Weekly Wrap Up - 10/14/16

The remnants of sickies are still hanging around our house. As I'm sure you don't want to see a pile of snotty Kleenex, this is a picture-less Wrap Up.

This week is Fire Prevention/Safety Week. We started out the week watching a video our local firefighters put together about smoke detector and battery replacements. We just checked and changed batteries in ours last week so it was a "yay we already did that!" moment.

Being that it's my busy season for my home business, the girls have had a lot of independent work. I mean, most of Brianna's already is, but Olivia too has been mostly working on Reading Eggs and Math Seeds rather than paper worksheets.

We did a nature walk. The girls insist on calling it a "nature walk" even if it's something we do often and it's right next to our house *sigh*

We started our first Country Study in over a year. Getting a subscription to Universal Yums certainly helped get the ball rolling! (check my post about Universal Yums here) Our Country Study this round is Thailand. Look for a post next week to read all about it!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Hip Homeschool Moms

Weekly Wrap Up - Feb 26th

I'm testing out a new format for Weekly Wrap Up, so bear with me. I'm going to list out our activities per subject to get a better understanding of what we may be missing. This is more for me lol

We got a new computer this week so probably did less schoolwork than we should have while I figured out Windows 10.

It was my birthday on Thursday, so no school (we take off all household birthdays), so we played 3 way Minecraft almost all day. Productive? No. But it was fun lol

Math: Brianna is working on percents. I love that discounts and taxes is a big part of this chapter as it has almost daily real life aspect to it. Olivia is speeding through her adding and subtracting review chapter.

English: Olivia's copy writing this week is writing out O Canada. She's taken to singing it often and almost knows all of it. She's also working through a quick phonics book to review some of the letter sounds she has issues with

Science: Olivia finished up her Senses unit, covering smell and taste this week. We also read The Senses that we got from the library. She was not a fan of the smell of most of my essential oils and was not a fan of the taste challenge at all (not surprisingly with how picky she is).

Geography/History: Brianna looked up and drew a picture of our "latitude twin", Bordeaux, France. She remembered how to tell if a location was north or south of us, just by looking at her daylight graphs.

Olivia told us about the tundra and permafrost at the poles. Then decided she was going to watch Happy Feet and March of the Penguins to remember more about the South Pole

French: Brianna has been really excelling at French, coming up with her own sentences with words she's learned. Olivia is busy absorbing and questioning (which helps Brianna since she can't just spew out French words, she has to know the English translation to answer Olivia's questions)

Health/Phys Ed.: We got snow and ice this week, so me and the girls worked together to shovel ours and our neighbour's walkways and driveways. Brianna did her cardio workout twice and ran on the treadmill once for her running training.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

New Computer!

I got a new computer yesterday and finished setting it up and transferring files today. I had an hour or so of sweating while I was transferring all the school files, praying to the computer gods not to kill my gazillions of files.

It's still a "bottom of the line" computer (because I'm cheap) but it's a big upgrade from our previous 6 year old bottom of the liner. Twice the storage space and seems way faster too! It'll help a lot with the kids school projects and various programs that require something a little beefier.

The old computer will eventually become a family computer that the kids can run Khan Academy on and play their learning software (like Reader Rabbit) that doesn't require high speeds and great graphics. I just gotta finish cleaning it off and getting a new monitor for it.

*runs around excitedly*

Current Curriculum July 2015

This post contains NO affiliate links

Previous post from last Sept here.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10 and Olivia is mostly Gr 1, a little Kindy and some Gr. 2. 

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.

Olivia:

We have a subscription to ABCMouse.com and Olivia really likes it! It has all the way from Toddlers to the end of Kindergarten. This program added on a couple more levels, but only lists levels not grades, so I don't know where the program ends after Kindergarten. Olivia is still learning to control the computer so she's a little slower going here than in her paper school work.

