Homeschool Weekly Wrap- Up: The Week We Went to Biomes Marine Biology Center

We started our week by decorating the house for Christmas and trying to come up with a plan of how we were going to get everything done for the week.  We had a pretty full schedule before the week even began and while we thoroughly enjoyed our day at Biomes and were thrilled to meet a real life children's author what I will remember most about this week is all the fun games we played together.  It's dark most nights by 4:30 and we've been filling our evening hours playing all sorts of board games together.



With my husband home for the whole day we planned to decorate our house on Friday. The boys cleaned their rooms and found room for their mini trees.  They decorated their trees and Alec put up my village.  Alec also cleaned out a lot of his Lego sets, bins and pieces and the other two boys went through them scooping up new Lego sets to play with and put together.  Evan used a ship he had and a matching ship he found in Alec's "get rid of" pile to make a giant battleship.  Ian found a set that Alec had not finished putting together and spent time making the whole set.  Alec found a mini block set that made a Panda bear and spent most of his evening working on that.  The boys all helped decorate the family tree and we invited my mother in law over to help us too.




Evan's creation

The set Ian finished putting together 

I took off for the day with Alec and my mom on Saturday.  We were heading to a craft fair where we had some family members displaying their wares.  We bought some cute wooden crafts, some yummy chocolate treats and I bought myself a new pair of leggings.  We then headed out to lunch at Panera bread and Alec lost his very last baby tooth.  Evan stayed home, playing in the woods while my husband worked on making door handles for his new shed/shop.  Ian was gone all day; first for work in the morning with his grandfather and then he stayed with his grandparents for dinner out and a movie.  They went to see the new Justice League.  It was a very relaxing day for us all.

On Sunday Alec went to the woodworking shop with my husband and made some new wooden shelves for his room so he can display Lego sets on his open metal shelving.  He brought them home to paint and then we set them on his shelves to see how they look. Ian was in his glory as he got to work on demolishing an old trailer that had been abandoned up in the woods and was falling apart.  It's finally time to take it down and get it into the dumpster.   The younger two boys were given the job of cleaning up brush by their grandfather and they were thrilled to get paid; money that will come in quite handy for buying Christmas gifts!


His shelves all put together with his Lego sets on display 








We woke early Monday and got ready to head out on a fun field trip. We were checking out this nature center called Biomes and we had a wonderful time learning about marine animals.  We got to feed all sorts of sharks and fish.  It was amazing & you can read all about it here. Once home Ian headed off to crush some more of the trailer while Alec read a new book from the library.  Ian came home and cleaned his fish tank while the younger two boys played video games.  Ian and I played Yahtzee and Memory.  After dinner we all played Clue and a couple rounds of Beat the Parents.  I just love nights when we're sitting around the table laughing together and having fun.




We headed off to karate on Tuesday morning with the agreement that schoolwork would get done when we got home.  We typically have a very short day of school on Tuesday because of karate and I just asked each boy to work on some cursive, two pages in math, and read something.  It took us a good 3 hours to finish school and I was so discouraged.  I tried to help the boys turn the day around and so we turned to art and games.  Ian worked on his model, Alec went to draw some Pokemon pictures and Evan asked to make some glitter ornaments like the ones I made for the ornament exchange.  He wanted to try using two different colors of glitter for the first ornament and two different stamped images for the second ornament.  He LOVED how they turned out and wants to make even more.  Once art was done Alec asked me to play Mario chess (and beat me mercilessly), Ian asked to play Yahtzee and after I beat him he brought out the Scrambled States of America game.  I won the first game and then Alec and Ian played a quick round while I finished cooking dinner.  After dinner we played another game of Beat the Parents and then Ian ended the night playing The Clumsy Thief with my husband.







Thinking part of our problem on Tuesday was starting school so late I wanted to make sure we started school nice and early on Wednesday.  However, I forgot the younger boys were going out to breakfast with their grandmother... so we didn't start school until later in the morning.  We worked on math, reading, and English/grammar just as soon as they arrived back home before packing lunches to head out to see a free concert in the city... only we never made it to the concert.  At the last minute we decided to turn around and head back home. Luckily it was a really nice day and we decided to go for a walk in the woods once we arrived home.  Ian took us bushwhacking across streams, over old rock walls, and through pine groves.  We hiked for over half and hour and enjoyed exploring the woods.  By late afternoon the younger two boys were playing video games and Ian asked me to play Scattegories before we started a game of Monopoly.  We played until dinnertime and so far we seem pretty evenly matched.

If you look closely you'll notice that the tree in the foreground on the left is actually just the top of the tree
 on the left; we could not believe it blew off and landed that way! 




 Thursday the boys worked through their morning work quite quickly.  We started reading two new chapter books together: A Boy Called Christmas & The Lincoln Project.  The boys all worked on math, reading, and writing.  We had time for a quick experiment-- we blew out candles using baking soda and vinegar (they'll be a full post about this next week!).  After lunch we headed to our co-op class and met a local author.  The kids listened to her read aloud from her book, talk about the story behind her books, and learn a bit about the process of publishing a book by collaborating with an illustrator.  We ended our class fun craft project to go along with it. 





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Comments

  1. Great field trip - great crafts! And I actually thought the photos of them demolishing the trailer were very cool! (Can you tell I also have boys? LOL)

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    1. I thought it was neat to demolition too; we learned a lot about how trailers are made, wired, and plumbed.

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  2. Your festive home village looks awesome! My boys would've loved a stand for their Lego creations, those are so good! Have a wonderful weekend!

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  3. You had a very busy week. I don't know how you fit it all in. I like the Christmas ornaments and the Lego projects. Thanks for sharing at #HomeMattersParty

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    1. LOL! I'm not really sure how we fit it all in either. In fact my oldest son just told someone yesterday that we are involved in too many things... so I think we'll be cutting back a bit but I just can't help wanting to craft and create things together.

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  4. My word! What a busy week as ever! Well done with the Christmas decoration - we haven't out ours up yet! lol! I really like the boys' lego creations and the drawing of the Pokemon too. They are so good at it. I'd love to spend me time with the author too. So interesting. I really want to write a Children's book - perhaps - one day. :) Thank you so much for linking up with us on #FabFridayPost xx

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    1. It was so neat to hear all about the writing process and how she came up with her book ideas. I think I might have been a bit more enthralled with the presentation than the boys because I've always been fascinated about the idea of publishing a book. Although I'd want to do all my own illustrations if it was a children's book.

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