Tailgating...Military Day

My kids love tailgating with Jeff's parents and the rest of the family. They especially love it when there's something special going on, like military day. They got to climb on all of the military vehicles and see the inside of them.

Carter was the only one who wanted to do the rock climbing wall. He isn't going to turn down a chance to do rock climbing!Of course, the boys' favorite part of tailgating is eating the yummy chicken-on-a-stick that Jeff's dad makes for them! Patrick's friend, Tristin, enjoyed them as well. Madison's friend, Kaitlyn, also went with us.This was our last tailgating for the year. We have one more home game, but we will be out of town and won't be able to go to it. Thanks Mimi and PawPaw for a fun day.

School Stuff

Yes, we are still doing school :)!! I realized as I was posting yesterday that I haven't posted an update on any of our schooling since we started our school year. We started back about 2 weeks before going to Disney. It was hard to concentrate on school while planning our trip, but I knew that we had to. The kids are now in 5th, 6th, and 8th grades. Wow, that's so hard to believe.

Jeff was so sweet and had a basket full of goodies sent to us on our first day back to school.

We are continuing with Life Science this year. We have studied ecosystems, food chains, and pollution. Now, we have started studying the human body.

We tested rain water to see if it was acidic. I was surprised at how clean it was.

Then, we tested our tap water and found it high in chlorine but not overly acidic. Here is the comparison of the two of them together.

To demonstrate the food chain, we cut into an owl pellet and found bones and fur from the animals that it had eaten before it died. This was a gross, but fun activity. We are sure we found remains from two different animals...a shrew and a bird.
During our study of skin, we made a kit to take our fingerprints. It was interesting to see the different patterns on each of our prints. While studying transportation and assembly lines in Social Studies, we made an assembly line to build cars out of candy pieces. The kids learned how much faster it was to learn just one specific task to do over and over instead of making an entire car each time. The kids are all doing well with their book work. They are becoming more and more independent with their learning. I find that they retain things longer if they attempt to understand it by themselves first. I've been working towards this since I started homeschooling but have really seen it kick in this year for them all.

Art Lessons

Madison enjoyed her summer art lessons so much that we put her in a weekly class this school year. She is taking it with her friend, Emily. The great thing is that as she learns, she is teaching Carter. He loves his art lessons too :). Madison is excited about the possibility of putting her work in a gallery at some point through her art studio. Madison's workCarter's work

First Camping Trip In The New Pop-up Camper

Jeff surprised us last week by bringing home the pop-up camper that we've been thinking about buying. We love camping so much, but it's so much work with the tent. Also, we could only go in the spring and fall because of the heat and cold. Now, with the new camper, we can go year round. We were so excited that we spent the night in it the night Jeff brought it home...and the next night :). We took it to the state park last weekend for two nights. The weather could not have been more perfect. We enjoyed the camper so much and can't wait to take it again!