All Things Supercinski

We were able to go on two field trips this month. I’m not sure if that is what you call them if you are homeschooling, but you understand.

Our first trip was to Washington on the Brazos for one of their homeschool days. It was a wonderful trip, and I highly recommend it. Speedy stayed home with Thomas which made the experience much more enjoyable.

First, one of the ladies that works in the museum talked to the kids about life for pioneer children who were early settlers in Texas. They were able to see different tools, chores, clothes and toys from that era. We made a few simple toys together, and then we toured the museum before enjoying a picnic lunch outside.

In the afternoon, the kids got a tour of the Barrington Farms portion of the museum. First, there was the tour of the pioneer house and time to do some of the chores–feeding chickens, carrying water, and washing rags in a bucket with a washboard and then hanging them on the clothesline. Sugar loved the “laundry”.

Afterward, we got to see the farm side with pigs, turkeys, cotton plants and lots of dried corn.

We got to see the slave quarters and compare them to the house. They were exhausted by the time we were done, and Sugar was out of smiles.

Last week, we went on a tour of the air traffic control tower at our local airport with our PE co-op. We also got to sit in a little airplane and look at other planes in the hangar. The kids enjoyed it, and Speedy learned the sign for airplane after watching a plane takeoff on the runway nearby.

This was my favorite picture of the trip.

September was a whirlwind of a month for us with our Classical Conversations group starting back for the year. I am tutoring Bud’s class which is a lot of fun and sugar is in a big kid class, too. Our PE Co-op also began, thus homeschooling is going full-force. We started reading Story of the World about ancient times. We even made some little caveman wall paintings.

Thomas spent a week in Canada for work. It was our first week of CC and PE, but we survived! To help pass the time, we did fun things like getting yogurt in the afternoon.

Thomas celebrated another birthday. He is still a kid at heart, as you can see. The kids were really sweet and put together a whole shoe box of presents for him–stickers, their favorite crayons, pencils, drawings galore. It was really sweet.

We had dinner with some of our international student friends. They took us to a Korean restaurant (they aren’t Korean), and we had a lot of fun trying new foods and catching up about our summers.

We enjoyed the cooler weather and ate dinner outside one night until the mosquitoes drove us inside.

Thomas and Bud built a bird feeder in the backyard. The kids planted many of the sunflower seeds in their sand toys and many have sprouted. The feeder attracted a cardinal several times, but now the seeds have been consumed by a squirrel, hanging from the branch by his tail.

Sugar built a high chair for her baby, who enjoyed some scrambled eggs one morning.

I have done a much better job documenting some of our bigger events in August (the Supercinskiad, Speedy’s birthday, my new pull-up bar), so this is light on pictures.

August seemed to fly by as we spent many days at the pool and hanging out with friends. I felt like I finally mastered our summer routine: park after breakfast before it is too hot, home for Speedy’s nap and school with Bud and Sugar, errand or trip to the pool, home for lunch and more naps, hang out or errands until dinner and bedtime. Sugar is swimming really well these days and loves to dive into the pool. She can swim at least 10 yards to me, then take a breath and head back to the wall. She likes to pretend to be Missy Franklin, and Bud holds a noodle in front of her as she swims to be the world record line.

I spent the last few weeks of August easing into our transition back to full-time school. I continued math, reading and spelling a few days a week during the summer so that Bud wouldn’t forget everything, and I just recently added science back into the mix. The kids have had a blast with science, and I am really happy that I started early to cover the extra lessons we wouldn’t need later in the year. We made some molds of pawprints and the kids pretended to be scientists for a day in their museum. We observed animals at two local pet stores, charting the invertebrates and vertebrates we saw, and we bought two sea snails to join our goldfish, and we have a gigantic bowl of mealworm larvae living on our kitchen counter. Fun times!

I spent much of my free time while the kids were sleeping working on lessons plans for the class I am tutoring at Classical Conversations this year and our at-home lessons plans for the fall semester. I really enjoy all the filing, copying, binder-making and such that goes along with this time. The Olympics were a nice time to get stuff done.

We said good-bye to some of our dear friends who moved at the end of August. I am sad to see them go as they have been sweet homeschooling friends.

We also enjoyed a birthday party with another friend who introduced Bud to the wonders of Wii dancing games. He was really good at it, too.

The garden is empty except for sweet potatoes. We are planning our fall garden and looking forward to fresh lettuce again.

