Karate and pumpkins

Originally, I had intended to do a "Week in Review" post, but I did not do a good job of working on it throughout the week, and so once Friday rolled around, it seemed like an awful lot of effort to try to recreate all they did all week from scratch. I'll see about doing a better job next week. :)

A few really fun things happened at the end of this past week. On Thursday, the boys both had their belt tests for Karate (Tang Soo Do). They won't actually get their belts until the belt ceremony next week, but I am proud of my new yellow (Cub) and orange (Crawdad) belts. :)

That's Crawdad right here at the front. Hard to tell with his back to us, but this is where the parent seating was. Cub is the last kid on the last row of white belts on the far right.

Kicking his opponent right in the head. :P  Well, not really as they weren't wearing gear--just showing off techniques for the judges. :)

Taz sat quietly beside me for an hour and a half. God is good!

Cub breaking a board using a knife-hand strike.

Eventually, she got really bored sitting with me, so they let her sit with Crawdad to watch the board breaks. She was very still and attentive. Board breaks are pretty interesting. :)

Cub is a very bright boy who is not lazy about his schoolwork (well, most of the time, anyway :P). Math has never been his strongest or most favored subject, but lately it has been giving us more trouble than usual. This makes me more than a little nervous as we are soon to get into higher level math, and if he doesn't get it now, he will be LOST. As he is both a visual/kinesthetic learner and dyslexic, we decided that some hands-on lessons might be helpful. So on Friday, I downloaded a lesson from Math U See on decimals for us to work through. Luckily, we still own the math blocks from waaay back when we used the curriculum when he was much smaller.

Of course, Taz had to play, too!

Crawdad is very mathy and is doing just fine with Singapore, but he wanted to play with the blocks anyway. He made spaceships out of them. :P

At the end of the lesson, which I thought had gone very well, and I was very pleased with how well he seemed to have understood, I asked him for his input. His reply? "I dunno, Ma. I think it might be a sign of the Apocalypse. I actually enjoyed math." Goofy kid. :) So, upon it's arrival in the mail next week, Cub will be using Math U See. We will be working hopefully fairly quickly through Zeta so that we can make it through Pre-Algebra by the beginning of next school year. Or close to that, anyway.



 Yesterday, we had a bit of fall fun. Family friends invited us over for a pumpkin carving party. We all had a great time. :)

 Papa Bear gave instructions to the boys, then set to work helping Taz make hers. She wanted an "angry face." Go figure. :P

                                          Cub drew, then carved, his pumpkin.

Taz did his own carving for the first time this year. :)

 Taz was actually willing to stick her little finger in the pumpkin goop to touch a seed. More than once, even.  I was duly impressed. :)

How come I always get stuck with the scooping job?

That's pretty much my opinion of pumpkin innards too, kid. :D

Pic out of order, but this one is Crawdad drawing his pumpkin face. 

 My kiddos and their pumpkin faces. :)

Ichabod Cub? :P