July is #NationalPicnicMonth #NationalGrillingMonth

Today is July 1st. It is the beginning of both National Picnic Month and National Grilling Month, so we took dinner outside tonight, and went to the park.

The Ceremonial First Lighting of the Portable Grill

I don't know where this path leads. I only followed it for a little while before turning back again.

Hot Dogs, Polish Sausages, and Skyline Chili

Grandpa and Connor

Nana

Me!

A Shrine to Hestia

A More Modern Fire Pit

Look at all the fog over the lake! It's gonna be super creepy as the sun goes down.

Zeus and Hera

Connor is newly obsessed with these NERF Rival guns.  They shoot little foam balls instead of darts, and they are more like paintball guns than the traditional NERF guns.

He got one for Christmas from Nana and Grandpa, and then he used an Amazon gift card that Uncle Tom and Aunt Kathy sent to buy another one.  (He even set up his own Amazon account. When did he grow up all of the sudden?)

(Also? Thanks, guys.)

Anyways, the second gun was delivered this afternoon, and he was thrilled.

I guess all the NERF Rival guns are named after Greek Gods, so these are the Zeus and Hera models.

Watch out!  You don't want to anger the Greek Gods!  It hurts when they get angry.

Happy Mother's Day!

When the kids first handed me my card, I didn't notice that the two little boys on the front of it were actually my own kids.  I guess I was just expecting some stock photo.  But it is them!  And that makes it extra wonderful.

I also love that Connor signed for himself and Tik, and that he signed in both English and Greek.  And I like that Lex went ahead and signed for everyone, even for Connor a second time.

Kevin took new photos of the boys for me to replace the old ones on our walls.  They turned out wonderfully.  I even heard a story later that they climbed over a barbed wire fence into a field during their photo shoot!

Connor spent some time reading and relaxing on Mother's day.

Lex playing with a machine gun that he built out of K'Nex.

The boys also brought me some flowers for my patio pots.  Lex helped me plant them.

Happy Mother's Day!

This week at Redstone Academy: A Photo Essay

Wordless Wednesday: Redstone Academy Edition

First Day of School

Today was our first day of school for the 2016-2017 school year.



I offered to take them to Cadillac Ranch to let them spray paint their grades and school year on the cars for a photo, but Connor declined, because doing the chalk thing is tradition.  I appreciate his love for our family traditions.

He did say that it looked like they were both in 24th grade.  Sorry about that, children.

And here I thought just saying that Lex was in 2nd grade was easier than saying that he was doing 2nd in some subjects and 3rd in others.  And that Connor is just in 4th instead of 4th/5th would make things more clear.

It's like a one-room school house here, with students ranging from 2nd to 5th grade.

These are their common core workbooks.  They are each doing four this year, being Phonics, Geography, Science and Math.

We are also doing a ton of subjects that aren't common core.  Like cursive and Latin and Greek:



We reviewed the Greek alphabet this morning.



We also had story time.  After we read the Magic School Bus book about reptiles, Lex colored this scientifically accurate flying snake:

Can we just appreciate the perfect points on all the brand new crayons for a moment?  Swoon.







Another first day of school tradition around here is the Lego Mini Figure prizes at the end of the day.  This year I opted for some of the new Disney series.  I love them.  Lex was excited to have gotten a Mickey.

Ursula is such a baddie, that she already stole herself a sweet new ride:



I'm actually still waiting on some of the curriculum that I ordered to arrive.  Our new scanner/copier/printer arrived right in the middle of our school day this morning.

Books that we do already have for this coming year:

We did zoology as our big science topic last year, and we are going to finish it up with this living science text book.  Then, our big science topic for this year is going to be anatomy:

I'm really excited for this constellations book, because it reminds me of when I used to work in the Planetarium.  It's science and mythology, and it coordinates with our Latin and Greek stuff.

Cryptography is going to be an elective for Connor, and maybe even Lex.  Connor is also doing an online Java coding course.

These Egyptian books are going to go with some other things that haven't arrived yet.

Connor completed this United States workbook about two years ago, and now Lex is going to have his turn with it.  They are both going to do the mazes.



Finally, our modern history lessons are going to revolve around the US Presidents, because they form a natural timeline that makes it easy to place events, and Connor has a wonderful knack for all sorts of presidential trivia.



Hopefully the rest of our curriculum gets delivered soon!  I was expecting some of it by today, but our mail is frequently late because we live so far from any other big cities.