Every spring when my favorite bush, the Yesterday Today Tomorrow bush, blooms, I try to get a picture in front of it with Callie. This year, we were a bit late, but still managed our picture after church on Sunday. (I’m sure we would have looked better before church!) The rest of the family got in on the tradition as well.
Carson didn’t get in on the picture this year because of his cast.
Fairly well attended African Pastors Conference.
Monday and Tuesday our teammates hosted the annual African Pastors Conference at their new church building. I was very thankful to have a break this year from all of the cooking I had to do in the past! I was able to homeschool every day this week, although Wednesday we only did half of our work since I had to go to town.
The smoke from this huge brush fire could be seen from town as well as from our villages Wednesday.
Caleb got 67 smilies one day on his multiplication facts practice with Xtramath!
Our life has not settled back to “normal” routine; I’ll be happy when we can get back to that. Nevertheless, we did have some triumphs this week. Colin learned his 10 addition family, and he already knew about half of them. Caleb has begun learning how to do double-digit multiplication with regrouping. Math-U-See is so strong on teaching place value and using manipulatives to show what is happening that I even feel that I got a clearer understanding of why we multiply the way we do.
Callie learned “N” this week, and Colin finished one of his handwriting books for the year. Caleb, with my help, wrote a short composition that worked solely on ordering events (what he does in the morning). Writing with Ease has switched from copywork and dictation each once per week to dictation twice per week. So we are using other things for daily copywork or handwriting practice.
In history, we learned about Copernicus and Galileo’s theories of the solar system, and how the Catholic church stifled Galileo’s findings. Seth dropped similarly shaped but differently weighted items from the roof to recreate Galileo’s experiment on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which proved that that heavier objects didn’t fall faster. Caleb finished a few books this week: Who in the World Was the Secretive Printer?, How a Book Is Made, and Starry Messenger.
The objects are above the window.
We spent a week learning about jellyfish and anemones. Next week we should finish our chapter on cnidarians. There was no science project this week, so we spent more time on our lapbook. I didn’t do much with art or music this week. The kids drew something from our yard for nature study (“art”); and Caleb drew while listening to the Allegro movement from “Spring” by Vivaldi. (I told him to draw something that looks like spring to him, and he drew a lion. Boys. Oy!) I spent some time speculating about Renaissance art, specifically the sometimes ample figures of Renaissance women versus our beauty expectations today.
Another triumph: one of the tadpoles we are raising on our kitchen counter has changed into a froglet! We noticed its legs on Monday and were all very excited!
Ita Vita 
Looks like a great week! My dd is also learning about cnidarians shortly. And it sounds like your kids made some good progress!