Adventures in Mommydom

All About Reading tip

2012-01-27T03:50:00.000-06:00

I took some of those fun games they have in the All About Reading workbook and made them into an envelope game. For the feed the monster, I glued him on, and cut a slit in the envelope so we can feed him.

Afterwards the pieces just store right in the envelope we fed them into.

I did the same thing for the monkey game, and plan to do the same for all upcoming games. Now it’s easy to play it over and over again.Update:1. Sorry for the bad photo, I took a quick picture with my phone in a rather dark room.2. Since first creating this "game" we have done the monster game almost every day, I'm taking it super slow with Princess and taking about a week a lesson for now.

Luck with Potatoes

2012-01-26T03:46:00.000-06:00

“Luck With Potatoes” is a fun book about a farmer in Tennessee who has the worst luck until one day it turns around. You’ll have to read the book to find out how.

Well, after reading the book there was nothing to do, but to draw what was going to be found in our potatoes.

Apparently there were a lot of animals found in our potatoes. Not to mention entire worlds. If we were potato farmers we would have been able to make a mint off the things found in there.

I had originally planned on having the kiddos make something out of potatoes, but it didn’t come to pass, much sadness. Maybe I’ll save that for the 20th rereading of the book.

Tennessee: Casey Jones

2012-01-25T03:31:00.000-06:00

One of the local Tennessee heroes is Casey Jones, he was a train engineer in the 1800s who was known for never being late, and who sacrificed himself but saved everyone else on his train from a crash.

He was originally made famous by a song written a few years after his death, and then became famous again when Disney made a cartoon short about him.

For our study we read about Casey Jones with a very well written rhyming book, then we watched the movie.

Afterwards we compared the book and the movie. In this instance we did a simple same and different T-chart, but this is a favorite activity of mine with books that have been made into movies. What was changed?

In case you can’t read what that says, in both he crashed, but he did not paddle through water in the book.

There were a few significant differences between the book and the movie, and if you’re interested I’d highly recommend the wikipedia article about Casey Jones, it gives some interesting facts there.

What is your favorite book to movie transition? Do you like any picture books that have been made into movies. I have very mixed feelings on those movies.

Bible Alive: Israel Complains

2012-01-24T03:01:00.000-06:00

This past week with the kids and then again with my Sunday school class we learned about Moses and the Red Sea and a few other things.

I’m going to spotlight how I taught this with my Sunday school class, I taught the story on a walk with the kids taking turns acting the part of Moses and other people, since I didn’t take pictures in that version I’ll show the pictures from the peg doll version I did with my kids.

Moses and all of the Israelites set out following God, but they looked behind them and saw Pharaoh was following them and the Red Sea was in front of them. At this point I had the entire class say, “Why did you lead us out here to die!” as dramatically as possible.
Then Moses held his staff out over the “water” (or the street) and all of the Israelites crossed on dry land.

The Israelites traveled some more and they started to realize they were thirsty but the water they found tasted bad (I gave them each a few drops of watered down vinegar to taste, boy were they unhappy). Again the Israelites said “Why did you lead us out here to die!”

Moses prayed to God, and God told him to throw his stick in the water (the kid playing Moses threw his staff on the ground and then they got to drink from the water fountains).

They traveled some more and at this point they’ve been traveling for 3 months. They’ve started to run out of food and they’re hungry. They came to Moses again and said, “Why did you lead us out here to die!”

Moses went to God, and God said He would send mana for the Israelites to eat.

The Israelites gathered mana just like God said (they walked to another corner of the building and found cups of honey teddy grahams).

They traveled some more and were out of water again. They complained to Moses again and said, “Why did you lead us out here to die!”

Moses went to God and said, “What should I do?” God told him to hit the rock with his staff and water would burst forth.

Moses did as God said and just as God said water burst forth. The Israelites drank the water and were happy.

We talked about two things with this:

1. Do you thank God for what He gives you? The Israelites didn’t always thank God when He gave them what they needed.
2. Do you obey without complaining? The Israelites spent most of their time complaining.

