL.

I let him read Beast Quest (REALLY good part). I guess it really doesn't matter what he is reading the point is to practice his oral reading skills. We did not do a chapter in our science book knowing most of the afternoon would be spent on tornadoes. Very off subject  from our bodied; but the right time of year to be learning about them! For social studies we started a unit on Iowa we learned about the state bird, flower, and the year it became a state.I would like to learn about Independence as our next unit before we go global. :)

library day and squirrel pics. :) 4/4/2012

Went  to story time as usual where Vonnie read Easter books and the kiddos did a  mini egg hunt among the library shelves :) Then Caiden read his Beast Quest book for about 40 min. on one of the couches before we headed home. He is on book 4 and was a good part I assume.  At home he wanted to research squirrels so we got out our book of mammals (thanks grandpa Mike) and read about the grey and red squirrels. This was so important because we discovered our squirrel, spikey, is a girl and a mama so now Caiden needs to help her take care of her babies :) We had a ball reading and hunting the tree for her and Caiden made her a salad out of things the book said were in her diet: berries, nuts, seeds, and leaves.

what a great day :)

little company and big plans 4/3/2012

Today my beautiful boy is going to work as fast as he can because his little cousin Levi is spending the day with us; and he would much rather be playing with him than doing school work :) We are sticking to our schedule but I'm sure he will end up with more free time than usual at the end of the hour.

For language arts he did lesson3.5 forming the past tense by adding ed. To which his comment was "This is cake! I'll be done in no time". I love how they pick up our sayings. One of my most used has been holy crap... I'm not big on the boy saying holy crap all the time (yes I know it could be much worse) so I have started saying really goofy things like holy macaroni, holy horseradish, ect.. which has turned into a fun game for us :) We reviewed the definitions of noun,proper noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, and adverb. I like to review every so often if it hasn't been in our daily work for awhile.

For math he is on exercise 48 which is still telling time but is figuring out  what time two clocks say and how many minutes later one clock is from the other.  To which I got "woohoo this is easy too. This was a good day for Levi to come. So far everything is easy!". I love this boy :) Although he did not do his best because Levi was here; so he went TO FAST and missed silly things and had to come back and do corrections.

He got 13/16 today on his spelling list :)
He read chapter 12 in Sherlock Holmes. I read chapter 7 in Who was Ben Franklin and the: your sense of touch unit in science. We have to finish our favorite food chart from yesterday tonight because the girls got home late and had A LOT of homework of their own :( Then he played My amazing human body; the computer game that goes with his science book.

For SS he sang me his states and capitols song and continents song and was off to play!! Legos here they come :D

things that smell and sea turtle money 4/2/1012

Language arts today  is a review over subject-verb agreement and irregular verbs he did awesome 100%  :) Our new schedule is working wonderfully for us (thanks for the idea daddy) . In his math book he is doing exercises over telling time which is really a review for him; he learned to tell time last year. I'm still trying to find a good way to do the timed math that doesn't send the boys brain into panic mode. I will gladly except any recommendations you may have :)

spelling list this week:

still

learn

should

america

world

hush

slush

dash

wash

wish

dish

money

coin

bill

cent

dollar

9/16 correct on first try . We tried him and daddy reviewing his spelling list together after supper last week and that did not work out at all they only remembered one night so Caiden didn't have much of a chance to make it to 16/16 last week :(

He did a review of his states map for ss just because it's been awhile and we worked so hard I would hate for him to forget!

Friday we read what's that smell for science, unit on your nose, and today we did the blindfold test to see if he knew what I was having him smell while blindfolded.We also read That's tasty, unit on your tongue and taste buds, which left the boy with work to do this evening he has to pole his family members on their favorite and least favorite tastes :)

He is on chapter 12 of Sherlock Holmes and we are at chapter 7 in Who Was Ben Franklin.Today was a very good school day :) We are now off to return our and Aunt Jen's pop cans and put the money in the adopt a sea turtle fund. He's been doing lots of little jobs to earn money :)





