Middle School is Tough

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I need to a better job showcasing Liz and her schooling. Middle school isn’t all cute and craft-laden. It’s lots more work than what the littles do. And it doesn’t make for fun pictures.

Except when I get wide-eyed leave-me-alone stares.

Liz loves notebooking with PowerPoint and Notebooking Publisher. yay for technology!

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Visit NotebookingPages.com to learn more about their memberships
and their new web-app, The Notebooking Publisher™

 

I snapped a pic of Liz’s DNA strand. She’s going through Apologia General Science. She does most of the experiments with Dad, so there aren’t usually any pictures since I’m not involved.

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Liz is enjoying Tapestry of Grace. We’ll learn about her namesake Elizabeth I next week!

She continues to adore Life of Fred math. She is now on Elementary Physics, a pre-algebra book.

Some of Liz’s favorite things…

Her aStore

Narration with Technology

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Lightbulb.

I had been fighting threatening negotiating with Liz to get her history narration//writing/accountability questions/thinking questions completed. Tapestry of Grace can be overwhelming without a little planning here and there. Picky Choosey. We sure can’t do it all.

I threw an outline together on PowerPoint and told her to fill it in with the information. She loved it. No more battle. Why didn’t I think of it before? When I taught public school, I often had my students use PowerPoint and Publisher for assessment. And Liz is now of the age those students were. Perfect.

I will probably do this technology narrating each week now. And I will utilize that awesome Notebooking Publisher for her too (see below for LIFETIME membership!). And it’s good to show Dad that she accomplished something. Since all she wants to do is lay around and read and talk about it. He wants to see a product. Win/win/win.

Powerpoint summary






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Math (and history) Monday

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We completed Life of Fred Apples. Our Singapore math unit is about telling time. I found some supplemental materials for them. The pack we worked on the last couple days is from School Express. You can sign up for emails and get a unit each week. I rarely use them, but this one seemed fun. They’re mostly puzzles and busy work.
wow, I think Katie was excited to do this time pack!
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A fun fact sheet about time. We all giggled about the statement: “You can’t hear or smell time.” We tried!
time pack
Katie filling in our school day schedule. I wrote the items on our board after we discussed the order of our day and the girls copied it at the appropriate times on their pages.
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Tori’s copy of our general school day schedule. Look how much free time if they complete their work!
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Cross curricular activity: decoding letters for Tapestry of Grace Year 2, Unit 2 history. We read a Max Lucado story and completed the puzzle for the symbolic Bible verse represented in the story.

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The girls really enjoyed the puzzle and begged me to find more code games for them!
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Then we read Musicians of the Sun for history and had to dance and make music. Music is math. Winking smile

Just look at the gorgeous colors and fun shapes in this book! Art is math too. Winking smile
history living book
The girls pretended they were characters from the book, making a rainbow.
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Alex heard the cacophony and ran to join us!
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It was loud, obnoxious, gave me a momentary headache, but the kids loved it and will certainly remember this book!


Medieval Feast: Tapestry of Grace Year 2 Unit 1 Celebration

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We didn’t do so well on unit celebrations for our Tapestry of Grace studies last year. It was all new to us and honestly, I just didn’t plan them.
So, we planned a medieval feast as our first unit celebration this year. It coincided with Elizabeth’s 12th birthday. She said it was the best birthday ever. Points for mama!
Thank you, Costco, for the awesome knight and princess costumes!
Alex tried on his costume and immediately wanted it off. Yeah, I can’t imagine eating in shining armor either.
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Mercy, no dressing these two alike anymore! I can barely tell them apart!
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I had this costume from a party years ago and now Liz can wear it. My, she’s getting tall!
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Here’s a copy of our menu I made on Publisher.
Medieval Feast Menu
Here’s the best picture I could get of the table. We set it with our fancy stuff! We don’t have any pewter plates and I wasn’t using bread trenchers! The flowers were for Liz’s birthday. We kinda dug into the “subtlety” after lunch. It was her birthday cake!
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We checked this book out from the library. It had lovely examples of medieval menus and recipes galore! We especially loved the copies of actual recipes in Old English and art depicting cooks during the period.



We had cream of vegetable soup. Tori and Katie loved this and asked for thirds and fourths!
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Cedar plank grilled salmon filets. We put brown sugar on top and they were delicious!
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Roasted herb chicken. We used Jamie Oliver’s recipe. It is delectable!
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Creamed spinach. This is Aaron’s mom’s recipe. Liz and I love it, the others, not so much. But it has BACON!
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Alex wanted to be like Mama and Daddy and have his grape juice in a big glass!
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We’re excited to start our Renaissance history studies! Already working on what we can do for our unit study in 9 weeks. This one will be hard to beat!

Check out the wonderful world of Tapestry of Grace for yourself!


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