Welcome to the Homeschool Mothers Journal for the week of September 20, 2013. My goal with the Homeschool Mothers Journal is to keep myself accountable, have something for my kids to look back at someday of their journey through homeschool, and also to let our family/friends keep up to date on our life!
This past week was yet another very busy week. Between having 2 different events, having to stop at 2 different farms, and 5 different doctor appointments on top of all the daily life things, and homeschooling to say we were busy is an understatement!
Places We Are Going/ People We Are Seeing…
Monday ~ I had to bring Cody into the doctors office because his nose started getting weird streaks that  just were not going away over the weekend. He ended up having impetigo and it has spread through out the week to 3 different spots on his face. Poor buddy is having a hard time not itching it and it has now spread to 4 different spots on his face including inside his nose, but he is now on antibiotics and antibiotic cream so he is no longer contagious.
Tuesday ~ Â Anthony, Ethan, and Gabe had dentist appointments to get some dental work done. Ethan and Gabe both had to get their first fillings, both of them did wonderful which I’m sure had something to do with the wonderful pediatric dentists they see who does an amazing job with the kids!
Wednesday ~ I had a couple tests done to recheck a cyst that will now need to be removed in the afternoon. In the evening we headed out to the farm we get our Non-GMO chicken feed for our chickens, which is an hour drive each way. The kids had so much fun with the goats, chickens, ducks, the french guienas, as well as seeing her new bantam chickens!
Thursday ~ In the afternoon we headed out to the farmers market, then went out to the farm we get our milk for the week. Farmer John was so kind and let the boys each climb in the tractor and check it out. They loved checking out some of the animals around the farm as well. If you are looking for raw milk and live in the area this is the place to get it, both Karen and John are wonderful people and the milk well it tastes amazing (so does their meat!!) This is the only place we get milk and meat from since they use no chemicals on the farm and know where it came from!!
 
 
Thursday Evening ~ In the evening on Thursday we went to see the Barnum Brothers and Dragons Circus in town. It was so much fun and everyone had a wonderful time well as long as someone was covering up Ethan’s ears the whole time. Review coming next week for the circus!
Friday ~ I had to get a nerve test done. They put a small needle in your most sensitive spots like right in your neck or wrist bone which isn’t but they then have to move it around and have you flex the muscle while the needle is in. The good news is that I do not have any nerve damage from nerves that are getting pinched in my neck. Now I need to go in and have an MRI done to look closer at the area.
Saturday ~ We participated in the Bloggers day at Vineyard Farms for their Harvest Festival, which was so much fun for the kids. You can read about our trip to the Harvest Festival from last year. I will be posting about our trip this year soon. If you are in lower west Michigan you need to to stop over and check
 
 
 
 
 
 
The farm grows grapes for Welches Grape Juice and this year they had a section that you could go and pick your own grapes. The kids really enjoyed picking grapes for the first time!
 
  
 
Around the House…
Ethan has been helping with new chores around the house. Even though washing the windows is not one of his chores he spent almost an hour going around and washing windows last week 🙂
Learning to load the dishwasher is one of his chores now. Cody washes the dishes and helps Ethan figure out where to put them in the dishwasher.
Gabe is loving the new hamster, Serena is getting better about letting others hold him 😉
Serena enjoying her I-Pod.
In Our Homeschool…
The little boys were doing letter “E” activities this past week
We read lots of Thomas books since they are “Engines” and some other letter “E” books. I also try to read at least 1 book about the entire alphabet. Next week I am pulling out our fall books to bring up for our evening story time.
Getting the morning eggs was a fun activity this week as always, especially for letter “E”.
Ethan had fun alphabetizing the letter tiles before our All About Reading lessons for the week.
Ethan finished working on the number 4 & 5 this week in math.
Anthony is working on reviewing multiplication in math, and continuing to work through his Primary Language Lessons for English him and Cody also started working on Vocabulary Spelling City this past week for vocabulary and spelling for a crew review. He is reading through a Magic Tree House book ~ Polar Bears Past Bedtime, which is one of the series he is loving at the moment.
Playing with blocks is always a favorite, even for the older boys.
Gabe loves drawing on the chalkboard whenever I set it down on the ground, it’s also great fine motor practice!
Calendar time is so much fun. Gabe and Ethan both are getting great on counting up to 30 with the extra practice they are getting during our calendar time.
Magnets are still being used regularly and are staying on the shelves for now.
 
Cody working on Time4Learning. Still very much enjoying the program.
Gabe has learned how to take the boxes of books out of our homeschool library read them and put them back away where he found them. He has spent lots of time this past week reading through lots of our books
 
What we are cooking/eating
As you can imagine we cook tons of food each week. Since we eat almost no foods with preservatives and almost strictly organic it means that we cook lots of food each day. Some of the things that I managed to take pictures of this past week were.
We altered a recipe to make some wonderful homemade cheesy potatoes. They were decicious and the kids ate them so fast I didn’t get a finished picture. This will be a regular recipe in this house I’m sure of that.
On Cody’s night to help make dinner he made some apple coffee cake muffins.
 
He did let Gabe help him add the topping onto the muffins, which he really enjoyed.
 
They turned out delicious as usual, recipe will be shared here on the blog shortly since it’s a hit in our house since the start of apple season!
In Our Garden:
Next week I will be picking the rest of our corn for the season. There is probably about 40 ears of corn, which we will freeze to use through out the winter.
Our squash is coming along good. Loving the cold weather!
Tomatoes are almost ripe, hoping they finish before we get our first freeze of the year. There are hundreds of heirloom tomatoes growing and I cannot wait to eat and can them!
My Favorite Thing Of The Week.
Our chickens get all organic scraps from the house. The little boys decided they wanted to feed the chickens the lunch and breakfast scraps for the day. It was to cute watching them hold out the corn cobs for the chickens.
 
I am linking up with these great linky parties.
