There is a new baby in our family! The kids have a brand new, long awaited, beautiful baby girl cousin and Juan & I have a new niece. This meant we had to take a trip to Build A Bear to create something fabulous for her.

In science Jayden is currently learning about measuring solids, liquids, and gases. Naturally we had to make a batch of nutella chocolate chip cookies since we are learning about measurements.

 

The kids have been fascinated with learning Spanish lately. Caitlin's favorite word? "Cooooooooooooooooooooooooooonchale!" She really stretches out that "o" to the max. Thanks a lot daddy! To help them learn more productive words, I found some free videos online called Salsa. It is a series of videos with puppets that Caitlin loves. Jayden does not though, so I will have to find something else for him.

 We finally picked up Jayden's karate uniform and he looks completely adorable in it!

I have been slacking on the blogging! Oops! Sometimes life gets in the way.

We have still be working on school. I have still been taking a ton of pictures. A whole lot of pictures.

Jayden is loving karate.

Starting off with a pledge which includes being a leader, eating your vegetables, and keeping your room clean

Warm ups!

Deshi helping Jayden with a karate move

Ending with the pledge

Grandpa & Lisa were visiting that weekend. So after karate, we went to their hotel and the kids went swimming. They were ecstatic to show off their new skills.

I don't know if it was the smaller pool or the bigger audience, but Caitlin felt confident enough to jump into the pool all by herself. Usually she wants her teacher to hold her hand. This time she said "I can do it by my own self mom!"

 And she did!

Hot tub

The following week we met up for our Minecraft game with Owen.

During swimming class later that week Miss Scarlett was pleasantly surprised when Cait jumped in by her "own self."

 

I love these kinds of pictures of Caitlin. You see her swimming her ass off!

Mr. Cool

During the week that I last posted we made a few changes to our curriculum. Jayden decided he no longer liked Time4Learning and Caitlin decided she wanted to try it. After a quick phone call to the company, the grade, username, and password were all changed and set up for Little Miss.

Spelling City Review

We have been members of Spelling City for about 30 days now and we LOVE it.

At first I wasn't sure if it would be s good fit for us. But once I poked around the website I felt confident Jayden would enjoy it. And he sure does. In fact, he ASKS to play on it.

I love that you can input your own spelling lists. For Premium members, once you input your list, Spelling City generates definitions (sometimes more than one definition for a word, then you can choose which definition you prefer).

What Jayden loves best is the amount of games on Spelling City. There are TONS of them, including Word Search, Word Unscramble, and Crossword Puzzles. These have been his favorite games so far (although he hasn't gotten to try all of the games available).

What I love about this website (apart from how much fun Jayden has) is that it keeps track of test scores which means less work for me. With the spelling tests, words are read aloud to him, then used in a sentence, and read aloud again. Afterward he must type the word in correctly.

I love that this website is challenging him in ways that his regular spelling book can not. The games stimulate his mind and he loves having to work a little harder to figure out the answer.

I also love that there is an assignments tab in the teacher section where I can set up Jayden's daily assignments. Once he logs on he can check out what he has to do for the day. There are also a TON of resources available for teachers.

There is a free membership but the premium membership price is phenomenal as well! Less than $30 for a year long membership for up to 5 students!

We love this site and will definitely continue using it as part of our spelling curriculum!

At the local mall the kids can come in to play Minecraft, Jayden's favorite new game. We met up with Owen & Vinny to play.

 

Cait flipped, jumped, ran, and played on the kindle.

  

We also had swimming class, which went fabulous. 

 

Jayden worked on his new spelling word list on Spelling City.

Jayden has been reading Mummies in the Morning out loud and working in his notebook.

 

Cait has been working in her work books and reading her Mat & Sam books.

   

And Juan bought Minecraft for the Xbox so the kids have been playing together!

Just another school day!

The kids decided they wanted to do the 30 Day Shred to get in some exercise. It was HILARIOUS! But they did really well. They did the entire 20 minute workout. (which is more than Juan and I can say for ourselves.)

Cait decided she wanted to watch the Hooked on Phonics dvd to practice her reading.

She successfully read the second book, Sam, in the Bob Books series!

Then she read it to her babies.

 Jayden worked on math worksheets involving subtracting money.

Once he was finished, we worked on Science and discovering that air takes up space.

We started with an empty bottle. I squeezed it nearly flat. Then I had Jayden blow into it, watching it fill back up and demonstrating that air occupies space.

We compared solids and liquids and discussed how to measure them by mass, length and/ or volume. 

We tested out the different ways to measure solids and liquids.

We tried out our membership to Spelling City for the first time today. Jayden took his spelling test online (and scored 100!) and searched for his spelling words in a word search. So far he really likes the website.

Then we read chapter 1 of Mummies in the Morning. (See Jayden all excited in the back? Yeah, he was checking out my "lame" map!)

He loved working in his notebook today!