The full story can be found at Peg Doll Bible Stories (where I’m occasionally putting up the stories I tell my kids) and this is the Israel Complains story cards.

History: Fountain of Youth

2012-01-23T02:39:00.000-06:00

How many of you saw the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean film with the Fountain of Youth?

I did, and found the lore included in it very interesting and amusing. Not to mention that I loved the ending with the Spaniards coming in and destroying it declaring, “Only God can grant eternity.” AWESOME!

Well this past week we read about Ponce de Leon, and of course I associate him with the Fountain of Youth. That was one of the big things he did as an explorer, he looked for the Fountain of Youth in Florida.

As a matter of fact there is an archeological park in Saint Augustine, Florida that claims to be the ACTUAL Fountain of Youth. When Jeff and I visited there, pre-kids our hotel was right next to it, but for various reasons we didn’t make it to that park (too busy exploring the fort, one of the few forts to of never been taken in battle, or any of the other sites there).

After reading about Ponce de Leon, I challenged the kids to design what the Fountain looked like out of Legos.

Up at the top is Batman’s which looks more fountainy, here on the left is Superman’s. He said the fountain was near a battle, so it needed soldiers to protect it. Princess’ fountain was more on the theoretical side. I’m sure there’s a fountain in there somewhere amongst all of those bricks.

Science Sunday: Hermit Crabs

2012-01-22T06:30:00.000-06:00

I’ve had this pinned to my Swimming Creatures pinterest board for a very long time and have been rather eager to give it a try for a while. We finally reached crustaceans, so it was time to get started!

Supplies: red paint, construction paper and scrapbook paper, glue, scissors

First we read our science book about hermit crabs and talked about what made them unique and different. We also watched the Dinosaur Train episode and Cat in the Hat episodes with hermit crabs (which my kids reminded me of after reading it).

Then we read “A House for A Hermit Crab” by Eric Carle, and compared the hermit crab in the story to what real hermit crabs do. Real hermit crabs do actually get sea anemones to help protect them from predators and will move the sea anemone from their old shell to their new one.

After reading both of these I painted their hands, and made a handprint for the body of the crab, and then we cut a roughly shell shape from a piece of white construction paper. They drew a swirly shape onto their paper for the shape of the shell.

Here was their assignment: Glue on things that live in the ocean that a hermit crab might have on their sea shell, or be in the sea near them.

Princess had lots of barnacles and such added to hers. Superman had a sea anemone, a shark swimming by, and another fish. There was also some coral nearby. Batman had a sea anemone (with a very accurate description of the symbiotic relationship), a manta ray, and some rocks because the hermit crab in the book had rocks.

All in all, I’d say they both absorbed the book, and the scientific knowledge. Now, I seriously considering a whole mini-unit about the book…….. It’s just so much fun.

There were several weather themed posts linked up this week, so I had to highlight such a nice little theme already built in.

Next Generation Homeschooler has a great week long unit on weather for preschoolers.

Little Wonder Days continued the weather theme with a Simple Anemometer.

Learning Ideas k-8 has a cute wind sock to make. Does anyone else remember making these as a kid? She also has a whole bunch of weather posts on her site, but I didn’t want to show you every single one.

It’s fun when we can do an art project (which they’d been begging me to do, because you know we never do those) and have it work well with science.

Hopefully I have not messed up my linky thing and put in the wrong date or start time again (fingers crossed).

The hot glue gun……

2012-01-20T09:15:00.001-06:00

Since several were worried about the whole hot glue gun thing I figured I’d show you how they did.

Here are the ground rules:

1. No silliness, that’s an important one for safety.

2. You have to ask before getting it out. Many of our craft supplies they have free rein with, but these like paints and sharpies need permission first.

3. Unplug it when you are done, this is also a safety issue.

4. New one added in after last experience: put away all of what you used. Last time they did not properly put away their craft supplies.

Why did I do this? They’ve shown the maturity and readiness to use it. They know how to act with various craft materials because I’ve let them have lots of access to them. I did not give them a high temp one that would definitely burn them, but this one cools down within 5 seconds to a touchable level. We talked through a lot of safety issues, and now they know how to use it properly.

