Science and Art week again!

Hooray, it's my favorite week of the quarter. Instead of my usual, planning-intensive, combined and cohesive art and science unit planned for multiple levels, we are all working on Maria's TOPS Balance Beam unit. The big boys say it's so much easier this time. And on day one our art consisted of carving pumpkins for Halloween. Ok, it's a little more "crafts" than "arts".

Yes, Maria is Smiling while doing her science!
We have one homemade balance and one that we bought.
Everyone from Joseph up has been able to do the lessons so far. 

Thomas quickly grasped that he could express the equation
of a line graphed on Cartesian coordinates by using the balance.
This line is y= 3x + 1
He then pointed out that the two coordinates we can see from this are (0,1) and (9, 10).
We used graph paper to check his answers and he was right. I'm calling this a big success.

Joseph is carving his own pumpkin!

Cecilia did several practice faces on paper so she could
learn the technique of how to carve without the teeth
falling out. Unfortunately, she didn't quite do as well
with the carving knife, but she used toothpicks for the final
teeth and I really like how it looks.

Charles didnt want to carve his own pumpkin this year,
but he was willing to be very helpful pulling out insides and
scoring designs on the pumpkins for others to carve.

James seemed very excited that he was big enough to use the pumpkin carving tool by himself.

Maria also practiced the art of making crepes which we ate for dinner.

This is possibly the face Anthony was trying to translate onto the Jack O' Lantern?

Maria on taxes

Maria: "I think everyone should have lots and lots of babies so they wouldn't have to pay so much in taxes and then the world would be very nice. And have homebirths. With midwives."

Christmas!

Carmen gives to Monica

Alan L. gives to Stephen

Victoria gives to Maria

Marc gives to Juliana

Chrysostom gives to Theresa

Catherine gives to Cecilia

Michele gives to Laurence

Doug gives to Rachel

Jonathan gives to Dominic

Monica gives to Carmen

Patrick gives to Isabel

John gives to Bill

Theresa gives to Chrysostom

Alan C. gives to Anthony

Isabel gives to Patrick

Gregory gives to Charles

Juliana gives to Marc

Stephen gives to Alan L.

Laurence gives to Michele

Paula gives to Thomas

Naomi gives to James

Veronica gives to Joseph

Rachel gives to Doug

Bill gives to John

Thomas gives to Paula

Anthony gives to Alan C.

Maria gives to Victoria

Charles gives to Gregory

Cecilia gives to Catherine

James gives to Naomi

Joseph gives to Veronica

Dominic gives to Jonathan

Please send any suggestions for gifts to your assigned giver.  For example, I know that Marc needs new Scotch tape to hold his phone together (or even a new phone) but maybe what he wants is the new Taylor Swift CD.  To know for certain, he must send me his ideas.  You, also, go and do likewise.

Anthonyisms

Anthony and I were talking today about his vocation to the priesthood and his feelings about girls. I told him that he would have to learn to be able to friends with women while getting used to being chaste. 

He looked at me with confusion. 

"I have to get used to being chased?"

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Anthony came up to me and asked if I could have 4 more kids by the time I am 47 because then we would have a chance at becoming a big family. 

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(PG-13)

Watching Jim Gaffigan's "Mr. Universe" we were all laughing at his piece on babies. He starts by describing the miraculous nature of a woman's body: it grows a baby, it births a baby, it feeds a baby. His next comment is that the man's brief contribution to the miracle is spending a few minutes actually doing what he thinks about all day. 

Anthony looked at me and said, "Eating?"

OLYMPICS!

The boys have lately been watching the olympics and have been inspired to create their very own.

Anthony (in red) won 6 out of 8. "May" the best man win!

Fencing!

 That's about it though ping-pong has also been popular.

Bedtime Prayers

He has already been shaken
off and Joseph has been refocused

When Dominic started to stand independently, it happened during our evening decade of the Rosary. But we made the mistake of breaking off our praying to encourage him, which has led to a bad habit.




While you might see seven people kneeling reverently in prayer, Dominic sees a human bowling alley. We make the Sign of the Cross and up go his arms over his head to elicit a "hooray" from the encouraging crowd. Then he unsteadily walks over toward the group and wham! slams himself into his brother, knocking him over. The other pins are usually fairly eager to wrestle rather than reset themselves. And I cannot help but laugh, a rare commodity these days which is why I haven't worked too hard to train him out of it yet.

There he goes again!

James

James recently decided to email his godmother Jodie Francis whom he has never met in person. I wanted to save his email to her because he typed and formatted it completely on his own and so so sweet:

dear micas francis I love you more then you thought please say you love me.

maybe I can visit you

               love!

                JAMES.