I wrapped up another Bradley series of 15 total couples (!!!) and I am thoroughly enjoying a break before the next series begins.

Bud is starting first grade, and Sugar is doing a little more school this year than the last two years where she basically played and colored. This is what is on our plates for this year:

Sugar
Reading/Phonics – All About Reading Pre-Level 1 – We have been working in this for a few weeks now, and it is very appropriate for her reading level. We are working on letter recognition, sounds and handwriting.

Handwriting – Handwriting Without Tears and various activities (stickers, playdough, gluing)

Math – We are working on skip counting songs, counting, number recognition and writing numbers. So far, this has been through a few workbooks, but I plan to start doing Saxon 1 with her once or twice a week starting later this winter.

Geography, Grammar, History, Timeline, Latin, Science – She will be participating in a Classical Conversations class this year and will be working on memorizing her weekly memory work through CC and at home. In addition, she will completing many activities with Bud to supplement our weekly history and science.

Bud
Reading – We are working through Explode the Code Level 5, a few sheets a week. He also reads chapter books to himself and some aloud to me (A to Z Mysteries, Magic Tree House).

Spelling – Bud just finished All About Spelling Level 1 and will be starting Level 2 next week. I love this curriculum!

Math – Bud is already almost a third of the way through with Saxon Math 3. He made some great progress over the summer with speed and consistency with math facts. Math is one of his favorite subjects.

Language Arts – First Language Lessons by Susan Wise Bauer. We have been doing a few of these lessons a week with both Sugar and Bud. He is memorizing poetry, practicing narration and learning more grammar.

Geography, Timeline, Grammar, Latin, Math, History, Science – memory work through Classical Conversations

History – we will supplement our CC weekly history sentence with readings from Story of the World and various activities to go along with them. I have lots of fun activities on Pinterest.

Science – For the fall semester, we will be supplementing our CC science memory work with lessons and activities from Evan Moore Science books for grades 1-3 on Vertebrates, Invertebrates and Plants. We are also planning to raise some tadpoles into frogs and caterpillars into butterflies. We have completed most of our vertebrate unit already as the kids have been begging for more science.

Geography – we will supplement our CC memory work with learning a bit more about the countries we are locating (each week they will work on finding different countries and physical features on their maps and practice tracing them–we are doing Africa and Asia this year). We will also read biographies of missionaries to those countries, and use Window on the World to pray for those countries. We will also eat food from those areas and perhaps watch a travel guide show about some of them. This is not applicable for every week, but several of them.

Fine Arts – through CC we will be working on drawing for the first six weeks and supplementing at home with various activities and lots of time with Ed Emberley’s drawing books. Then we will do music and practice playing tin whistle and reading music (perhaps we will get a keyboard do more with this?), then in the spring we will work on art history and painting along with orchestra and classical music.

Physical Education – we are part of a PE co-op that meets weekly. The kids will also continue with gymnastics for the fall semester.

Scripture Memory – both kids will be memorizing Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments) with CC. In addition, we have been memorizing a verse a week from My ABC Bible Verses. I really like the applicable stories that go with each verse. Bud practices handwriting by doing copy work for the verse each day. We are also still plugging through some simple catechism work.

Once again, better late than never! July was a busy and fun month for our family. We had a few weekends away, too.

We spent the weekend of Independence Day at my mom’s house with my grandparents. My grandparents drove all the way from Arizona to East Texas, and we were happy to get to see them.

Sugar practiced swinging on Nana’s swing, and Speedy had his first taste of snow cone. He wasn’t so sure about it.

I spent a weekend watching the Crossfit Games (so awesome and motivating!) and organizing my ridiculous amount of fabric scraps and remnants. I can’t bear to throw away fabric, even if it is small bits because you never know when you might need a small piece for something. I collected cardboard boxes for a month or two and cut them into rectangles to wrap the larger remnants around. Small scraps were organized into bags. Anyway, this is what my living room looked like that night while I worked on it, but the end result was worth it.

We picked our first watermelon. It was really great! I took a picture of their faces as they were taking their first bites. It was good!

Our super-sweet next door neighbors (the ones with a little boy 3 days older than Speedy), moved at the end of July. We got to spend some extra time with their little guy (who isn’t so little, this is the only way Speedy was bigger than him).