For printables we mostly use 1+1+1=1 (there's also great tot school and preschool printables here!). Confessions of a Homeschooler also has great printables. I love 1+1+1=1 as they have a lot of themed units. They cover a wide variety of skills but under one theme (Olivia has done cats, pizza, Octonauts and more). Even though most of them are below her skill levels, she really enjoys them so we keep doing them. 1+1+1=1 now has literature units as well.

English:

We'll start dabbling in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We'll start up 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program once Olivia is more comfortable in phonics. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words.


Math:
Olivia has started Early Math on Khan Academy. She is super proud to be doing Khan just like Brianna. Her computer skills are still lacking, so Khan is definitely something that we do together, though she is getting better at navigating. 

Olivia loves to help take care of Joshua, cooking and household chores. We, of course, encourage her as much as possible!

Phys Ed./Health:
Olivia has started running like Brianna. This year, like last, she ran in the fun run this month and will be taking part in the Cornwall Triathlon, doing a duathlon, next month. She's also in U7 Soccer this year. The kids play weekly and Olivia seems to really enjoy it.

Brianna: 

Math: 
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions in a way that really gets through to Brianna. Math Mammoth goes only to Gr. 7, so once she's done that, I'll be looking for a new curriculum for Algebra and the like. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

English: 
We're using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" again this year. Brianna's especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes, which we'll be starting again in the fall. For spelling, I keep track of words she has spelled wrong in her general school work and base spelling practice off of that. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. She took part last year and wrote an impressive 12,000+ words. Amazing who someone who often struggles with writing a few pages. This year, we'll be starting early with NaNoWriMo's educator's lesson plans.

French: 
We will be doing Rosetta Stone now that Brianna has her own laptop to install it on. Brianna already knows more French than I do, so thankfully Rosetta Stone is a self-teaching course! We'll be using Living Languages for extra activities. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours has offered to test Brianna's French periodically.

Arts: 
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.

She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll  learn about him and read/watch some plays. 

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna runs with a local MultiSport club. Her last run of the year is her Terry Fox run on Sept 14th. She actually bikes the Terry Fox run, but as she chooses to do the biggest route (10km), it's certainly nothing to laugh at! Once that is done, she's done until May. She'll spend that time doing training at least twice a week (running, yoga, strength training, cardio) and of course, we live in Canada, so there's always snow to shovel! 

Computer: 
Brianna and Olivia both have Minecraft accounts. I'm currently looking for cool educational ideas for it as I know many are out there. But for now, both girls are just working on computer skills and building. Brianna is learning to use the MinecraftWiki to research how to do or use various aspects of the game.

Civics:
This fall we're doing a study on Canadian government and our Prime Ministers from Confederation to present. We have a federal election this fall and will be tracking the candidates and their platforms. We're using various books and sites like Canada Votes, Exploring Canada and a cool Prime Ministers of Canada set that I got from the Library and Archives of Canada

Life Skills: 
Brianna has taken on babysitting and dog poop scooping jobs from our neighbours. This is teaching her a great deal about responsibility and money. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 


Both:

History/Geography: 
Lee and I are driving across country at the end of August and the girls will be tracking us and learning about various places as we go.

We're continuing to do Country Studies. The kids have really enjoyed them so far. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. We'll be using History of the World and Geography of the World at home and whatever oodles of books we can snag from the library. World Atlas is fantastic for maps and National Geographic Kids has a bunch of videos and articles I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will.

Science:
For the most part, science is done through day to day life with no set curriculum. We'll be doing a lot of interest based topics. Both girls want to do the human body. We'll have to do a refresher in a few years for Olivia, but with the random stuff she picks up on of Brianna's school work, I'm not worried about doing a joint class with them. Brianna got an ant farm for her birthday and the girls are fascinated with watching it.  

Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.

Joshua:

He will to continue to be cute and get into stuff and steal school work *wink*


Linking up with the iHomeschool Network

World Education Days Results

World Spelling Day:
- Tanya got 407 words correct in 5 rounds (50 quizzes) with a 70.45% accuracy, an 8% improvement from last year.
- Brianna got 279 words correct in 5 rounds with a 65.34% accuracy, also an 8% improvement over last year.

World Math Day:
- Tanya got 747 correct answers in 5 rounds with a 93.42% accuracy!
- Brianna got 768 correct answers in 5 rounds with a 93.1% accuracy, a 6% improvement over last year!
And these are girls that "suck" at math *roll eyes* lol

World Science Day: (was randomly crashing and had to do it over 2 days)
- Tanya got 182 correct answers in 50 games with a 45.38% accuracy an improvement of 5% over last year.
- Brianna got 281 correct answers in 50 games with a 63.29% accuracy, an amazing *20%* improvement over last year!!
Both girls lost a LOT of accuracy points worrying about speed and getting through as many answers as possible rather than slowing down to make sure they correctly answered the questions they already knew.

We can't wait til next year!!

Tot School - Letter E (2 weeks)

Olivia is 32.5 mths old

Linking up with 1+1+1=1

We had GREAT weather the first "E" week and spent most of it outside, so we stretched "E" week to 2 weeks.

Did a peek at the Typical Course of Study through World Book and checked what Olivia "needs" to know to "complete" Pre-K. Here's what we've got to work on...


-Matches shaped or objects based on size
- Counts objects in one-to-one correspondence (counts to 20 fine, but needs work on the 1:1)
- Completes incomplete sentence with proper word (really never tried this)
- Prints own first name (currently working on tracing it)
- Understands over (on) and under
- Understands top, bottom, middle
- Knows age and birthday (we've got age down, working on birthday)
- Repeats a sequence of orally given numbers (if they're in order, sure. We're working on mixed up numbers)
- Is able to stand on one foot for 5-10 seconds
- Pastes objects (just starting on this)
- Able to button a garment
- Able to zip a zipper (she's working on this one)
- Cuts simple shapes
- Handles scissors well (just started with scissors)
- Takes care of toilet needs independently (working on this spring)
- Crosses residential street safely (working on it)
- Knows home address (working on it)
- Knows home phone number (next to work on after address)

Sorting colors

What happens with she gets into her sisters glitter lol

She was happy to identify letters I made with playdoh, but no interest in trying to make her own

Showing Daddy StarFall

Putting more work into teaching her that a big E and a little e are really the same letter!

She is very meticulous in her tower building. She'll even tell you "Shhh! Have to be CAREFUL!"

Started doing cutting and gluing workbooks with her this week. Cutting was (not surprisingly) a lot harder than gluing.

She love the gluing though. I told her to make the fishies hide (turn over) before gluing them and she thought that was great. I think we'll focus on gluing for a little while before trying cutting again.

She just loves these dot stickers!

Day in the Life

I haven't done one of these in a while (last one was here)

This Day in the Life starts at midnight, since I was still up, dyeing (is that a word? lol) and cutting my hair. Yeah, I'm a night owl. Thankfully though, I'm lucky enough to have a hubby, a morning person, who happens to get off work shortly before the other morning person (Olivia) gets up. Meaning me and the other not morning person (Brianna) can sleep in.

2:08am - I go to bed

6:52am - Olivia wakes up and calls for either me or Lee. Thankfully I hear Lee talking to her so I can go back to sleep

8:59am - one minute before my alarm goes off, the phone rings *grumble, grumble*

9:02am - ship Lee off to bed and try to figure out why Olivia shirt is sopping wet

9:04am - I sit down with a coffee and discuss with Brianna whether she's really still sick or if she wants to just play the DS again all day. Not having to go back to bed wins and Brianna finds breakfast.

9:13am - talk to my sister and find out the my BIL is driving Tanya to school today. He says they're leaving at 9:45... whether that's am or pm, who knows (my BIL is notoriously slooooow)

9:33am - send Brianna to get dressed and do her morning chores and eat a bagel. Olivia's curled up on the couch watching her shows.

10:02am - The girls sit and play the DS together while we wait for Tanya to get here. I get working on printing out school stuff

10:06am - Wooo! BIL wasn't as late as usual and Tanya is here.

10:08am - Olivia tries to bounce her face off the floor so we make things all better by "feeding" the ferrets (shoving bits of cat food through the cage bars)

10:15am - The girls settle down to fixing their longitude/latitude chart for their Mystery Class from last week. Olivia insists on doing her school work too

10:32am - Tot School is ditched for Toopy and Binoo

10:34am - tell the girls that they better get school done so we can go to our field trip (which probably wasn't the best idea cause now they're yapping about the field trip instead of doing school lol)

10:37am - somehow, they lapse into talking about Terry Fox....

10:49am - explaining to the girls about their Mystery Class journal page (in which they predict what their photo period graphs will look like at the end of the month) that that's only 2 weeks from now and not the summertime so they should make educated guesses based on the current photo periods and now much they would move by the end of the month (meaning we probably won't suddenly jump from 11.5 hrs of sunlight to 15 lol)

11:26 am - Finally starting the girls on other school work, Tanya, English and Brianna, math.

11:30am - Olivia demands a red crayon to do school work in her notebook then *needs* to show Grandma her sunglasses

11:40am - Handwriting practice talks about the Wright Brothers so we head off on a mini rabbit trail about the first flights.

11:48am - Hook Olivia up with a peanut butter sandwich and a bowl of yogurt for lunch, big surprise, the yogurt gets put on the sandwich

11:52am - my sister shows up to go to school (I live next door to her college)

12:04pm - set up the girls with their lunches and have them continue school work since they piddled around all morning taking 2 hours to do 30 minutes of work.

12:22pm - argue with Olivia that the sunshine streaming into her room at nap time isn't too dark, but too bright lol

12:28pm - Let Lee know that we're leaving and will be back before Olivia gets up so he can still lounge in bed.

12:36pm - Leave for the Invertebrates Workshop and the Ontario Power Generation Visitors Center

2:04pm - Back from the OPG center. The girls got OPG balloons and run balloon races through the kitchen.

2:13pm - Back to school work. The girls are finally done their review/assessment stuff and are working through actual curriculum.

3:04pm - random discussion on the difference between telescopes and microscopes (which has a lot to do with the math they're working on lol)

3:26pm - Olivia gets up and wants to wake up Daddy and have a snack. The girls hear about Olivia's snack and suddenly fall hungry

3:52pm - The girls each earned an extra page of school work for their dawdling

4:08pm - FINALLY onto this week's Geography

4:36pm - My sister comes back from school and we discuss her class while the girls screw around do their work

6:02pm - Tanya is finally done her work and goes home

6:06pm - Olivia's balloon pops and she's soothed by doing her dinosaur pre-writing page

6:13pm - Olivia switches to tracing her name and coloring Dora shapes and with Brianna finally done she plays with the Canada magnet set

6:22pm - Brianna and Olivia declare snuggle time before supper to watch Backyardigans

6:40pm - supper time!

6:59pm - I reply to an email from The Canadian Homeschooler about putting together a blog post about homeschooling in Ontario

7:03pm - Olivia suckered Lee into watching cartoons in our bed and Brianna slooooowly got started on her evening chores.

7:08pm - actually paying attention to the tv (when it's not Toopy and Binoo on) lasted about 3 seconds longer than it normally did and Olivia's off to the tub while Brianna takes 6 years to do a load of dishes.

7:14pm - discussing with Brianna what 30 minutes of exercise a day really means.... ya know, swinging your legs off a chair while you daydream doesn't count...

7:27pm - Brianna's turn in the shower, she's on a 10 minute time limit or she stay in there til the water runs cold.

7:42pm - after braiding Olivia's hair she wants to play her game (ReadingEggs). She's still stuck on a sounding out lesson  so we switch to StarFall.

