November 2016 homeschool happenings

Another month has passed, and it’s always a miracle to me, when I look back and discover all we did.

We had a lot of field trips

field-trips

Between our virtual field trips with FieldTripZoom (click for the coupon code) and our physical field trips with our homeschool group, it felt like there was one of two each week.  Actually I know there was, with the week right before Thanksgiving having 5 field trips (most of them virtual, so jammies!).

Virtually we toured several Civil War museums, including the Hunley which we had not been able to visit when we went through South Carolina this fall because it was closed that day.  We also visited the Hermitage and learned about the 1820 election from the Hermitage and how Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, and was tied for the electoral college, but the Presidency went to John Quincy Adams.  Very interesting.

In real life, we went to the Renaissance Festival twice, once for homeschool day, and once to have fun with family.  We went to the Bob Bullock Museum and saw a fascinating display on Nazi propaganda.  And we went to a couple of local parks for play dates with our homeschool co-op.

Oh and we visited the traveling Vietnam Wall.  That was rather cool, the city of Pflugerville was able to get it for Veteran’s Day, and there were several vets there to talk about the wall.  I need to plan a way to have an entire post just on that, and how to get more from your visit.  But, needless to say I had several cool stories from that short field trip.

 

We had a lot of fun time with friends and family

general-silliness

My brother came down from Colorado for a surprise visit for Thanksgiving.  That meant lots of time with family that week, and my grand plan of getting videos of some chemistry experiments fell apart.  Also, having 11 year olds film stuff means sometimes the video is sideways for “visual interest”.  Needless to say, that did not go well, and that camera man has been fired.

You can see all the cousins together in the top right picture.  The various houses were rather noisy when the cousins got together.  I got a great shot of my brother Sean picking up one of the bigger boy cousins and using him like a baseball bat to hit another boy cousin as part of a grand wrestling spree among the Uncles and cousins.  Everyone thought that was awesome.  Meanwhile all of the aunts and the grandma were downstairs making bets how long until someone came down hurt.

No one ever did.

That night.

Superman did sprain his knee playing tag outside in the dark.

Princess turned 10.

All of my kids are now double digits, and it feels weird to be solidly in the older kids camp with no younger kids.  I’m not ready for this revelation.

As per usual we played lots of games, if I have a review of the game I linked to that (Amazon links are affiliate):

 

And we did learn other stuff

fantastic-mr-fox-snacks

We have one week left of history for the semester.  That’s it.  Same for chemistry, but neither of them were particularly fascinating in terms of pictures.  Part of our history was the Civil War so our virtual field trips were kind of my special thing I had planned for that.  Though I did promise the kids a recreation of excavating the Hunley later.

The big fun things this month were poetry.  Or Princess thought that was fun.  Everyone else has struggled with that idea.  Meanwhile we read and watched Fantastic Mr. Fox.  I had no clue it was such a short book, and the movie was that….. not for anyone.  It’s like the producers forgot they were making a kids’ movie and tried to inject adult humor but still keeping it PG, and they wanted to capture the weirdness of Roald Dahl so they made it so odd parents wouldn’t enjoy it.  I don’t know how else to describe it.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite shots from the month.  We got the kids new jammies and Batman and Princess both opted to get Batman jammies like I have.  Of course we all had to pose together afterwards.  The zipper on my jammies randomly popped out so it looks like I’m very pregnant, but I assure you, I am not.  Superman has cow jammies and loves them.

batman-jammies

I’m off to put together our Christmas in Mexico lesson, which is also going to be written about soon, and if I get my writing done tonight, I’ll have our Spain books posted…..


Comments

4 responses to “November 2016 homeschool happenings”

  1. Love the picture in Batman jammies! Looks like another full month for your family with inevitable injuries 😉

    1. Someday I will post a month without injuries, but today is not that day…..

  2. Phyllis at All Things Beautiful Avatar
    Phyllis at All Things Beautiful

    I can’t believe another month has buzzed by! I am still mentally back in October.

    1. Me too! Though I think I might even still be in September, and yet somehow it’s December 2.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *