Harry Potter Break!!

It's finally here!! The last harry Potter movie ever! 

We have been reading and re-reading the books since day 1 and seeing each movie as they came out. From about #4 on we have been going to the midnight releases. My kids have done Hogwarts Summer school. Dressed up as the characters for Halloween. Gone to special book release parties. Had Potter-themed birthday parties. So tonight is exciting and sad at the same time. I know I have one more child to read the whole series aloud to. But we'll never have another HP midnight to go to. I'm glad I get to share it with Scout and Bella. I'm sorry Jem is too young. He'll be sound asleep by then. He just will never make it to stay up that late. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I will!  I have been having more and more trouble each time we see a midnight movie. It's about 3:30 and I am sure Bella is already in line with the other crazies. Tonight we're seeing it in IMAX 3D. Had to go all out for the last one. Maybe that will keep me awake!

So anyway, I figured I needed to rest up today. That plus Scout doing her volunteer work at Shirley's Chihuahau Palace (as I like to call it - more about that later), and then lunch with Gramps also,  meant not much time anyway, so I decided we'd have a no school day!!   YAY!!

The kids were pretty excited and so was I :)

I needed to clip coupons AND start reading my book club book The Winter of Our Discontent by John Stienbeck (one of my favorite authors!), which needs to be read by Monday night and which I haven't even started!!  Better get off this blog and go read!!

Then after a quick dinner it will be off to stand in line for about 5 hours and then , sigh,  the last HP movie EVER!  Wish I didn't know what was going to happen, SOB, SOB.

BTW, Jem and his Dad are going to see Green Lantern tonight so he's happy as a clam :)
And Flossie, Freddie, and Dill aren't coming tomorrow so I can sleep in!  Well, a little bit. Bella has a job interview at 10 :(   Dang it.

Wow! Mellow Day! - 7/13/11

Don't know what happened to these kids today but everyone was pretty mellow and motivated today!  Both boys got busy early and got their school done before lunch time!

Dill for some reason got the organization bug and organized all the books on my shelves and the art supplies, and he and Jem organized all the colored pencils.

The preschoolers did really well with all their work too. Freddie did Math, Human Body, art, computer, ipod preschool apps, watched Meet the Numbers, and did the Starfall ABC's on the computer.

Flossie did her shapes workbook, bears and blocks, fruit color sorting, art, watched Meet the Numbers, did Starfall ABC's on the computer, ipod preschool apps, and number work. For that last one I had to turn it into a "mommies and babies" game.  I used the little foam numbers and the big Montessori wooden numbers and had her put 3 "baby" numbers with each "mommy" number - just trying to get her to work on her number recognition. She is getting better for sure.

We had one little disaster today. Flossie was going to put some picture cards on our beginning sounds board and there was a dog gate in the way. She went to move it and that made a picture frame come crashing down which broke (just the frame luckily), and also the gate crashed down which scratched up her hand! Luckily the picture frame and glass didn't land on her head!

Since all the kids finshed their school before lunchtime today - whoah! - they had the afternoon off, and so did I - yay!!  They swam in the pool and played "band."  They brought me a song they had written. Bella and I also watched Harry Potter 6 which they flitted in and out of.  I caught up on my Couponsense stuff and worked on this blog :)  We finally decided to open this up to the public, and in doing so, I wanted to make sure it was as safe as possible for the kids, so I went and gave them all nicknames. I changed the initials I was using for them form the beginning post (38 posts ago!!) and substituted their nicknames. I explained their nicknames in the edited first post, and also added some side links to help explain them too. It's almost 10:00 and I'm finally caught up!!  Getting outside followers will hopefully bring in some fresh ideas and also help keep me motivated to do new inspiring, amazingly brilliant things!!!!  Woo hoo!! 

Letter Review - Games - Human Body - 7/12/11

Well, today we wrapped up letter K I guess. I wish we had done more with it. I guess the main obstacle has been money unfortunately. No funds to buy supplies to make kites or ink to print good K pictures. Payday is coming!!! In the meantime, we did some games today to review. I found some foam letters and numbers last week at Target in the dollar section. We used the letters today for a game. We each had a dish in front of us and then we laid out all the letters in a big pile in the middle. When it was your turn, you would roll a number cube to see how many letters you would have to pick up. You would only pick up letters that you knew and could say the name of. This is going to be a really good game to do with the numbers!  After awhile we got tired of doing just 1,2, or 3 at a time so we got out the cards from another game that had pictures from 1 to 10 and used those as our "dice."  That made the game go faster and made it more challenging. They had fun with that. Afterwards, Flossie wanted to play the game that went with the number cards so we did that one real quick too.