7:58pm - Olivia's off to snuggle with Daddy before bed (and con him into watching Cat in the Hat lol) and Brianna is making up her own version of Go Fish!

8:31pm - Olivia come down for "one more kiss" and Lee puts her to bed.

9:03pm - Brianna decides that she's going to exercise before bed and starts running in circles in the living room

9:34pm - Lee leaves for work

9:39pm - I ship Brianna off to bed and explain to Olivia that it's supposed to be dark in her room and no she doesn't need a flashlight.

9:45pm - I sit at my desk to check facebook and try to find Tanya an English curriculum that isn't book based (while I think book based curriculum is great, I prefer ones that CAN be used with books instead of one that MUST be used with books)

10:43pm - No luck in finding more than 2 worksheets for Tanya so far, but I did find 2 French sites (here and here) and a Catholic site for my sister....

10:52pm - Give up for the night and work on some marking from last week

11:57pm - Organize pictures and links for today's blog post

12:52am - off to bed!!

World Education Days Certificates

The girls completed at least 10 round of each level in all 3 games (Spelling, Math and Science) so they got above just a participation certificate.

Our Current Curriculum - March 2012

See my last curriculum post from May 2011 here


This post contains NO affiliate links


We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Tanya started Feb 6, 2012 coming from 6th grade in public school. Olivia formally started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. But as we don't follow specific grades, Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 4-6, Tanya is anywhere from Gr. 3-6 and Olivia is PreK/K. Olivia obviously has her own work, but majority of Brianna and Tanya's work is the same thing, at the same levels (really the only exceptions are Math and English).

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 4-6 mths I'll post what we are currently working on. We are currently mostly not using traditional HS items, but regular workbooks you can buy at the bookstore/teacher stores. Most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books.


Olivia:


We use a variety of educational toys with her, some of our favorites being:
Discovery Toys Busy Bugs
Crayola Dry Erase Activity Center
Basic magnetic letters and wooden blocks
Pretty well anything from Leap Frog


For printables we mostly use tot and preschool curriculum from 1+1+1=1 but also Confessions of a Homeschooler.


Online, our favorite sites so far are ReadingEggs and StarFall


Books we're working out of are Hooked On Phonics ABCs, Fisher Price On the Road to Learning, Fisher-Price Watch Me Learn, School Zone Counting 1-10 and School Zone Preschool Basics.


Brianna: 


Math:
This year we are doing a new type of workbook Jump at Home Gr. 4. This method apparently breaks concepts do into simple step-by-step directions. Since Brianna is such a literal child, I think this will benefit her. A lot of her problems in math are because she either doesn't read fully or doesn't understand the directions. Outside of the workbook, the main things we'll be working on is multiplication and division.


English: 
Her regular curriculum is English and Grammar Gr. 4 from the MacMillan/McGraw-Hill website. She has a really rough time with paragraphs, making her sentences more in list form than a flowing sentence. To aid in this, we'll be using Editing & Writing, Paragraph Writing and Writing Paragraphs. 


Tanya: 


Math: 
Tanya is doing a more condensed version of Gr 4 math in Active Minds Math. I think most of the Gr. 4 level, she should be able to get through it fairly fast and not need a full curriculum. Outside of her workbook, we'll be working on long division and starting fractions.


English: 
After struggling through the Gr. 2 level work I was giving her, we're starting her in a full curriculum of Gr. 3 English. She especially has problems with proper nouns, general capitalization and all punctuation other than periods. She's a very strong reader, so I'm hoping once the sentence building info clicks in, she'll fly through. She'll be using the Daily Editing book Brianna used last year, which focuses a lot on capitalization and punctuation. Also, both the On Level and Grammar books from the MacMillan/McGraw-Hill site, which is the basis of her curriculum. And, of course, other random worksheets I throw at her to give her a different perspective in trouble areas.




