Our week started out with my attempt at making homemade strawberry jam for the first time. After getting all of those delicious strawberries last week, I just had to make some jam. You would think with my love of cooking that I would have already managed this one, but not true. Thanks to lots of help from my mom via phone (Thanks, Mom!) she walked me through the process which was a lot of this type of conversation:

Me: The SureGel instructions say to do xxx.

Mom: Yeah, you don't have to do that. Just do xxx. It works just as well and is a lot faster.

That's why you ask your mother these things. She gives you permission to break the rules! Here is how my jam turned out: It tasted soooo good too! I forget how much better homemade is until you have it after eating store bought for so long. Next up is dewberry jam (very similar to blackberries) since the dewberries are getting ripe around here.

Our biggest rabbit trail this week in school came courtesy of Chipette. She has not been happy with me since I bought this clock on clearance at Lowe's (only $10!). She is great at telling time, but these "weird numbers" had thrown her for a loop. Since Roman numerals showed up on her MEP math worksheet for the day. I thought why not teach her how to read that strange clock and have a little fun. Here she is filling in the whiteboard with the Roman numerals on top and Arabic numbers (in case you didn't know it that's what we use) on the bottom. She caught on to the pattern pretty quickly. ﻿ Next, she did addition problems using Roman numerals. She didn't miss any! I was quite impressed. When we were finished, she thought she was the coolest because she had done math like an "ancient Roman kid". Magpie started working on the letter G this week. We kick off each week's letter with Do-A-Dot worksheets from Homeschool Creations (one of my favorite websites for teaching toddlers and preschoolers even if you don't homeschool!). While Magpie does each dot with her paint markers she has to make the sound of the letter. This really helps to cement those letter sounds right at the beginning of the week.﻿ We've also recently started nightly family devotional/Bible studies. A friend of mine posted on Facebook about a month ago that if you want a 100% guarantee that your children will grow up to be Christians, then having a father-led Bible study is the way to do it. I told my friend that I teach my children Bible during the day as part of our homeschool. While she said that was wonderful, that having fathers leading Bible studies is even more important for a child's faith. Here is a picture of My Man teaching Chipette and Magpie from Genesis. Monkey and I usually hang out on the floor as I try to control Monkey so he doesn't interrupt! And last, but not least, here are Magpie and Monkey acting silly, playing on the changing table in Monkey's room. Which gave me an idea that when Monkey is out of diapers that changing table will make a really good shelving unit!﻿ Praying all of you had wonderful weeks as well!

Rockin' the Roman numbers in the treehouse,
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