Rocks and Games

It is weird to me that my blog is becoming a Homeschool report but honestly, that is what my day is filled with right now.  This past week went well.  The boys have been bugging me about a treasure box and I finally got some items for it and they are excited to earn fun stuff each week.  All I have left to do for that is make some coupons they can "buy" like skip a subject or lunch with mom or extra computer time.  One good thing about Homeschool is that it provides me the opportunity to work more on their cub scout requirements.  Will had a rock and mineral requirement and it aligned with his Science this week so I purchased a minerals kit and I had no idea it would provide the kids with so much fun.  They sat at their desk and oohed and awed over just about every rock and then they filled their little charts up and spent a long time on this before moving on to their next subject.  Eli even found a rock that he called "Dad's rock" because in his opinion, it looked like Blue Cheese.  

We do not do Art as much as I'd like.  I am not prepared well enough for that.  I try hard to have at least one Art project a week.  Last week we made cool pumpkins where we cut the pumpkins out of black construction paper and behind it we cut strips of fun halloween paper up and glued it to the paper before we put our black pumpkins on top.  I didn't get a picture of the finished project though. 

I'm also trying to focus more on the Executive Skills area lately, which means being more strict about their planners.  I write down their assignments each day on the white board and require them to write them down in their planner and check each subject off when they finish it and put their books away for that subject.  I also require them to write their times down for Spanish, Scripture reading, regular reading, and piano.  They try to sneak it by me that they have done their required 15 minutes (30 for Spanish) so I make them write their start and end time down and then at dinner time they have to bring out their planners and show both me and Mike and have us check them off for the day.  

It seems so unnecessary but this is something they all need help in and I hope that teaching them how to be more organized and follow through on these little tasks will give them good habits for the future.  My biggest complaint is that they can NEVER find their pencils.  It drives me crazy.  I honestly had no idea how many pencils we would go through in a couple of months.  If they would just put their pencils away each day...

I also bought some fun games for the boys that should help them practice executive skills.  This week we played Phase 10.  I hate Phase 10 but the boys love it and it is a good game that helps them think through processes so I let them skip Math on Friday and we played Phase 10.  That is some serious love right there from me.  I was hoping they would just play the three of them but they insisted I play.  Bleh. (the last picture shows my unexcited face at playing Phase 10) I also bought Swish, a new game that we are going to try out this week.  

I feel like these blog posts are getting super boring lately and more like an update than anything else but honestly I don't have the time for anything else.  So, maybe when life calms down I'll be able to sit and form some thought provoking or witty post but until then I'll just keep spitting out a bunch of pictures with explanations.  :)