Our neighbors had a moving garage sale and we put a few things in it. Bud finally realized his dream of a paper airplane shop and actually made a dollar or two. Bless those people who bought one!

We continued doing a little school over the summer, and plowed through Bud’s spelling curriculum. The kids also got to dissect a crayfish one afternoon after my tutor meeting (one perk of being a tutor’s kids, spoilers!)

Thomas took Sugar on a date on evening to Olive Garden. He brought her a corsage. I love it.

And some of my other favorite pictures from the month:

Today marks one year since Sugar had surgery on her tummy. In case you missed it, last summer Sugar had really bad abdominal pain that was so bad she couldn’t stand up straight. We took her to the ER since we thought it was her appendix. They thought so, too, but couldn’t tell for sure, and since our community doesn’t have a pediatric surgeon, we were sent to Dell Children’s in Austin. She had surgery on Monday morning where they removed a duplication cyst from her small intestine, along with that piece of intestine and her appendix. Basically, a pouch-like cyst had developed along her intestine as her intestines were forming in utero, it got infected and inflamed with some food in there and she was in a ton of pain. All these pictures are from her hospital stay, except the last one, it was from last week.

While this was not a huge emergency and many families deal with much more tragic and life-threatening events, it was a bit of a turning point for me. I am still thankful for each day I get to spend with this spunky girl. She is so healthy and strong. It really is amazing that all that happened to her.

Afterward, I wondered why she had to go through all of that. I honestly have no idea and I hope we never have to do it again. It taught me that each day with her (and each of my kids) is a gift. Sometimes I forget that in the midst of all the tasks of mothering–unloading and reloading, folding and sorting, cleaning and wiping, bathing and shampooing, correcting and disciplining, reading and soothing–sometimes, we need that jolting wake up call that this is not about the to-do list and the meals and the house and the schooling, but about their hearts and their souls. These little people are growing so fast into the people they will be. Our time with them is short, and at one year after we came closest to losing that time, I am so thankful for each day I have had. Even if some of those days are spent reminding myself that it is just hair and it will grow, crayon wipes off most things except for carpet, a table is just a table and bite marks add character, and so on.

As I mentioned before, we enjoy the Olympics. If you have been reading our blog for longer than the past two years, you might recall that nearly every summer, we compete in our Supercinskiad games. Most of our games the first five times were board games, word games, and card games, except for leg wrestling. The Supercinskiad was not held last year as I was too busy nesting for a new baby to stop and play games. This year, we decided to make it more for the big kids to enjoy, and I think it was a blast. The kids got really into it, and even made flags for themselves. Sugar’s got ripped up by Speedy, but she was a good sport about it.

It was a grueling day of competition, but the athletes handled it well. The day started off with track and field shortly after breakfast before it got too hot. The first competition was hurdles… maybe 10 meters? Bud’s longer legs helped him secure an easy gold medal.

Then we headed to the park for some more games. Long jump came first with each competitor getting three attempts. We had watched highlights from long jump the day before, but Thomas gave the kids some pointers. My husband is awesome.

Check out the height Bud got on his last attempt! Again, Bud’s longer legs secured him the gold.

Afterward, we attempted some javelin throws with an old tent pole. Hilarious. Bud triumphed once again.

Check out the “javalin” right in front of Sugar.

Then we combined discus and shot put into a ball toss. Bud won, again.

Next the kids did a short distance sprint across the basketball court. It was a very close race with Sugar right on his heels, but Bud managed to secure victory in all three heats. The last track and field event was a longer run, about 400 meters, which Bud accomplished, but Sugar chose not to finish. It was really hot.

At home, we fed and hydrated our athletes, put Speedy down for a nap, and the gymnastics competition was underway. First was floor routine (super cute), followed by balance beam. Sugar managed to secure the gold in floor, but they both tied scores in beam. It was too hard to judge.

After lunch, the games continued at the pool. We had several short swims to Mommy, which Sugar won all but one heat. (She has turned into a little fish this summer!) Sugar won all the swim races except for the back float contest, which Bud was able to float the longest.

It was a lot of fun and I hope we get to do it again next year!

