Weekly Wrap Up ~ Night at the Museum ...

From the Heart ~

I am thinking about fun ....  Can you have too much fun in your life?  What about too much joy or opportunities and events?  More than once, I have been told by some professional in the mental health field that our family is too fun. We have too much fun and do too many fun things.  They never have any other problems with our family.  They like our chore charts, our consistency, our devotion, our strong marriage, our child training techniques and family values -- but we are TOO MUCH FUN. One must remember that these are the same naysayers who predicted that our Goldilocks would never recover from severe RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) well enough to live in a family.  Now, they consider her to be pretty well attached to our family and the majority of difficulties she gives us can be blamed on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I am grateful for my fun family and all of the fun events we cram into our lives.  Frankly, we are an intense family with intense special issues.  We need a lot of comic relief to carry us through our days.  So, I seek out wholesome fun and try to fill our days with love and joy. I hope this is the right thing to do.

I am not speaking about material things here. I certainly do not think that all of the stuff that dribbles into our house is great.  I am still working on how to keep the tap closed more on that one.  But, that is a thought for another day.

On the Homefront ~

Wow, the month of September passed me by in a jiffy.  After weeks of unique schedules and travel, it is nice to be home. This last week was the first week that we got the feel for our Fall school schedule.  What it looks like on paper is sometimes different than how it feels in real life.  I am relieved that after getting through this week, it feels manageable.   I am even 90% unpacked from our travels.  I love October and am looking forward to a month with a more normal schedule.  We have two family birthdays and the joy of watching the changing of the leaves.  It should be a good month.

Learning Time ~

We just completed our 8th week of school.  I did a little review to see where we are and how the kids are retaining their subjects.  The good news is that they are doing great in retaining math, reading, literature, art, music, science, Latin, sign language and geography.  However, they are lost and confused when it comes to history. They gave me unimportant info about a topic, mixed up famous people and generally showed me that our history studies are not sticking in their minds. I have been concerned with SOTW (Story of the World) for a little while now.  I love it, but it is getting more and more complicated. There are so many details, and it just seems way above their heads at the moment.  Often in the past weeks, I have felt like I am filling a vessel instead of igniting a flame. So, for now, I am putting SOTW away and moving through history with picture books and hands-on activities. We are just finishing the Rennaisance, and I will be starting a unit study on Native American Indians before moving into American history, starting with Jamestown.  My priority is for my children to have a love of learning, not to be able to state every little detail about an event.  I think I lost my priorities a bit in the last few months.

Our pop up Globe theater has added loads of fun to our Shakespeare study of Macbeth.

Reinforcing blends through a phonics game in a doctor's waiting room

"Double, double, toil and trouble..." This is our witches brew to go with Macbeth.

Family Time ~

We went to the new exhibit at our hands-on science museum.  It was the Blue Man Group exhibit.  For those who don't know who the Blue Man group is, such as my Mom, they are comic, musical entertainers who paint themselves in shiny blue and use everyday materials to create music.  They perform in large venues such as at Las Vegas, but this was not a live show -- it was an exhibit exploring sound and light with lots of videos of the Blue Man Group.  The kids loved it and dh really got into it, too.  We went on members-only opening night and were delighted with the spread of food they provided.  Yummy ...

Considering how messy the crowd is supposed to get at the Blue Man performances, this movie is probably close enough for us.

Getting down with the Blue Man Group

Today, we spent time in our very first corn maze. It went better than I expected.  No one is terribly itchy but dh did have a huge allergy attack. The children also loved swinging on the rope swing and falling into the piles of hay. We picked a pumpkin out of the pumpkin patch and ate homemade ice cream, too.

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Blessings,

Dawn