Would I trust every 6 year old or 5 year old with a hot glue gun? That’s a big NO, but my kids were ready.

And as a side note, I will be buying a large number of popsicle sticks very soon.

Tennessee: Davy Crockett

2012-01-19T04:44:00.000-06:00

Okay, be honest, how many of you as soon as you read that got “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier” stuck in your head?

Now, who has it stuck in their head?

Amazon.com Widgets

I found about 6 books at our library about him, and this was my favorite. All of the others were more factual, but this one had humor, and Davy Crockett has humor in him I think. And it’s a tall tale. Who doesn’t like a tall tale?

I certainly do, they’re like American mythology. Of course our modern mythology is comic books, but that’s a different subject.

After reading it we grabbed a peg doll, some pipe cleaners and made us our own Davy Crockett doll.

Or that’s what it is in theory. In reality…… The hats never quite fit right, and kept covering their heads. Princess objected she wanted to make a girl, so she made Swamp Angel. Then the boys decided they were making Captain America and proceeded to make pipe cleaner shields and add arms……….

Yeah……… So this did not go as planned. I really want to make some coon skin hats, but it wasn’t going to happen on that day. Concentration was NIL.

Moments to Remember

2012-01-18T04:56:00.000-06:00

There are times it’s helpful to have a husband who says come out and have some fun, rather than holing myself up and trying to do “one last thing.”

So, I watched this, rather than write about 10 different things I had to work on.

And then I went inside and let Princess paint my fingernails.

purple with a pink stripe and a green dot.

Tennessee: Sequoyah

2012-01-17T04:46:00.000-06:00

Hey! I spelled it right! I was so sure I was going to spell that wrong.

Amazon.com Widgets

Every now and then you find a book that just works completely. It presents the information well, the pictures are interesting, and it’s something you didn’t know before.

This was one of those books.

I’ve heard of Sequoyah trees, and now I know I’m spelling something wrong because his name is spelled differently than the trees. I knew the name of the person, but not much beyond that.

I learned Sequoyah created the Cherokee alphabet and persevered through people burning his house down to stop him and other hardships. Isn’t that cool.

I’ll be back. I promised to teach the kids how to use the “hot glue gun.” Can it really be called that if it’s a low temp one?

I’m back. The kids are now happily gluing away. I foresee another trip to buy lots of wooden supplies.

This is what really intrigued me about this book. It includes the story written in Cherokee.

After reading it I challenged the kids to create their own version of the alphabet.

Which they happily set to.

My boys created various blobs. Older friend made a rather ingenious alphabet based off of musical symbols and other symbols he knew.

Princess just recopied the alphabet. She was not getting it. Younger friend again happily scribbled.

Tennessee Sequoyah

Okay, so they’re not going to invent alphabets, but they did learn about a cool man who stood up for what he believed in.

Linking this up over at All Things Beautiful.

Tennessee: Swamp Angel

2012-01-16T04:00:00.000-06:00

Little did I know, but Tennessee has almost as many tall tales and what not as Texas does. I’ve been having a blast previewing the books we’re going to use, and I’m thinking of having my kids take a stab at writing their own tall tale.

Maybe, I’m sure there would be an uproar if I did.

Amazon.com Widgets

Swamp Angel is the story of a girl who grew up in Tennessee and saved it from the biggest bear ever to plague the state.

At one point while she and that bear wrestled she threw him up into the sky and he hit the stars (thus creating Ursa Major). Well, we had to make our own versions. I had grand dreams of much more complicated versions, but I knew for the sake of the kids I needed to “Keep It Simple Stupid.” So, I did.

Swamp Angel Tennessee

As always they took it and ran. Little friend happily scribbled away. Big friend, drew a picture of a bear with a very small earth below. My boys drew the entire fight with both sides growing appendages all over. Princess happily drew a smushed bear up in the sky.

Science Sunday: Shrimp

2012-01-15T03:41:00.000-06:00

I’m kinda thinking I need a “grocery science” category, because as I was finishing up our science experiment for the week I realized a large majority of our science experiments come from there.

Case in point. This week we were reading about different crustaceans, and I thought excellent let’s check out the lobsters at the store.

We had a lot of fun observing the different parts and remembering why the water is cold (keeps the lobsters complacent and from needing to eat).

I asked if we could touch the lobsters, but they’re not allowed to touch except with gloves on, and I was rather expecting that answer, but figured I’d give it a shot.

That night after dinner we explored the 6 shrimp I got after looking at the lobsters. I considered getting some crab too (what a great excuse to get crab, right?), but the crab is already cut in half and doesn’t have the exoskeleton on it. Kinda takes away some of the science lesson, and thus my excuse to get crab.

We went through and looked at their swimmerets, and discussed their exoskeleton, which is tough and brittle. Then we looked at the tail, talked about it for awhile.

Jeff joined in the lesson at this point, and after having pulled the tail off one, pointed out the long thin brown thing you can see in the picture (thank goodness for zoom). That is the shrimp’s lower intestine. Then we talked about how the butcher (or someone else) had already taken the head off and removed most of the organs.

Let me tell you that was the most fascinating thing EVER to them.

Afterwards they filled out the lapbook portion about shrimp and drew pictures. Oh, and they all stole Jeff’s shrimp. Back when we were on our Christmas trip they all tried shrimp and swore they didn’t like it. On Wednesday when I only got a little they all decided they loved it and stole all of poor Jeff’s shrimp.

Here’s a few fun ideas from this past weeks link-ups:

Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational has a fun way to learn about spiders (I know my boys would love this).

All Things Beautiful did an experiment with the connection between taste and smell (FYI one of my boys has those same jammies).

Learning Ideas K-8 has a fun anemometer, homemade wind speed measurer. I didn’t know you could make one at home.

And one last one:

The Learning Hypothesis gave us a link to the science behind play dough.

My dog secretly thinks he’s a cat

2012-01-14T03:47:00.000-06:00

This is my dog. He’s small for a mini-schnauzer, and weighs about the same as most cats. I think he got confused and decided he’s a cat.

I have a bad habit, and I know it. I put the leftovers on the kitchen table when we get back from somewhere and then walk off to put my shoes away intending to come back.

This doesn’t always happen.

This particular time as I was taking my shoes off, I stopped to look up a detail on the art project we were about to complete. I then got distracted answering an email and then the kids were all set to head off and start the project without me. No joke.

So, I headed up and started it up. I send them off for a rest and then head off to spoil myself with a bath. As I’m laying there soaking said “dog” comes up smelling of Shanghai chicken.

I wrap the bathrobe around me and see the above picture on the floor. Notice he didn’t eat the rice. He jumped from the chair to the table, and knocked it on the floor in eating what would have made a full other meal for the kids and I.

He is now spending some quality time outside contemplating just what he did. I don’t think he looks sorry, what do you think?

50 State Study: Rhode Island

2012-01-13T13:29:00.001-06:00

This is one of those states where I just didn’t have much to go on. So if you live in the area or have been there I’d love some extra suggestions of what else to tell people about for when I write for ABC & 123.

Don’t you just love all of the empty space on Princess’ pages? She was quite insistent on gluing it all in this way……. Sigh, and she lost her carousel symbols.

Carousels- Rhode Island was the site of the first carousels in America, and was famous for the designs on their carousels. For that alone I want to go there.

Yes, I liked carousels. I’m a complete sucker for them.

Nathaniel Greene- famous general from Revolutionary War, and there was not one book about him specifically at our library. Sigh, so I made something up using Wikipedia.

Finding Providence- I did not write a post on this one because I didn’t have any pictures of the activity.

And now I see why having taken a picture of the end results. The activity was to write down different ways you can know or learn God’s will, because Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, trusted to God’s Providence.

It’s a good activity, just not very photogenic, or exciting.

Seriously, any other suggestions. Christy from Snacks and Stories (she used to blog at Superheroes and Princesses) gave me some good suggestions of making “Cabinets,” which sound a lot like milkshakes, I think Phyllis from All Things Beautiful had a similar suggestion.

Traveling by train in the 20s and 30s

2012-01-12T06:43:00.000-06:00

So, when we were up in Oklahoma we got to go through their train car they have in the museum. It’s open a couple of times a year and we got lucky and were there during that time.

Now our guide was rather………. okay, there’s no nice way to say it, he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. I’ll provide you a mini-rant when I get to the point I was no longer able to remain silent.

Now this whole train car is a private car, and was made my the company’s executives. This is the equivalent of the lounge car where you can seat about 10 people. This couch transforms into a bunk bed. The back moves up to become the top bunk.

In the back is a speedometer “so the fat cats who were riding in it could tell if the drivers were slacking off and not doing their job, at which point they would be fired right away.”

Yeah………. I think he might have literally said that.

There was also a call button, which I did not get a picture of. I will not treat you to the nonsense he explained to us about how they porters were supposed to respond.

Here’s a bedroom. This particular car had 3 bedrooms in addition to the lounge. The lounge was able to sleep 4. Each of the bedrooms was able to sleep 2, which made for beds for 10 passengers and then 2 crew beds.

During the day the room looks like this, there are two roomy chairs and a table in between. The ceiling above is slightly sloped because that is the bunk bed that pulls down for people to sleep on.

Unfortunately with the holly on the top bunk it’s a little hard to see what it was like. But, the top bunk pulls down, and those two chairs slide together to make a bed. It’s rather like RV beds now.

At this point I was biting my tongue really hard not to correct him as he attempted to explain traveling by rail.

Ummm…… I’ve traveled by train, and it had very little to do with what he said.

The dining car was set up with a full course meal, and our guide said the cooks would have to be ready to serve a full course meal at the drop of a hat.

My experience with trains is you have an assigned time to come for your meal and you come then and are presented with several options. Now this is a private car, so it may be different, but I don’t know of any chef who is able to create a multi-course meal at the drop of a hat.

I might mention our guide was a college student who probably doesn’t cook anything more complicated than Ramen.

And now we come to the part where I totally lost it and corrected him POLITELY. I was polite.

He said, “The owner of the car was very proud of hiring ex-slaves who had just recently been freed from slavery. He required them to memorize this whole thing on the rules of ettiquette. It was very hard for them because it was a lot to memorize.”

REALLY! REALLY!?!?! Okay, how many ways can this be wrong?

1. It was build in 1929. The slaves were freed in 1865. RECENTLY FREED? At most we’re talking about their grandchildren.

2. Illiterate, I might give you, but the literacy rate was not as bad as he was making it out to be.

3. Pre-literate cultures are very good at memorizing things. That is the whole reason we still have the Iliad and the Odyssey. They MEMORIZED them. You know the whole hundred page poem.

Okay, end of my rant. I can feel my heart rate rising in annoyance.

All of that being said, it was fun to tour the train. I just wish we hadn’t gotten the substitute tour guide, but the older man who was in full conductor costume.

Guess what my boys are starting?

2012-01-11T06:24:00.000-06:00

They might be a little excited about this. And by a little, the day they started they spent all day asking “Is it time yet?”

Great gift to give for a kid’s birthday party!

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-06:00

All you need: paper mache dollhouse found at Hobby Lobby or most craft stores (I'm fairly sure I've also seen it at Michael's), various scraps of scrapbook paper, popsicle sticks for added touches, peg dolls (I get mine at Casey’s Wood products), and a bottle of glue.

Here's the price break down, more or less

house- between $2-5 depending on size you buy, that's full price. I time the sales and get it 50% off
peg dolls- if bought at Casey's Wood Products $0.15-$0.30 per figure plus shipping, if bought at craft store, about $3-4 for 10 or so
scrapbook paper- 5 for a $1 on sale, otherwise 4 for a $1, or on hand
popsicle sticks- can be bought for a huge box for about $5 or small pack of 50 or so for a dollar at the dollar store, as could the paper
glue bottle- bought at back to school sales for $0.03, otherwise about a $1

Now you have an instant craft kit that is loads of fun, can provide hours of entertainment, first deocrating the house, then the dolls, and finally playing with your dolls.

For those without a Hobby Lobby, I just checked and it is available on Amazon: Paper Mache Box with Windows Small.

edited to add: link for houses and pricing

Bible Alive: Frogs, where do all these frogs come from

2012-01-09T07:42:00.001-06:00

Before Christmas I started my kids on Moses, but then Christmas came along and Moses just went out the window, other than the short bit I did on him as part of Advent.

Well, we got back to it this week, and I’m going to post this stuff out of order as I’m going to be doing some activities out of order.

So, I read all about the plagues, and we learned all about the plague of frogs. Now I’m sure that the Egyptians when that plague happened thought, “I know we can play a game with these little buggers.”

So, we did. Or rather we played with the 15 or so frog bean bags I made. I had made more but I think the kids ate some.

I piled all of the frogs in the middle and for the first game they had to run over and pick them up one at a time and run them back to the ring.

This was a great success.

The second game went over great with the boys, but not so much with the girl. In this version I gave them a time limit and told them once they ran out of frogs in the bucket they could steal from each other. If they got tagged while stealing they had to drop the frog. Princess was not so good at the tagging and defending.

At some point I have an activity to do involving Moses and the burning bush, but…….. It’s been 70 here. I don’t think it would go over well with Jeff if I started a fire when it’s that warm.

Science Sunday: Chinchillas

2012-01-08T06:17:00.000-06:00

Over Christmas break we visited a friend who had a pet chinchilla. Oh boy the fun and learning that abounded.
First we learned that chinchillas are nocturnal, and then we learned what they eat and a little bit about them.

But the most exciting part was watching them take a bath. They come from a very cold and dry area, so they take baths in dust. The kids thought this was hilarious. I wasn’t there to see it (we girls were getting breakfast and snack supplies), but I was told ALL about it for the next several days.

So, I give you the “Chinchilla dust bath.” ENJOY!

Educating Layton has a fun food pyramid lesson complete with some printables.

The Tiger Chronicle has a fun post about penicillin and how bacteria grows.

Delightful Children’s Books has a great list of books about trees.

Have you ever learned something from someone else’s pets? I learned a lot about chinchillas.

Do you ever play with your camera settings?

2012-01-06T06:47:00.000-06:00

We finally made it to the children’s museum and the dinosaur exhibit which I thought would enthrall my kids, they spent a cursory few minutes at, and then they split according to gender.

So, I spent a good 30 minutes being fed plastic food. Which led me to play with the settings on my camera.

This is the accentuate one color. I played around with different colors, but pink was most startling.

Fish eye and miniaturization. Neither of which I thought were all that fun. Maybe I should play with them more, or it might be a situational thing.

You know looking at most of the rest, I don’t particularly see how they were different, but it’s a fun thing to fiddle and play with.

Do you ever play with the settings on your camera? Any tips or tricks? I’m not that great of a photographer. I can see what makes a great shot, but I don’t always follow through.

Fun way to entertain kids when you have nothing on hand

2012-01-05T06:50:00.000-06:00

play charades!

Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

Beware the salad monsters

2012-01-04T06:39:00.000-06:00

Saying my boys like salad would be an understatement. The little bandits are quite sneaky about it, or not so sneaky.

It started with a simple invade Daddy’s salad, and eat it all. Then they started reaching across to mine…….

We gave in and gave them the last scraps in the bowl and that’s when the true fiendishness started. TWO FORKS APIECE, and then Batman upped the ante with THREE FORKS.

Only problem is it’s not super effective for actually getting the food to your mouth.

Kentucky: Night Boat to Freedom

2012-01-03T06:13:00.000-06:00

So……. I’ve discovered something that’s a side effect of the books we’ve been reading. My kids have decided because in all of the books with black people they’re always slaves or not allowed to do things, so they’ve decided it’s a bad thing because of that. Here I thought I was showing how they’ve overcome so much and this is so great.

