Weekly Recap: with the birds

We've had up days and down days recently! Some days the kids are dedicated and finish school early. Other days one or two of them are doing school until dinner time. The youngest two are on a roll lately though... always done early. That's been really nice!

We celebrated daddy's birthday with pork chops, green beans, and pudding pies. M made breakfast burritos to freeze so he has food when he goes to work early in the morning. The two youngest made the pies.



Another night my husband and I went out for a date night and ate at the new Chipotle in town. That was pretty good! I tried the burrito because it looked a lot like food I used to get from a place called New York Burrito that closed years ago. After dinner we wandered around Hobby Lobby and found some balance birds, which M has been using at therapy. So we bought her a couple. When the other children saw them they all wanted to buy their own! I have seen balance birds everywhere in the house since that day!

M spoke in church last week. She spoke about how the Atonement of Jesus Christ helps us through trials. It was a wonderful, spirit-filled meeting hearing from people who were well prepared to share about this topic. J had a meeting before church and as it began he opened his pen to take notes. His new pen... which he had filled the previous day... and we didn't realize it had a broken part. So the cap was full of drops of ink and they spilled all over his hand. Luckily he didn't get any on his suit or anywhere else!

School highlights:

• We learned about the first pioneers to enter the Salt Lake Valley, and when Brigham Young fell ill but saw the valley and said, "This is the right place. Drive on."
• In our literature lesson on Amos Fortune, we learned the process for tanning skins. We also talked about the importance of self reliance. Some kids used leather to make a small pouch.
• We began our lessons about the five senses for science. It was a fun lesson, and the kids are excited to talk about each sense individually.
• For geography, we began talking about languages. Our lesson was on body language and we had a lot of fun with facial expressions and hand gestures.
• Art was about Native American pottery. It was neat to see the various types of ancient pottery that have been found. We talked about the process of making clay and pottery, and we talked about the modern horse hair pot my dad bought for us from a Navajo potter in New Mexico. 

Upcoming reviews:

Reviews for the next year have started up again! We debated coming back for this year, after feeling overwhelmed with life at the end of last year. But we decided we would return to the Homeschool Review Crew and take less reviews than usual from all the places we review for. Well, so far we feel like we've adjusted well and we've already requested a bunch of fun items! Right now we are working on:

I Am Harriet Tubman

Wulf the Saxon audio drama

Bytes of Learning typing lessons

Magic Stix markers

Watch for our reviews coming soon, and keep an eye on our Instagram account!