May is Here ~ Now the "Crazy" Really Starts!

The last week of April was a whirlwind. My youngest son turned 13!! This week there were parties, appointments, out of the home classes and lots of sugar. My son received some awesome presents that have kept our homeschool fun and educational this week. We are finishing the week off with a bang! My mother is having surgery today and we would appreciate your prayers. Since I am short on time, this will be more of a picture post than a word post.

Tom Sawyer on the far right invited four friends and his sister to go roller skating. 

They had a wonderful time.

We decorated the house with caution tape as a joke. Everyone says the teen years are so hard. My experience has been that some years are hard and some aren't, all the way from infancy, through childhood to adulthood. Actually, my 11 year old is giving me more issues currently than my 13 year old.

Awesome Learning ~ 

• Thinking Putty was a popular gift that has been experimented with all week.
• The Snap Circuit Rover is awesome. The kids have performed eight experiments with it so far.
• We finished up our Tinker Crate box about polymers. The kids made plastic out of milk and expanded the polymers in a gummy bear (the before and after is in the collage photo above).
• They love the Plus Plus building set Tom Sawyer received.
• We continued with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and started The First Four Years.
• The kids did reading, CNN Student News, math and language arts daily.
• We started reading about the 1960's.
• We enjoyed a "taste" of 1960's music (a list of songs will follow in a future post).
• The kids did four lessons in Draw Write Now.
• They attended all of their out of the home classes.
• Dissected a rose under our stereo microscope.
• Tom Sawyer made mustache cupcakes for celebrating his birthday with his dance class. Aren't they cute?

Making plastic out of milk

This is just the beginning of our busy season. The kids will be logging 59 hours at the dance studio before the month of May comes to an end. There is end-of-year testing and a host of subjects to wrap up. But the end of the year is within sight ~ not that anyone is actually complaining about doing school. What a blessing it is to homeschool! 

Blessings, Dawn