A day home with Grandma!

On Tuesday, we went to Atlanta to visit our friend, Whitney (Maria's godmother), and her sweet little girl, Emma. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera :( :( :( :( We had a lot of fun visiting, and I'm sorry we don't have pictures to share of the kids playing together.

Yesterday (Wednesday), Grandma had the day off work!! She did a few things to continue getting ready for Christmas (1 week from today!!!), but she still had plenty of time for a couple of fun projects with the kids.

Here they are making chocolate covered pretzels with sprinkles. Yummy!

Here they are building a princess castle.

1st Day in Georgia

We had a very good drive down from PA on Sunday. Dany set a new record at 10.5 hours :) We only stopped once for gas and lunch and arrived at my parents' house by 6pm in time for supper!

Here was our 1st day...



My grandmother came for a visit...



The kids decorated the tree...



Chiara helped...


And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

The girls have their own little tree in their room (Uncle Robert's room) that they decorated :)

Homeschool-Week-in-Review 12/8 - 12/12

Happy 2nd week of Advent!

This was a busy week. It started on Monday with an important feast day in the Church, the Immaculate Conception. Being a Holy Day of Obligation, which is like a Sunday, we took the day off from school! We went to Mass that morning and then Matteo's swimming lessons. At home, the girls worked some on their Advent lapbooks, read books, and played! I enjoyed the relaxing day, too!

Then rest of the week would've been a 'normal' week, except for our ultrasound appointment that took up Friday morning (see the 2 posts below) and getting ready to leave for Christmas! The only subject that had to be skipped was History. Oh, well :) We did give the playroom and schoolroom a good cleaning one afternoon!

We also "decorated" for Christmas. I think one of the downfalls of living in a neighborhood is feeling like you have to decorate your house like everyone else on the street. For those of you who know me well, you know that I don't decorate! It's a major accomplishment for me to hang pictures in the house, and the only curtains up in my house are the ones that were hanging when we moved in. But, the kids are CONSTANTLY asking why we don't decorate the house for Christmas like everyone else. I use the excuse that we're never here for Christmas, so it's kind of pointless. But, I did break down this week and got some bows for the front porch. The kids were happy :)

Dany finished giving finals on Wednesday, so he got to stay home with us on Thursday and Friday. He went to Homeschool Swim & Gym on Thursday. We remembed the camera!

Here is a video of the girls in a scooter relay:

This is Chiara snacking on goldfish and watching her sisters during gym class.

Here is Maria doing the backstroke. I think this is the area in which she's improved the most this fall!

Here is Cati working on her rotary breathing with the kick board. She's improved a lot, too! She's much more relaxed in the pool. She's kicking with the kick board without the instructor pulling her. She's not getting upset when they go to the deep end. She even started taking a few strokes by herself during the past few weeks, but I don't have a video of that :(

Here are a few pictures and videos of school things we did this week:

Matteo finished his train lapbook early this week. Here he is telling you about it. You can tell that this is totally unrehearsed!

I don't have a picture or video of Maria's chemistry experiment this week. I only have her report.

Here is Cati learning about copying congruent shapes and designs in Math this week:

All of the rest of my posts for the month of December will be from GA! We're looking forward to celebrating Christmas, New Year's, and Cati's birthday with my family. We're also looking forward to a break from the snow and cold for a few weeks!

Introducing Elena Lucia !!

We can't let our little ones go long without a name :) After discussing lots of different names, we have decided on Elena Lucia !



Elena is Helen or Helena in Italian. We've chosen this name for St. Helena, who was the mother of Constantine. She discovered the True Cross of Christ. Lucia is Italian for Lucy. St. Lucy was an early Church martyr. Her feast day is tomorrow and is a much celebrated one in Italy!

It's a ...

GIRL !!! Sorry, no name yet :) We'll be working on it!

Here are some pictures:

Homeschool Week-in-Review: 12/1 - 12/5

Happy Advent! We've had an enjoyable 1st week of Advent. Lots of Christmas music being played around here :)









The girls have been working on an Advent lapbook. Every week they add a candle with info, prayers, and Bible readings for the week, which we use every evening when we light our Advent candle. They also glue a new symbol to the Jesse tree on the back of the lapbook each day, and we read Bible readings to go with it. The Jesse tree tells the story of Creation through the birth of Christ, our salvation history. We also completed a project for the lapbook about the major feasts during Advent: St. Nicholas (today!), the Immaculate Conception (Monday), and Our Lady of Guadelupe (next Friday).



Here is a picture of Cati decorating the cover of her lapbook:







The girls completed their usual work in grammar, spelling, reading, and writing.



In history, they learned about the Phoenicians this week.

Here is a picture of a Phoenician ship that Cati colored:







In addition to narrating about the founding of Carthage, Cati wanted to illustrate the story. I've included Maria's narration to help explain Cati's pictures.































Maria's really enjoying all the experiments that she's been doing this year as she studies elementary chemistry. Here is a video of her experiment during Thanksgiving week:








This week, she did an experiment showing that adding salt to water lowers the freezing point of water. Here is a picture of the two cups of water (the right cup had the salt, the left one was plain water) after a night in the freezer:





Cati finished her shark lapbook early this week and started one about salmon. This will be the last week in her study of fish.














Here's a picture of one of Cati's math lessons this week. She's been learning about adding 10 to a number starting from any number, not just zero. She learned about counting by 100s on Friday. In this lesson, she was ordering numbers from 1-50. It was really an exercise in comparing numbers (greater than, less than).







I promised to include Matteo in my posts more, so here goes! I never make him do school work since he's so young, but sometimes he asks to do something like his sisters. I've started doing some very young lapbooks with him. He enjoys cutting, gluing, and coloring. He also enjoys the books we've been reading to go along with them. We've been doing one about trains, which had a counting lesson, and lessons on opposites and rhyming words.







He came to me yesterday asking to do some handwriting. He's using the Handwriting without Tears program. It's not just a writing workbook. For each lesson, he begins by building the letter with wooden pieces:







Then, he watches me write the letter on a small slate board. He then traces over my writing with a small wet sponge, erasing it (and practicing the letter!). Then he dries the lines from the wet sponge (practicing the letter some more!).










Then he writes the letter himself on the chalkboard:










Finally, he goes to his handwriting book to practice the letter.

All of these steps gives him lots of practice with each letter without really realizing that he's practicing. He also really enjoys using the chalkboard and wooden pieces, as all kids do!

And, finally, not to leave anyone out, here's a picture of Chiara all dressed up and ready for Mass last Sunday!

Mid-pregnancy Ultrasound scheduled!

Everyone keeps asking when we'll get to find out the gender of the baby. Well, I had a check-up yesterday, and we scheduled the mid-pregnancy ultrasound for next Friday, Dec. 12. Hopefully, I'll be able to post the news by that evening!