Brianna and Tanya together: 


Daily Binders: 
Both girls have what we call their daily binders. Each day they have a math drill (adding/subtracting/multiplying/dividing, depending what they need extra work in that week), penmanship and handwriting practice, vocabulary (words that they have misread/mispronounced have to be looked up in the dictionary for their definition and a sentence with the word made), Boggle spelling (they're given a "boggle board" of 16 random letters that they have to make as may words as possible with and the more letters in a word, the more points it earns) and journal (with various writing prompts). We'll be adding something to do with French in their daily binders within the next few weeks.


Spelling:
We don't really do a formal spelling curriculum. We are trying out a book, Active Minds Spelling Booster, but normally I just track misspelled words in the girls' school work. With them, I have them copy, alphabetize and make sentences with the words.


History: 
We are currently not doing anything for History, but this will be a together subject.


Geography: 
We're working our way through Journey North's Mystery Class. We started out with 10 Mystery Locations around the world. Through graphing photo periods, latitude and longitude clues and photo clues we'll slowly be able to make educated guesses on where these locations are. 


Math: 
The girls are together working on Menu Math and Market Math which brings the math they are learning into everyday situations that they'll see in real life. Both books come with a menu or grocery list that each page uses.


English: 
For creative writing we're using their journals, but also Everyone Write Gr 3-4. 


Science:
We haven't finished Science Investigations Gr. 3 so we'll be finishing that then moving on to the 4th grade version. Brianna's science knowledge is beyond the Gr. 3 or even Gr. 4 level, but she loves the book we're in so we're continuing with it, just doing it faster and supplementing on top of it. We didn't get the Butterfly Unit done last year, so we'll be doing it once the butterflies come back. We also have Astronomy/Space coming up using Astronomy Projects, Astronomy Lapbook and Astronomy Program. We're hoping to be able to also incubate chicken eggs to hatch and raise, but I'm having some difficulty finding eggs and not already hatched chicks. And of course, we'll be starting up Wilderness Wednesday again!


French:
My sister is covering French. We picked up Living Language which has 3 books and 9 CDs and some free stuff online. I don't speak French at all, but my sister is looking to see if anyone knows of some French sites that have printables?


Art/Music: 
Learning the recorder hasn't happened yet. I got a book that has little songs and fingerings, but I still think I need to find something more "beginner". The book I have seems to be the next level up. I also need to get Tanya a recorder (and Brianna a new one since her seems to have disappeared in the move). 


I found these great origami sets, Pet Shop Origami and Springtime Origami. Once we've worked through those, we do some basic "art lessons", colors, shapes... Kindergarten, only more detailed!


Phys Ed/Health: 
We do swimming twice a month with the local homeschool group and I think we'll be starting up soccer or something similar once the ground thaws and dries up. 


The girls will be continuing with their running this year. Once all the snow and ice is gone they'll start running in the park again. The girls have several official races this year and training in between.
May 21st - 5K
June 13th - 5K
July 7th - Kids Fun Run, 2.5K
Aug 18th - Triathlon, swim 100m, bike 6K, run 1.5K
Sept 3rd - 5K


With the girls' ages, puberty is running rampant, so that is the big Health Class focus right now.


Computer: 
The girls are playing ReadingEggs. I have them starting from the beginning to try and help with their spelling by again going over phonics basics. And Brianna needs extra help in blending sounds when sounding out words to spell. She often, somehow, reverses them such as hron, wrod, paly (horn, word, play). But they do also have accounts on the "big kids" side for reading and grammar games. They do need typing work, but that's just not on the priority list right now.


Life Skills:
We moved just before Christmas. Our new house sat empty for at least 6 months before we moved in and no one took care of the property in that time. So the girls will be helping us tear up all the grass with a rototiller, laying boarders for the veggie and flower beds, laying the new walkway and patio and reseeding the rest of the yard with grass. 


They will also have their own small veggie gardens this year with small raised beds made out of good wooden boxes (that mom found at work that were going to be just thrown away). They will be completely responsible for them. No one else will plant, weed, water, thin, ect... in their gardens.