Weekly Wrap-Up – May 4th-10th

I can hardly believe it’s May already!  Our school year is almost over.  Yay!  Of course, we begin again right away since we school year-round, but I always feel a sense of excitement over the new beginning and all the shiny new books we’ll be using.  If only the kids shared my enthusiasm!  LOL

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We got a huge box in the mail from Learning Palette.  It contained a complete 2nd grade math learning palette kit, a complete 2nd grade reading learning palette kit, a basic math learning wrap-up kit, a vocabulary learning wrap-up kit, 10 Days to Multiplication Mastery, and 10Ssteps to Addition Mastery.  We also get access to the Learning Palette Online program for 1 year, which gives both of the kids access to every grade level for math and reading.  We’re so excited!

I won’t get into their use of it…you’ll have to wait for the review in June!  But let’s just say they dove right into it!

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We’re nearing the end of the school year very quickly, and some days when it’s warm out, the kids get a case of spring fever and have a hard time getting motivated to start their school work.  Instead of yelling like usual, I decided on this day to lure them into the same room with a little bit of morning fun.  I turned on some music from Music Together’s Family Favorites CD, which we reviewed last year.  The kids absolutely love the music!  Sure enough, they came running to see where the music was coming from, and I had some fun games waiting for them to play.

They played a few rounds of Discovery Toys’ A B Seas, and then they did a matching puzzle where you had to sets of 3 pieces together that worked on sequencing, like life cycles and how things grow or progress.  They raced to see who could get the most puzzles completed by the time they were all put together.  This was a great way to get their brains working, but also bring them together so maybe they could start their schoolwork with a positive attitude when they were done.  Very cool!  They certainly appreciated the change of pace.

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On Friday night, we went out to the oceanfront for Monsters on the Beach!  That was such a blast!  It was a great show, and the weather was so pleasant for an evening at the beach.  There were plenty of crashes and near-crashes to keep us all on the edges of our seats throughout the evening.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures because I took LOTS of video!  We don’t have satellite television any more, so Holden can no longer watch Monster Jam competitions on the Speed Channel.  So I knew taking video was going to be cool for him so he could watch the performance over and over again.  What fun!

You can watch a couple of the little videos I took, like Avenger’s freestyle performance and Megasaurus eating a car!  Megasaurus is always exciting to watch when it’s dark out. It was so funny, because all of the 5- and 6-year old boys sitting around me (including my own) were shouting “Just torch it, just torch it!”  So funny.

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That pretty much wraps it up!  We had a great week, and I hope you all did, too.  See ya next week!