Music for the Soul

Henry started his week out on a high note.  He had his memory master dinner, which is his favorite part.  He loves eating at restaurants.  He's really into salads right now and he ordered a grilled shrimp salad, which looked really good.  He sat with his friends, ate, played games, and had very lively conversations.  We stayed til closing time, so it was a late night.  We took the obligatory pictures as well.

Now that Henry and Caroline are finished with CC, Henry sees it as his mission to finish as much school work as possible before 7 a.m.  He does not appreciate late risers when it comes to the things we do together (history and science).  

This week has been a long one with regards to Josiah's school work.  He has his blue book assessments coming up and the days have been long.  He and I have differing views on the necessary amount of time to study/prepare for said assessments.  My suggestive study time is significantly longer than Josiah's estimates.  The struggle is real.  For science, they have been learning the body systems this semester.  On the assessment, he has to teach the respiratory system to his class.  He has to draw it, name all the parts, and explain how it functions.  He's practiced that quite a bit and does a good job with it.  He even tells his classmates not to smoke.  Bonus.  (Although at $7-8 a pack, it's amazing anyone can afford to smoke anymore.)  In his cartography strand, he has to finish drawing the world.  He has to complete all of Asia, Africa, and the 'Nesias (Polynesia, Micronesia, etc.).  Latin is going to be the biggest hurdle for sure.  While we practice vocab daily, we rely heavily on his books for the noun declensions and verb conjugations.  It is a bit like solving a math problem with each translation.  Josiah highly favors translating Latin to English.  We shall see how he fairs without the books to help.  Even so, he's learned a lot of Latin this year.  He actually starts the same Latin books over next year, but moves at a quicker pace and gets further along.     

Todd kept asking Josiah to study for the blue books this weekend.  Josiah, however, stimulated his mind by spending a lot of time at the keyboard.  He was on the same page as Ross Geller with his keyboard skills.  He lets it play a tune on loop and sings his own lyrics to the music.  We've heard the Here Comes the Bride and Lionel Richie's Say You, Say Me about a billion times this weekend.  He just loops it.   

To soften the never ending music, Josiah made us all pancakes for breakfast Saturday morning.  He did well; not a single chest hair was singed.  Henry and Caroline told him they were very fluffy.  

Both before and after their breakfast, all three kids engaged in an intense battle of The Floor is Lava.  After playing for a good long while, they each got dressed in their own team's colors.  Making it so official, however, dampened the spirit of the game and they quickly stopped playing.  

To stave off the constant requests to play video games and watch videos on YouTube, we had a paint night.  Caroline worked hard on a waterfall.  

Josiah went for rockets.

Henry had a hard time finding inspiration.  He settled on a night sky.  

Josiah's also done some chalk art this week.  Unfortunately, it has rained both days after he chalked them.  His puppet Al Dente:

Paul McCartney:

Henry and Caroline saw me going through my pictures in anticipation of writing about our week.  They asked to put sunglasses on Henry's Essentials class.  Here is their work (giggle giggle).  

The assessments will be towards the end of this coming week, so the days will be long until then.  After they are completed, we should fly through May with a much easier schedule!