Snail Trail

I think I feel some Snail Trail coming on. Has anyone who is not in my family EVER heard of that game?

I was out pulling weeds today while the kids were busy playing with worms, spiders, and snails.  The snails were the big hit.

We learned lots of interesting things about snails that were news to me, one of which was that snails are hermaphrodites!  I also learned that they carry diseases and you should make sure the kiddos wash their hands really good after handling.

Check out this Snail World website where we learned all about snails!

Vikings!

We learned about Vikings last week as an intro to US History, as the Vikings landed in North America in around the year 1000 A.D., probably around Newfoundland, CA.  This week we are talking about Christopher Columbus.  The curriculum wanted us to move more quickly onto Columbus, but I have a house full of boys and Vikings are cool!

We checked out some books at the library on Vikings, one of which had some awesome Viking crafts, and today completed our Viking ships.  These are not quite as elaborate as the book, but pretty cool still!

Here are the boys playing with their ships. :)  The blue baby chair is Iceland, the blue yoga mat is the ocean, the green yoga mat is Greenland, and the caste across more water is North America.  (Pay no attention to proportions, exact placement, or what kind of sense it doesn't make to have a castle in North America. :) )  Pretty fun!

P.S. Update: I already decided against that LDS curriculum I was thinking of using next year.  When it comes time to move beyond the Bible study included in our curriculum, probably next year, we will just add other scripture study as it's own curriculum.  I'll share what system we start using once we get to that point!  I do however like rotating Science, and Spanish most of the time.  Social Studies has now become more consistent and a base for our other subjects.  Even cooking :).  A couple weeks ago, chef Superman and I, made and served some patriotic layered white yogurt, raspberries, blueberries, and granola for the brothers.  

Rotating Subjects

So there is a fabulous LDS curriculum that I plan on starting next year for history, see curriculum here, and with  this curriculum they recommend rotating subjects.  Well, I'm not starting their curriculum yet, and when I do I may only do history, but I'm going to try subject rotation now.  I've been noticing Spanish is sort of suffering and science is sporadic SO here's the rotation.  Devotional (song, prayer, scriptures in one form or another), pledge, reading, writing and math daily and then one subject per week of science, social studies, and spanish.  I should also have listed instruments daily....but we're slacking on the daily-ness ;) of that as well.

Right now we're having a problem with Superman retaining his Spanish.  I think that emphasizing Spanish for a full week every three weeks will work better than Spanish once or twice a week as far as retention.  It's also way less stressful to me to have less subjects on my mind at once.  Hopefully I'll let ya know how it goes!