First week of school in pictures

These pictures are all from our first week of school, this past week.  Not all of them are of the kids actually doing school, but I just tried to capture what our week looked like.

Danil and Kellen:BBFF(Bro Best Friends Forever)

Kellen and Danil adore each other.  Any time Danil sits down to look at a book, Kellen is right behind him.

Daddy mowing.

Kellen loves to ride on the mower with Josh.  This isn't the first time he has ridden himself to sleep.

Ray with the glitter after doing her craft from our Bible story.

On that day we read the parable from the Bible about the woman with 10 silver coins and she loses one. 

Josslyn hugging KK.  If I pull out a camera she will hug anyone in sight so that I'll take her picture.  If there happens to be no one in sight to hug, then she just strikes a pose.  That girl loves the camera.

And the camera loves her.

Pretty girl

All the kids having a juice pop during snack time.

 The juice pops are half water/half apple juice. They are easy to make, cheep, not loaded with sugar, and the kids love 'em.  That's what I call a winner!

This is how Josslyn trotted into the kitchen one morning when I called her to come take her medicine.  I thought the loads of jewelry was photo worthy.

Wednesday afternoon after the kids naps, we took a little field trip to the beach.  We ended up being there at low tide.  That meant lots of beach and lots of shallow water fo the kids to play in.  It was perfection.  The kids had a blast.

All 6 kids are in this picture.  Bet you can't find Danil!

Like I said, she loves to pose for picture.

I think Kellen has had enough of the sisterly lovins.

Of course, we had to throw in some learning.  This is homeschool, people.  You can learn anywhere, ESPECIALLY at the beach.  In science we are studying plants.  Since this was our first week of school it was just an introduction to plants.  We talked about kingdoms and classification and such.  In this picture we had decided that this dead catfish was once part of the animal kingdom.  It DID have a backbone.  It was cold-blooded, and had no scales.

Josslyn, of course, just had to pose with the catfish also.

And so did Alik.  Josslyn pulled a little photo bombing and jumped in there with him.

PB and sand sandwich. MMMmmmmmMMM!

Skipping rocks and shells in the shallow water.  He is really good at it.

Danil loves to have his feet buried in the sand.  He will sit like this for 30 minutes just grinning.

Yes, I know they have beer bottles.  They found them on the beach and were having so much fun filling them up with water that I thought it was innocent enough.  They are clueless, so I figured it was harmless.

I love this picture of Luke.

These are the hermit crabs we collected, all in about a 15 minute period.  Luke wanted me to take a picture of them before we released them.  More classification, of course.  Hermit crabs are animals who have a one part shell.

Peek-a-boo!(Or Cuckoo!, as they say in Ukraine.)

 Our beach field trip was a great way to spend the late afternoon having fun while it is still so hot.

The kids with their glitter pictures of what the home that Jesus is building them in heaven looks like.

Luke making a paper mache globe for geography.  This is a several day long project, so I am sure that I will post more pictures of the finished product next week.

Friday was Danil's birthday, so we made it a special day all day.  Pancake breakfast which included singing happy birthday to Danil several times.  We ate dinner with my grandparents for supper.(Mexican food, which Danil loves!)  Then we had a family movie night(which is typically how we spend our Friday evenings as a family)  They looked so cute on the couch waiting for me to start Rio that I could resist a picture. (Luke was on the recliner.  The little one are too squirmy during the movies for his taste.)

We are studying the beginning of American history in....history.  Here Luke is working on painting a map of Columbus's voyage.

Part of our plant unit is about cells.  Luke and Alik made a plant cell.  The ziplock bag is the cell membrane, the jello is the cytoplasm, the grape is the nucleus, and they put them in a small box to represent the cell wall.  Fun, and tasty too.  Apricot jello is good!

This was what our week looked like.  I'll post more about what our day looks like, schedule wise.  I do have to say that the original schedule I formulated is working well.  I use it more as a guide then the law.  I've let myself be flexible with it and I think that is partially why it has worked to well for us.  A reader asked how old my kids are.  Luke is 8.5, Alik is 5.5, Ray is 4.5, Danil just turned 5, Josslyn is 3, and Kellen is 18 months.  In the near future I'll explain where all my preschoolers are at developmentally(and all 4 of my middle children are who I refer to as my preschoolers.  Alik might be 5.5, but his isn't kindergarten ready.)

More soon!