So I'm not sure what happened to Blogger this week but I couldn't sign in!! so this post is a mash of all we did this week excluding spelling lists,reading chapters and exact exercises for math... Wednesdays story time we got to take Caiden's best friend Ashton ( his school is on spring break) they did the giant floor puzzle of the ocean after stories :) unfortunately my phone is no longer allowing me to download pictures and I forgot to take my mom camera :( so her is other things we did this week ......

bird house he painted...

cat house he built...

and they like it :)

growing brain plant

Caiden and my fish tank which required feed everyday; corals have to be target feed. That's Caiden's job :)

We have made it to book 3 of Dripping Fang Forest series. We read this at bed time :)

Caiden and his daddy (favorite person in the world)

This is the first time he has been clean shaven in 8 years LOL

and this is the poem Caiden wrote about his daddy (favorite person in the world). I love it!

Caiden on book two (he's on book three now) of Beast Quest series. This is his free reading book :)

Caiden's sister Brooklyn teaching him and his cousin Trace her track workout. Those boys were whipped when she was done with them :) LOL

and last but not least; Caiden's picture of cats on a fence with garbage piled next to it and dogs barking at them :) lol love his brain.

3/22 "I just want go back to bed". From caiden?

I knew from the moment he sat down today was going to be a long day. I made this decision based on many cues but the big one was when he thought he should just move his cereal bowl to his lap because he was to tired to pick his head up! ugh....yep that's how our morning went. to tired to get dressed, to tired to write, to tired to think...imagine my surprise when at about 11:15 he says "I just want to go back to bed". If you know my child you are in as much shock as me. Bed is something to be avoided at all cost read till you have to hold your eyelids up with your fingers, one more trip to the bathroom, dehydration caused by not drinking for 24min. one more drink. I can't blame him, ask my husband, he gets it from me. The later it gets the harder it is for us to fall asleep :/  SOOOO knowing it's going to be a rough one we start language arts, which today I thought would be relatively easy; he was writing a letter to his friend Rhiannon.

 I knew this would not be the case when he looks at me and says " I forgot how to spell dear". To which my reply was "That's a shame I think I forgot I was going to build with you after school work is done." Amazingly he instantly remembered the correct spelling of dear. This stubbornness of his I also cannot hold against him but I don't think I get all the blame for this character trait. There are 4 lines of genetics this particular trait could be blamed on  :) So dragging his feet and definitely taking his time he finished his letter with no free time left. So we start math, his favorite class. He did his fraction worksheet with ease and then I got out his timed math sheet and a noise cam out of the boy that would make you think I just cut his favorite stuffed animal in half! I look at him and ask if there is a problem? To which I get the reply "why do I have to do this again? I HATE them!" HATE is a bad word at our house the lecture goes like this: hate is a very strong word that can easily upset other people and hurt their feelings and you should only use it when you truly feel that way. There are few things in the world to truly HATE. This has also been turned back at me; my own lecture repeated to me followed by I truly HATE timed math worksheets! They make it to hard to think!He did his math drill but left me with something to think about.... science and reading of Who was Queen Elizabeth went quickly. Mainly because that is when I read to him. This is where we break for lunch and just talk. I love to listen to him ramble off his thoughts. Today was a discussion about smallpox(queen Elizabeth brought that on),Poland(Rhiannon is moving there),worms and if it hurts them when the birds pull them apart, how old Connie(a relative from Georgia) is in "regular people years" if she only has a birthday every 4 years and just had her 13th birthday, and how much he would rather go back to bed than finish the school day LOL. I suppose it was worth one more try. On to His reading: one chapter of Sherlock Holmes and I found a better website for kids news: http://www.timeforkids.com/news-archive/all?page=1 . So we hopped on there and read about a new search for Amelia's plane, and a girl that collects bikes and donates them to her local Chicago school where they are given out to kids with good grades and perfect attendance. The school reported it has been a wonderful incentive for the students to try harder. After this LONG HARD day ,it was 2:30, he went to relax in his lego pile and as soon as I am finished on here he plans on looking on the website that goes with his Hero Qwest books. They have mazes and problem solving games! Thank goodness he doesn't have to think anymore today ;)

NO thinking here! LOL