My Weekly Notebook: Swimming, rocks, and blueberries

Life this week...

I noticed at the beginning of the week that the patio was bugging me. It needed some freshening up. Plants needed to be moved and it needed a sweep and spray down. It took me quite a while, and I'm happy with how much better it looked afterward. The kids (including neighborhood kids) play in this area a lot so it can get pretty dirty with their dirt creations, or whatever they decide to play with at that metal table every day. I'm glad they like to hang out here though.

Speaking of kids. I found the sidewalk chalk box with old wet chalk lying in between some of the flowers. It hadn't been touched for some time. There was a little water in the box that wouldn't drain because it was a plastic one. There were also dead flowers in it that had fallen from the hanging basket. But, even though the chalk was all wet there was still a ton of usable chalk in there, so I decided to fix it up. I found a different box that would drain better. We had a white planter box just lying around with nothing in it, so I grabbed that. Took the still good pieces of chalk and put them in the new box, set the box out in a more open spot, and wrote sidewalk chalk to see if it would attract any attention. Just about 5 minutes later... they had chalk in their hands! It worked! Hoping this gets it all used up by the end of summer.

 

Homeschool this week...

Our classroom was this pool.

We did some math playing this game, tossing ping pong balls onto a target. We played 10 rounds. The boys had to add up their scores. It was tough keeping track of all the numbers without a paper and pen, but we did it! Alex won with like 380 points I believe.

Other than reviews (which I will talk about next) that's about all we're doing for school right now. Just natural learning through games and being outside. Hoping to start getting some nature studies in soon.

Reviews we are working on...

We just started reviewing Superteacherworksheets, so this was our first "worksheet" activity. Spelling in the pool. See, I told you we did a lot of school in the pool this week!. I taped spelling words to the dive rings, and they had to find the word I said and then spell it out loud. We did the first 5 words because I only have 5 rings. We might have to see if we can find some more rings to do the whole list. It turned out to be an awesome activity.

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

We went to Hobby Lobby this week to find a few things and ended up picking up a foam airplane for Alex to try out. Then we took it to the park. It was a beautiful day to fly a plane.

My favorite thing this week was...

Getting a ton of rocks from Costco. Literally a ton. 2,000 pounds. It's not very often you see a pallet of rocks sitting in the middle of Costco, but it was exactly what we needed.

These rocks or flagstones or quartzite to be more specific are beautiful. It was exactly what I was imagining putting around our pool for a walkway so it wouldn't be muddy.

It was a lot of work but we got them unloaded from the truck. Those rocks are super heavy! We had to unload them one at a time because we don't have any forklifts around here. We started just roughly laying them out. It's a start. We have to do some rearranging, but it is so nice having places to step that aren't muddy. Eventually, we'll put gravel around the stones. It will help keep mud and dirt out of the pool too!

My kids' favorite thing this week was...

This was Alex's favorite thing this week. Blueberry picking. He has been wanting to pick berries since summer started. He is the reason we went on this blueberry picking adventure because I wasn't so sure I still wanted to go on the morning of. But, I asked him if he still wanted to go and it was a definite yes. A very excited yes. Then, the whole time we were picking he just kept thanking me for bringing him. I'm so glad I did.

He eagerly picked a ton of berries.

Despite my lack of excitement that morning I was glad to be picking berries with him. They were so tasty too!

Random things the kids worked on...

Alex and I tried out the new LEGO dots bracelets. We worked on these together.

What we're reading...

Reading seems to be a miss a lot this summer. Now that we're starting to get more books from the library now I'm hoping that will change. I also finally got a few pictures of the things we read. I find that if I snap a picture right after we read it I'm more likely to remember that we read it.

Steamboat School by Deborah Hopkinson. A book about African American children who couldn't go to school because a law was made that prevented them from learning to read and write in the state of Missouri. But, the reverend found a way around that. I'm glad we checked this one out.

The Scrambled States of America by Laurie Keller. We have this game, and I recently discovered that there was a book too. It's all about a talent show where each state features a talent. Such a fun book.

I'm cooking...

I made a blueberry pie with some of our fresh-picked blueberries. It was delicious.

Photo of the week...

That about wraps up the last week. Now time for a new one. Hope you have a good one!