September 2017 Homeschool Happenings

September is the month I hit my wall in homeschooling. I didn’t really have a break this summer, and so I just was done about middle of September. I had planned a week break towards the end of September, but ended up having this week be a break as well to recharge more.

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September Week 1 homeschooling

This is the week my boys officially handed clothes down to me. It’s a weird thought that my boys are now buying shirts bigger than what I would buy for myself. Very weird.

We started on our science program, Nutrition 101*, and they worked on making the first recipe after learning what foods are good for the brain. I’m enjoying learning each week about a different part of the body and then hopping over to learn about the nutrition elements that nourish your body.

We played a few rounds of Five Crowns* and ate some popcorn. Okay, I only took the popcorn picture because it cracked me up to see Superman with the popcorn in his beard.

Every week we head over to Sams club and have pizza (I almost typed popcorn again, apparently I want popcorn right now) with my Mom before doing shopping. It amuses me greatly because my kids always insist on bringing a stuffed animal, even at 12 years old to throw back and forth or slide on the floor. This time I took a picture of the bear because it cracked me up so much with the bear posed like that. And it amused me so incredibly much.

The bottom left picture is my current project, Books of the Bible puzzles, it’s been quite a bit of work making enough copies for our whole children’s ministry.

September Week 2 homeschooling

Our week was fairly boring until we got to a surprise field trip on Friday. Our friends we went with move in three days up to Alaska, and when they invited us to go with them to Pioneer Farms for homeschool day, we jumped at the chance. It was fun to wander around and pretend to be back in mid-1800s Texas.

The remaining pictures, one is a cake Princess decorated for a tea party she had. The top left is us working on the garden, and everyone is quite amused of me balancing on the shovel.

 

For his #independentproject he is learning how to make lady fingers. Our first try tasted good but the dough was runny. #learningtobake

A post shared by Ticia (@ticiam) on Sep 8, 2017 at 7:38pm PDT

Of these pictures, the top middle is one of my favorites (aside from all of us at Pioneer Farms with an extra tag along joining us). Batman’s independent study is learning how to cook better. One of his big projects is learning to make Lady Fingers. This was his first attempt, and we learned so much from it, and he has improved each time we’ve done it.

 

September Week 3 Homeschooling was my “break week”

It was intended to be a week of funschooling and field trips, and a chance to start planning for the next units of Texas History and Anatomy. Instead it was a week of field trips, and “Dear God how is September already almost over?”

We went down to San Antonio for a visit to Misison San Jose, and it’s quite cool. We all agreed we wanted to come back with Jeff when he’s off for Christmas, especially since it was SOOOOO hot. There’s actually about three more missions we didn’t make it to, not counting the Alamo.

Funny story for this, we had some problems getting to the mission and after being there for a little bit, everyone was hungry and grumpy, so I decided we were going to take a break and go get lunch. I wanted Arby’s so I put in the directions and followed them, and then it told me to turn onto the Air Force base.

And I thought to myself, “I don’t think that’s a wise life decision to make, I’m pretty sure going onto the base to get Arby’s is not on their list of approved actions.” So I decided to ignore their directions, and it kept trying to tell me to turn there, and I kept ignoring the instructions. Eventually I told the kids, “I’m going to pull over at the next chance I get, and see if I can find a new one,” when I saw a giant Arby’s sign just ahead of where I was going to stop. So we ate at Arby’s and they happily worked on their Junior Ranger badge.

Our other field trips were to the Austin Nature Center and to the Bob Bullock museum to see La Belle, which made the kids happy as clams to see. It actually got me some fun ideas to play around with, which I might have the kids do next week……

The other three pictures with all of the smiley faces are our friends spending the night. I offered to have all of their kids spend the night, so the parents could get a night to themselves at least once before they move to Alaska. Unfortunately, one of their sons needs extra medical attention, so he wasn’t able to stay with us, but the other three kids had a blast.

 

Wind in the Willows #movienight #bookandmovie

A post shared by Ticia (@ticiam) on Sep 20, 2017 at 5:14pm PDT

I think the most unusual bit for them was participating in our book and a movie night for Wind in the Willows.

 

Week 4 of September, this week, kind of

I think I’ve got pictures moved around somehow, so I’m pretty sure these events are out of order. Sigh….. So much for my crazy plans.

Moving more or less clockwise around the collage. The Top left corner is from our friend’s going away party, it was a sad, but fun time. We left there early to head over to watch the Star Trek Discovery premier with my brother (you can catch our reviews of the first two episodes on his channel: Episode 1, Episode 2, Star Trek movies review)

In a bit of downtime I enjoyed a pot of tea in my new tea pot. I finally managed to get together with a high school friend and she gave me the super cool flower tea pot to match my flower tea cup. The kids were having fun painting gaming figures, an odd combination from the World of Warcraft board game (out of print, and not even listed on Amazon), and Shadows of Brimstone figures*. It was a nice calm day (I think earlier that day Princess and I were at a service project putting together care packages for Hurricane Harvey victims).

Speaking of Princess, I got lots of outings with her. We went to Secret Keeper Girl together, which is one of her favorite events, and then we went to a pioneer day, and had a blast trying out all sorts of projects.

We played a fun round of Forbidden Desert*, and actually won. Earlier today we played Bonkers*, which was my absolute favorite game as a kid. Princess even liked it, despite her personal general dislike of games.

 

I remember playing this #boardgame as a kid and loved it so much. Yesterday I found it at @barnesandnoble so I had to buy it. I’m having so much fun!

A post shared by Ticia (@ticiam) on Sep 28, 2017 at 8:16am PDT

The bottom right corner was from the night I snapped and “pulled a Dad” (or that’s how I referred to it, because it reminded me of the time my Mom, brother, and I got back from a trip and he couldn’t deal with the “Mess” and he went through the house and took pictures of the house), and I set to cleaning the kitchen. I was so upset because the kids had all sworn up, down, left, and right they’d gotten the cleaning done. Instead I spent two hours working on the kitchen.

By the time they got home I had calmed down, and I showed them the pictures on my phone asking what was going on, and they all confessed they were so eager to get on the computer they forgot to do the cleaning they were told to do. So they lost electronic priveleges for a time, and finished up the cleaning. No harm, no foul in the end.

 

And that was our September…..