Weekly Wrap-up: coast, a day in our homeschool, and science

Life this week:

We had a nice long weekend last weekend that included a trip to the Oregon Coast. It was a rather blustery and wet day at the coast, as usual. We mostly went to go to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, but we decided to brave stopping at Devil's churn (a really rocky shore with rough waters). It was really neat to watch the waters. The bottom left picture in the collage below has a good picture of the rough waters.

Top row: Alex playing with the navigation equipment at the aquarium, Dad and boys at Devil's churh. 2nd row: A view from the bottom of Devil's churn, Aaron on the trail down to the rocks at, Alex looking at through the glass on the floor at the aquarium. 3rd Row: Rough waters at Devil's churn, sea bird at the aquarium.

Science fair:

We went to a science fair with our local homeschool group. It was a nice evening that started out with delicious soup and bread, and then we got to hear from all the kids about their projects.

Here is Aaron presenting his knowledge of Betta fish. He even brought his fish to show. That fish was a hit with all the littles. I saw several little ones over there just watching the fish at various times throughout the evening. I thought it was cute, and I was very glad that Aaron didn't worry about it. I think it made him happy.

His cool looking fish, R2D2. He takes very good care of his fish. He does all the work for it, including changing the water. I'm so glad!

At the last minute we decided to take our kinetic sand for Alex to share. He even got a minute to say something about it. Just a little shy, I think he'll be up for something bigger next year!

Kinetic sand is pretty cool. I just love this picture.

Games this week:

I finally got my boys to join me for a game of scrabble. I remember when April would ask to play this game at 5 and 6. The boys haven't had any interest until now. I think it will really help with some spelling issues we have, and I think they liked it.

Aric even discovered a word on accident. He put these letters R-O-A-N out thinking it was a word. I didn't know it was a word, so I had him go grab the dictionary to look it up. We both discovered that it is a word. I always thought of it as a name! It was a great learning experience for him.

Of course playing scrabble led to some scrabble tile crafting. There was one tile in the bag that April had made years ago. Aaron asks, why does this tile have a picture?  I explained to him what she did, and of course he wanted to do it too. (How to make a scrabble tile pendant.)

Alex got in on the crafting action. He liked the idea of cutting pictures out of old magazines, so I told him he could make a picture. We'll have to get old magazines out more often! It turned out to be a great art afternoon.

In the kitchen:

Alex thinks he is the bomb in the kitchen. He loves to help, and he loves to make his own creations. This week he made a fruit salad (which I didn't get a picture of), and he loves to cook some canadian bacon in the pan while I watch. It is a good introduction to frying something because it's easy, and not very messy. He also loves to eat it!

Also in the kitchen was some cake baking this week. Aaron made a completely homemade cake on his own. We didn't have a box mix (or so I thought), and he really wanted to make it all from scratch.

Then, I thought it'd be fun to make these cake balls. I haven't made them for a while. Well, I got as far as baking the cake. The balls never happened, and then I ended up eating way too much cake. I think I will save the cake balls project for a day when we can take them to share for a special event. I decided they're too much work for just us.

Alex funny:

So, at dinner last night we had biscuits and sausage gravy. Alex didn't want to eat it at first, but after he took a bite he realized he liked it. When he asked for more it was "can I have more turkey and bagels?" instead of "sausage and biscuits". He couldn't get it straight, and made us laugh a few times.

Life learning:

I had the Safeway ad out, and the boys wanted to look with me. On the front page of the ad they were advertising their Monopoly game. The boys immediately began looking for the deals that we could buy so they could get some Monopoly bonus tickets. They decided they really wanted me to go shopping at Safeway so they could get started. We earned about 15 tickets I think, and when we came home they immediately started organizing the game pieces.

They were super excited to get these all sorted out.They worked together to find the spots, and decided it would be better to share a board to be more likely to win products and prizes. I haven't even looked at it yet to see what they would win, I just thought it was fun to see them so excited about it.


Library happenings:

After Safeway we had to return some stuff to the library. It was kind of one of those days where we were all feeling drained. I wasn't feeling inspired to get any books. April was saying she was feeling kind of blah, and not wanting to pick up any books. It was a weird feeling, so I went ahead and let the boys get the movies they wanted. That's all we came home with, 4 movies, from the library.  Sometimes that's just how it goes!

So, I was going to do a "day in the life of" post to link up with the review crew, but I didn't make the deadline. It's ok, the day turned out to be not so stellar anyway, and I just didn't have the energy to get it up and posted. But, here is a collage of pictures from one whole day of our homeschool. It isn't everything, and it certainly didn't turn out to be a normal day. A lot of science happened that day!

I think that wraps up our week! I am linking this up to Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly wrap-up.