 

After that we did some work in their Handwriting books and Freddie worked in his Math book.  Both spent some time on the computer on Starfall again by request. In between all of this I was wrangling the boys to get their schoolwork done. They did a bit better today but not by much. Dill has done most of his easy worksheets from his summer packet, so what is left are the one's he is either not interested in or thinks are too hard. That is making it challenging for him to get them done on his own anymore. I am having to squeeze time with him in between working with the preschoolers. Jem finished his Handwriting book and is working on his last row of Phonics books and finishing his Math book. He's getting close to being done, but is still plugging along. Meanwhile Scout spent the morning sleeping since we stayed up late watching Harry Potter 4. We're trying to watch them all again before seeing the last one at the midnights on Thursday night! 

After they did all their regular work, and Scout finally woke up, I worked with the boys to catch them up on their Human Body lapbooks while Scout did her regular schoolwork and the preschoolers did their workbox. They did pretty well with it today. They especially like cutting out the big letter Ks!. Afterward, they told me they wanted to do Human Body too and that they had lost their other big body tracings and wanted to do more, so we did them again.  That was pretty much our day. OH, other than 3, yes 3, HUGE screaming fits by Flossie today. Not sure what was up with her, but it looks like the full moon is about 4 days away so can't blame that. Must be those hormones kicking in early!

Letter K and Happy Birthday 7-11!!!

This morning the little kids played with Littlest Pet Shop stuff for a long time while the older kids watched the recording of the last Space Shuttle Launch.  We missed it last Friday since we had summer movies, so I recorded it and we watched it today. The whole idea of the last ever launch seemed to be lost on them. Or at least they weren't that bugged by it. They were just more interested in seeing it take off, and then they were done. Oh well.

After that I started cutting out some K's for a Letter K collage, and Flossie said, "We're doing Letter K again?!"  Well, we haven't really been able to do too much with it, so I asked her, "Well, if you can tell me what starts with K, then maybe we can be done with it. What starts with K?"  Silence. "Really?  Just tell me ONE thing that starts with K."  Silence. "SEE! We're not ready to be done with K yet!"  So I put her on the Starfall Letter K website and she loved it! She went through all the letter K activities over and over. Then Freddie had to have his turn. He got bored more quickly and wanted to try some of the other letters. After that, they both could tell me several things that started with K. We just haven't spent enough time on it for them to know yet. Still need printer ink to do more activities with K!!

 

I have been trying something new lately. It has been working with varying success. I need to get on a better schedule/routine with so many kids and all with different levels/needs. So I made up a schedule on the white board both for the kids and for myself to keep track of what everyone is supposed to be doing at each time block during the day. During one point I also have the little kids doing a "Workbox" which is just a box of various school materials that they can do on their own without needing much help from me. That is time I can work with the older kids during the morning after I'm done doing preschool. Sometimes it works great and sometimes not so much. The past few days I have had a horrible time getting the boys to focus on school. They used to be so good about getting right to their school in the morning and getting thins done. Lately they are really having a hard time keeping on task and I am continually dragging  them back to their work. I am sure it is just summer fun, but when I have let them just take the time off, the day dissolves into arguing and chaos. Keeping them busy seems to be better, but school isn't what they necessarily want to be doing. Unfortunately, for my kids, they don't have a lot of choice until they finish up some of their year's curriculum. Dill also has his summer packet to complete. So in the meantime, we will plug along, and I'll try to mix in some fun projects too. 

 

Did have some fun today! It was 7-11-11 today, 7-11's birthday! So free Slurpee day!  We stopped on the way home from picking up Bella at work. The kids were way excited and no one spilled in the car - yay!

The day ended with a nice water gun fight! 

Computer's Fixed!!! Yay!!!!

Finally! My computer is back in working order (It crashed - again!) and I can get Nowville back up and running again. There is NO way I can catch up on all the backlog of days. Suffice it to say, life, and school, have kept going on despite having no computer, and no printing capabilities. I HAVE, however, kept taking pictures, so I am just going to post a bunch of them here in this post so you can see what we have been up to. During our computer crash time:  Bella graduated (Yes! One down 2 to go!), we went to Comicon, we went to the zoo with Girl Scouts, Jem lost 2 teeth, Scout lost a tooth too, summer started and cousin "Dill" started coming for summer school! , Scout turned 11, Dad and Papa had their birthdays, we went to Pump it Up with the Girls Scouts, we went to the cabin for a week for a big family reunion, cousins D&G joined us for lunch with Gramps, Dill turned 9, Jem had his 1 year Diabetes Anniversary!, we saw fireworks for 4th of July, the preschoolers did Letters D and K and lots of review,  Flossie learned to write her whole name all by herself!, Freddie's pencil grip continued to improve, he also started addition and subtraction!, Scout fell off her skateboard and hurt her knee, and we all started learning about the human body!  Whew!  Here are some photos to prove it: