Gymnastics & Baseball

Immediately following her first gymnastics class, Caitlin insisted on getting a proper gymnastics outfit. We bought the first one we found, which turned out to be slightly too small. That did not deter her from insisting it was fine, nor did it deter me from keeping it because I didn't have the time to trek back and exchange it.

 We threw some black leggings underneath and voila! You can't really see anything!

 She stretched, backflipped, and somersaulted her little butt off.

And finally, she earned her two stamps for the day, a signal that she did well, and that class was over.

Last weekend Jayden started a Baseball clinic. A baseball clinic is basically practicing the different parts of baseball sans teams. They go to different stations to discuss and practice hitting, fielding, pitching, mental approach, sportsmanship, base running, etc. 

We had a huge snowstorm and thought we weren't going to make it. Jayden was pretty disappointed at the thought of missing it so we went.

The kids started out with some drills, sprinting and doing some other stuff that I can't remember since I didn't take any pics of it. I did manage to get a bunch of pictures of him batting though!

 He hit 5 of the 7 balls pitched to him!

I really like that at each drilling station he received instruction and feedback. It wasn't like the team he played in where there didn't seem to be much instruction.

Here he is practicing with the tee. 

Wondering why there are chain links in all of my pictures of baseball? They had this gem waiting especially for me! So all of Jayden's baseball pictures will be from behind the gate. Boo. 

Except for this one because I quickly snapped a picture before returning to the other side. ;)

Knitting Class!

One of our local libraries is now offering a parent-child knitting class. Jayden has been begging me to teach him how to knit for a long time now. I rarely have time to knit these days, and my previous attempts at teaching people to knit have been unsuccessful, so I didn't think I could teach him.

When we arrived there were needles and yarn set up for the kids with the first row knit for them.There were also some finished pieces for the kids to look at.

The librarian hosting the event, along with the ladies helping her, are both homeschoolers!

The best part of it all is Jayden can actually now knit!!!! He's been practicing frequently since the class.

Little Miss played her DS for a while but ended up wanting to knit.

One of the helpers helped Caitlin finger knit a bracelet.

She was super happy!

After class was over we stopped to check out this display of Alice in Wonderland. Cait thought it was hilarious.

Science- Genes and Growth

In Science we worked on a genetics lab and a fingerprint lab. The kids learned that half of their genes come from dad and the other half are from mom. We talked about how unique everyone is, because apart from identical twins, there are no two people who look exactly alike.
The first lab had them looking at the differences and similarities between them (the kids) and us (Juan and I).


Then they had to count how many similarities they shared with each parent.

The features on Caitlin’s lab favored Juan, while the features on Jayden’s lab favored me.
The second lab that we worked on had to do with fingerprints. It was a disaster! The kids either didn't press their fingers in the spot fully or they did it sideways. Jayden was pissed that his fingers were dirty. Caitlin was marking fingerprints on the carpet. So at the end, when they were supposed to examine what kind of fingerprints they had, the prints looked like a smudged mess. But they had fun! :)

Language Arts/ Math/Spanish/Etc.

Last week we did a lot of review to get us back into school mode.
For Language Arts, Jayden worked on reviewing words with a suffix.

He worked on topic sentences and putting sentences in order.

And he also worked on action verbs.

At the end of last week Jayden finished his unit on mass and scored 100% on his test!

Caitlin is still working on her handwriting skills. We write sentences down for her in her notebook and have her read them to us. Then she writes them. She is thrilled that she is at the end of her notebook, and can’t wait to start a new one!

She has been requesting more school work and I am happy to grant this request! She now has daily worksheets to occupy her.
Caitlin does calendar worksheets (FREE download at Confessions of a Homeschooler).

She has also been doing Math worksheets from Education Creations.

And finally, both kids reviewed numbers 1-5 in Spanish with a fun color by number worksheet from MixMinder.com.
Jayden’s

Caitlin’s

They are happily building with their new Lego sets. Jayden has even taken to calling himself “The Lego Master”.

Gymnastics!

Caitlin just joined a weekly gymnastics class. She has been dying to join a gymnastics class for a really long time. We finally found one that works with our schedule!
She jumped on the trampoline.

They did some basic stretches.

Caitlin worked on the bars, pulling her teeny self up and wrapping her feet on the bar in front of her.

She also walked on the small (pictured below) and big balance beams.

She was ecstatic that her friends were also in her class. On the drive home she said, "This is the day I've been waiting for my whole life!"