RTR Week 3

This week started out a difficult one. For whatever reason we fell behind on our lessons and just couldn't seem to complete everything scheduled each day. I was feeling very discouraged on Tue when it was 4:00 p.m. and we still hadn't gotten to history and a couple other things that I had planned. It just seemed like one distraction after another. Boo had a meltdown over spelling, Sis had a stomachache, and everyone was whining. I felt like crying. Then I remembered one of the reasons we were running behind was because our 15 min Bible time took over an hour that morning. It wasn't because we were slow, but because the kids had a lot of good questions and they had a blast racing to find bible verses. Boo did have that meltdown over spelling words wrong. That took way longer than it should have, but after a time-out we had a good talk about it being ok to not have all the answers right as long as we try our best. I think she went away feeling a little more confident and after that for the first time in a long time seemed to really grasp the concept I was trying to teach her. She even remembered it the next day, which was a huge breakthrough in spelling for her! I'm trying to learn that it's alright to not check every box and when things don't go as planned just go with the flow. Our day first seemed to be a complete fail, because I was only focused on what didn't get done rather than seeing all the good things that did.

For Bible this week we set aside our book we've been using for now and started learning about the books of the New Testament. Sis and Boo are learning all the books in the NT. Sis has memorized them before but is a bit rusty and this is the first time for Boo. We're going through each book, discussing the main topic and author and then having Bible drills looking up verses. Boo has only had a children's story book bible up till now, so finding verses on her own in a big bible is new to her. She's doing great with it though.

In history we learned about Pompeii, the Roman city that was buried under ash from a volcano and discovered in tact hundreds of years later. The kids loved this story. It would be pretty amazing to discover a whole ancient city! We read that the dishes of the people were found still on the tables from their meal that day. For a project we made pop up Pompeii villas that I found on Pinterest. The volcano is in the background and on the inside of the houses glued pictures of actual artwork that was found in Pompeii. Baby Bear wanted to make one too so we all had fun together on this project.One of our art projects this week was to make a mosaic picture, but since the floors of houses in Pompeii were mosaics we decided to design our own for the inside of our little houses and combine the two projects into one. To the right is Boo working on her mosaic floor of a heart. Unfortunately our printer ran out of colored ink so the girls had to color the frescoes and wall art with markers. Then we glued everything together. These have now become homes for our littlest Pet shops. Even Baby Bear calls it their "Pompeii house." I think it accomplished the goal, they will all remember the name Pompeii and what happened there because of this craft.

We're also still reading about Augustus Caesar. In our story he is still a young man named Octavian and has not yet become the Emperor. We made a map of the lands that Octavian ruled and Antony ruled.

We played a game that originated in Ancient Rome called "Odd or Even." The first child places a number of stones in his right hand. The second child must guess if there is an odd or even number. If he's correct he gets to take a stone, if incorrect he must give a stone. Play until one child has all the stones. Sounds simple and you would think this would be boring for a kid in this century, but actually the kids had a fun with this game.


Baby Bear worked on her creation book each day. On day 5 she made thumbprint fish for her picture with orange, red and green ink. She thought that was fun.

We have had some really unusually hot days again this week. With it nice out none of us have wanted to sit inside for school lately. So Friday we packed up and took school to our favorite park! We had a whole pavilion to ourselves so we did our school work there and took play breaks between lessons. It was a nice change of scenery.

We did our science lesson at the park. We have been learning about the 3rd day of creation: soil and dirt. Last lesson we learned that soil is a mixture of different things. This weeks lesson required us to find several diff types of rocks. So first we went on a rock hunt.

After we found our rocks we had to try to break them by banging them together. We noticed that some of the rocks were softer than others. Then we smashed them apart with a hammer! We observed the insides of the rocks and we discovered that the crumbly pieces that fell off looked a lot like dirt.

 In our lesson we learned that most of the soil on earth is made up of tiny rock pieces that have broken down. We learned how rocks absorb water, which expands in winter causing the rocks to crack and over time break up becoming part of the soil.


 We did bible time and a little history before we left home that morning, but all of the girls did their math and English at the park after our science lesson. Boo made a clock for math. Baby Bear  finished her Creation book that she's been adding to for the past 7 school days.

Here's a few more pictures of our day and our play breaks

This week we also started reading book 3 of The Epic Order of the Seven books "The Prophet, the Shepherd, & the Star." We started book 1 last year and we finished book 2 over summer. These are by far my kids favorite books (mine too!) We've been reading them at bedtime lately since we have so much other stuff to read and do during the day. The main characters of theses books are 7 animal friends who travel through time on missions from the Maker. The characters are so funny, Al the big orange cat is afraid of everything and only thinks about food ( the kids crack up at everything he says) There's always something exciting happening. Our last chapter ended with Max the dog being chased by a couple of fierce lions who were trying to steal his scroll. They bring the stories of the Bible to life and the girls always beg for another chapter. (Just a little side note right here) Of all the things I do with my girls, all of their schooling, all the places we go, etc. I truly believe that when they are grown our reading time will be my kid's favorite childhood memories. I have read aloud to them as a family since each of them were born. Reading to them is not something I do because we homeschool either. A lot of days I read to them while they eat their lunch. Other days we read at bedtime, but I always read to them. It's something we all look forward to. I believe it is why all of my kids love books and Sis wants to be a writer. No joke, at this moment as I'm typing this, they are in the other room it's almost bedtime and one of them just called "Mom can we read more of our book tonight?" It makes me sad when I hear other parents say they rarely read to their kids, because they are missing out on so much. If you don't read to your kids regularly I encourage you to start. Find some exciting books that hold your kids attention and read together daily. Baby Bear is only four, but since we have been reading chapter books as a family since she's been born she will sit and listen too (sometimes as she plays with her toys.) A lot of it is over her head, but she usually knows all the characters, can usually tell back a lot of what's happening in the stories and gets just as excited for story time as the older girls.  Anyway speech over.This third book started out with a Roman soldier in Bethlehem and the time of the birth of Christ! Then it went back 700 years where they discover a scroll and meet the prophets who foretold of Messiah. "Roman soldiers, ancient scrolls, scribes, prophets" all things we have talked about in school already this year, so this seems to be a good fit!