Thomas and I both really enjoy the Olympics, but we do not have cable. No cable in our neck of the woods means that with an antenna, you pick up two local stations (CBS and CW) and three PBS stations (KAMU, an all PBS-kids station–not complaining, and the National Weather Service station). During the 2004 Olympics, we were able to watch the Olympics on my roommate’s cable and nice, leather couches. After we got married, we didn’t even have a TV for the first three years. For the 2008 Olympics, Thomas sweetly rigged up a wire taped to a window that miraculously picked up fuzzy NBC. Now that we have older kids, we wanted them to be able to watch the Olympics. Some of my favorite memories as a kid are laying on my parents bed all day long, watching Kim Zmeskal do gymnastics, then attempting to do it myself. And during the winter Olympics, we would watch figure skating and then attempt to figure skate around the house, with jumping spins and all.

Anyway, all that to say, we got two months of cable (free installation!) so we could watch the Olympics. And we have. the kids have asked, “Are we watching the Olympics AGAIN tonight?” with a whiny voice more than once. Don’t worry, the cable will be cancelled soon. I have tried surfing through the scores and scores of stations available several times to find that there really is nothing worth watching.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the kids during the Thirtieth Olympiad:

Me: “What do you think of fencing?”
Bud: “It is cool, but not that cool. I thought they would be stabbing each other for real.”

Me: “That skeet shooting sure was neat, huh?”
Bud: “Yeah, but I really thought they would be shooting each other. That would be better.”

Sugar, after watching one of the track races and listening to the announcer say something about Carl Lewis: “Carl Lewis…. Carl Lewis… Carl Lewis… that is the name of one of my boy dolls!”

Sugar: “When I grow up to be big enough to drive, I am going to be in the Olympics! I will swim, dive, do gymnastics, and run really fast.”

In celebration of the Olympics, we held the 6th Supercinskiad. Post with lots of pictures forthcoming.

Better late than never, right?

June was filled with fun summer activities for the kids. We went to our fourth annual (so far) Big Rigs event at our local library. As always, there were lots of big trucks, lots of sweat, but no free popsicles this year (but they had free sausage! Yeah!) The kids posed for a few sweet pictures and they each helped operate a backhoe before deciding it was too hot and time to go home. Sugar was cracking me up as she sat in the backhoe helping move the levers and watching the bucket go up and down–her tongue was sticking out of her mouth so far. She was focused!

The kids also took gymnastics lessons after a full year off, and had a blast. Bud was not too keen about taking gymnastics (too girly, he says), but they offered a special “Super Hero Training” class for boys around his age. I love the creativity involved in this class. They wear capes and masks and run around doing obstacle courses and jumping around for an hour. It is great.

Thomas took Sugar on a date to a little Daddy-Daughter “Dance” earlier this month. Bud and I had a special night at home which included painting each other’s faces and playing a ton of games against each other.

Pa surprised Bud with his first BB gun at Sugar’s birthday party. After Speedy went to bed, the rest of us spent many nights having target practice in the backyard.

The garden grew a lot this month and is pretty much covered in vines–sweet potato, cantaloupe and watermelon vines. The tomatoes were covered in stink bugs and we gave up on them. The zucchini and squash all died from squash bug infestations. The bell peppers are growing well, and we planted some new green beans. Summer gardens are my least favorite.

The kids had swim lessons and made lots of progress, and I sewed Sugar a swim cover-up from an old towel. The old towel was quite bulky, so if you decide to make one, I recommend purchasing some terry fabric. Bud also had a paper-airplane making obsession for most of the month.

We had a nice mini-vacation a few weeks ago in Galveston with my side of the family. My mom and Woody rented a house on the west end of the island with a nice, private beach only about 100 yards from the house. The kids (and Thomas) had a blast playing in the ocean. Neither of us had ever spent much time in Galveston, and I have been spoiled by the beautiful beaches in Destin, but Galveston wasn’t bad, and you cannot beat a 3 hour drive with 3 kids in the van.

We enjoyed boogy-boarding in the waves, building sand castles (with their uncles doing the brunt of the work), eating sand (Speedy), burying in the sand, and collecting vast amounts of clams and hermit crabs. There was quite a bit of seaweed in the water, which was annoying as it brushed against my feet and legs while in the water. The beach was cleaned at night, which was really nice since a certain little baby kept trying to sample the seaweed.

Our family spent an afternoon at Moody Garden’s Aquarium for some more learning about oceans and wildlife. It was my first time at an aquarium, and it was not disappointing. Everyone had a great time, until a fish surprised Sugar by brushing against her hand in the touch tank. We also went crazy and let the big kids each pick out something from the gift shop.

It was great to get away after our hectic May.