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The Friend Song!

About six months ago Joey bought us the Rosetta Stone Homeschooling version for Mandarin.  Isabel is the one that is motivated and great at doing her lessons.  The rest of us, not so much.  Since then, we have met and made a friend here in Tucson who speaks Mandarin.  Lucky for us, she wants to teach Mandarin to children for a job but needs experience, so we end up with FREE lessons!  Anna comes over every Wednesday morning.  This morning was our second lesson from her.  At the end of each lesson we have a puzzle or something that we need to memorize.  This week we need to work on "The Friend Song."

Don't get this stuck in your head. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIFnT-zFll8&feature=player_embedded]

Isabel's Birthday

Yesterday Isabel turned eight!

A game at her party.  The girls had to cut the flour with their butter knives and if they made the dime fall then they had to pick up the dime with their mouth.

Of course the game isn't as fun when there is one person who purposefully makes the dime fall just so she can stick her face in some flour.

Playing one of our family's favorite game, Thimble!

Isabel wanted a cheesecake for her birthday this year...thank you Costco!

I am so grateful that Isabel has been able to make some really nice friends since we've moved.

McDonald's School

This morning when I woke up I knew what we needed to do.  So while I was still lying in bed, my first words of the morning were, "We need to have breakfast at McDonald's!"  I haven't had McDonald's breakfast in years.  I took our history along and we had a fantastic time.  No one was there (at least not in the play place) and after we ate, we did a history lesson, and then they played.  By the way, I don't like saying history lesson because really it's just me telling them a story from history, while they color a worksheet from the workbook (only if they want to) or do a corresponding word search or something.  Have I mentioned how much I LOVE The Story of the World Curriculum???  I know that they love it and are learning because if a word or story from our history pops up during the day (outside of our lesson of course) then Luke and Isabel get excited and say, "Hey! we know about that!"  To me, a good curriculum is one that the kids like (if they don't like, they don't learn) and it needs to be easy for me!  I am seriously thinking that this blog needs to be titled, "The Lazy Home Schooler".

Some pictures from this week...

Here is Luke with a salamander that he caught after scouts this week. I had no idea there were salamanders here in Tucson.

Here is outside of our library.  That's Luke and Sylvia down by the dried up fountain.

Sylvia is constantly making "recipes".  I am pretty nice and like to let my kids do or use things and make messes, but if I had been watching, I would not have let her use our strawberries.  Probably better I wasn't watching.