Our Week in Half

Half our family, that is (and also about half a week)! Three of the girls were at camp this week (two campers and one counselor), so I've been trying to do some fun and unusual things with the rest of the kiddos.

Monday - We went up to Holy Hill for Mass for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul and packed a lunch and some sketchbooks (along with a small set of Prismacolors). After Mass and Lunch we headed into their huge scenic tower, found a cozy corner out of the wind on the second-from-the-top level and drew pictures. We also did some sketching in the church and the shrine and ended our long peaceful afternoon with some really good pie at the Monastery Inn Cafe. Yum!








Tuesday - Frank became interested in playing this game - Deck of Chores - which I quickly adjusted by breaking the tasks into smaller pieces - and they loved it. I agreed to take them bowling if they did the entire game the following day. Still have to follow that one up as the bowling alley was closed yesterday.

We made a big trip to a local library they had never been to before and came away with 46 items checked out - yikes! It was a lovely, newer, very roomy library with a huge separate room for the children's section. And my favorite part - they had a special place for children's non-fiction; it was enormous and filled with lots of interesting goodies. Most of the local libraries are mixing the children's non-fiction in with the adult non-fiction. I suppose it's easier for finding things via the card catalog, but it absolutely stinks for fun kid-browsing.

We went home and watched a DVD I had never heard of before that we picked up on a whim: Tortoise vs. Hare: The Rematch of the Century. We loved it!

Later, Gus and John and I watched Kris Correira's webinar on Cohesion and Adhesion at Homeschool Connections (where you can watch the recording if you're interested), which introduced the basic concepts, showed us some fun (but simple) experiments and answered questions. Very cool! (Kate and Frank watched That Darn Cat during the webinar.)




Wednesday - Yesterday I picked up some food coloring, cotton string and medicine droppers so that Gus could do the science experiments from the webinar with his younger siblings. They were duly impressed and soon everyone was racing small colored droplets of water around on waxed paper and scaring pepper like crazy.

Last night we walked to a local tennis court and shot balls around for awhile (I really need to buy some new ones as we have exactly three really old tennis balls in our possession.)

And as a grand finale to our big plans, we camped out in the backyard last night. (And no, that's not our picture - it was cloudy and cool all night.)

We still owe them on the bowling.