Update...finally

Well, life has been happening with no time to blog! We are excited.  It is hard to believe we have been in our new house for half of a year!   It still seems like we moved in a month ago....maybe because our basement is still under partial construction and we still have no table and chairs in the kitchen...just a guess...

Next week is our last week of Friday classes for the semester.  I taught a Science lab class where we did different hands on science projects each week.  These pictures are from the week that they made bridges out of spagetti noodles and marshmallows.  

It has been fun to get to do these projects with the kids each week.  They have enjoyed it and I think have actually learned a few things as well.   It was a fun challenge for me to find "experiments" for us to do that would be easy and interesting for all the ages in my class (6-14 years..about 12 kids total).

Some other things we did was make lava lamps (with water, oil, food coloring, and alka seltzer), experiment with dissolving different substances, test acids and bases with red cabbage juice, make oozey goopey stuff while talking about states of matter, make catapults and test how far we could launch marshmallows, learn about aerodynamics with paper airplanes, and a few others.

Middle Bro. has also been taking a chess class and will be going to his 3rd tournament this weekend!  His first two tournaments were good beginner ones where he played against others in his own grade level and each grade level had trophies for the top three and keychains for everyone else.  So, basically, you get your feet wet and no one goes home empty handed.   He got 2nd place in his group at both of his tournaments...and had a great time as well.

My two older boys were also able to participate in something called First Lego League this year.  My great friend (also a homeschooler) had been wanting to involve her son in Lego robotics for a while and finally bit the bullet by starting a team.  Lucky me and my boys!   They got a Lego mindstorms kit for the team and a donated laptop and had to build their own robot and program it to complete different missions. 


This picture is our boys at a practice table at their first tournament this past Saturday.  We were not sure how they were going to do!   One week, the robot would complete the task, and when they tried it again, it wouldn't.  They also had to complete and present a project to go along with the theme of the year (Senior Solutions this year), and they were also judged on the programming/robot building, as well as on how well they showed the FLL Core Values (such as inclusion, cooperation, and the like).  (Oh!  I just realized you can see me in the back of this pic--that I borrowed from a friend on facebook..Lol)

All of these things and more kept me pretty busy this semester!  I am looking forward to a bit of a break, but am so proud of all my kiddos have accomplished.  Oh, yeah...I forgot to mention that our boys ended up getting 8th place out of 23 teams.  This allows them to go on to a regional tournament in February.

My little girls also keep me busy and smiling with their sweet dispositions!  I will have to talk more about them at another time..for now, I will just put some pics up that make me smile!

Just love how Baby Sis is hanging on Big Brother in this picture! So sweet!