Instead, they think this is still their lot in life, and if you have dark skin you are still not allowed to check out library books like happened to Ron in “Ron’s Big Mission.” So, I’m trying to figure out how to fix this. They don’t seem to of noticed that our neighbor next door who they talk to on a regular basis has dark skin. Or that several of the kids in their Sunday School class do as well. All they remember is the books I read and how in those their slaves or discriminated against.

Food for thought for me.

All that because, it’s another book about the Underground Railroad. I rather like this one.

Amazon.com Widgets

The main character (whose name escapes me) rows slaves across the river to freedom each night. When he gets back his grandmother asks “what was their freedom color?” and she adds that color cloth to her quilt she is making.

After reading that we had to make our own outfits for what we wore to freedom. Princess wore red to freedom, and the boys both chose blue.

Now what really cracked me up about the boys outfits was the competition all of the boys there that day got into about their boats. By the end of that activity those boys had the best armed row boats you’ve ever heard of. Stealth missiles, ability to use the rockets to go faster, heat seekers. Many countries would be jealous of the arms on these boats.

I’m gonna link this over to the geography linkie at All Things Beautiful and to

Final Christmas memories post for the year

2012-01-02T11:31:00.001-06:00

Now that I’m home and have internet connection I can write the remainder of the posts I have to write for last year and such.

One thing I discovered after Sam died is an appalling tendency in my photo taking to concentrate on the kids, and not get pictures of the adults as much. I’m trying to fix that trend, so I made sure to get at least one picture of each adult.

The most hilarious present was for Princess. Her Nana had put all of her presents in one big bag almost the size of her. So after she’d emptied it out, she spent the rest of the morning hiding in the bag and then popping out to surprise us. It was quite fun.

Oh, and I love this shot of the tossled bed head as she went through her stocking and discovered her ornament from Santa, a nativity picture. Isn’t that just the sweetest?

Goals for the coming year

2012-01-01T18:19:00.001-06:00

Goodbye 2011!

You’ll be missed, well some parts of you, others not as much.

I was looking back at my goals I had for the last time I set goals, and I have to say there were mixed results, so many of them I need to reuse as goals.

OVERALL GOALS FOR THE YEAR

1. Get the whole house under control. My goal is to achieve at least one room a month. Some months I will get more than one.

2. Establish a workable chore plan for the kids. All of the ones we’ve tried so far have not worked, hence why I haven’t shared. It’s worked for a few days to a week, but not lasting.

3. Resubmit my Bible study for publication. I submitted it once before and was given some revisions to make. I did those, but never heard back, so I need to try again.

4. Establish a workable routine. I created one at the beginning of the fall, but I very quickly figured out I don’t need a generic here is what I do for the day, but a day by day plan, otherwise it will fall apart.

SPECIFIC GOALS FOR THIS MONTH

1. Get a pantry that I can find stuff in. It’s gotten rather messy these past few weeks, and it’s more of a shove into place, rather than in the right place.

2. Figure out a cleaning schedule for the kitchen that includes deep cleaning things.

3. Create a daily review sheet for the kids. I used to do this when I was teaching, but I want to start it up again.

Now, I’m off to fiddle for a few minutes before taking down our Christmas tree!

Kentucky: Derby, of course

2011-12-28T06:37:00.000-06:00

How can you learn about Kentucky without at least having a brief stop at the Derby?

You can’t. So, I didn’t.

First we read “The Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby,” it’s a bittersweet story about a jockey who eventually quits racing here because of racism. I don’t think it was the best book for what I was trying to teach about, but it’s probably a good book for another lesson.

Afterwards we watched a video about the different hats women wear.

Which Princess thought was wonderful, the boys were more interested in seeing several different races from different years.

Afterwards we made Derby hats.

I turned them loose with styrofoam plates, bowls, pipe cleaners, buttons, bows, what have you.

Unfortunately, Batman’s was so precarious that he could never wear it. The same with Superman’s, which I did get a picture of.

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Local Christmas memories

2011-12-26T08:58:00.000-06:00

With all of the grandparents and aunts and uncles in short driving range we get to celebrate 3 Christmases. At the time of this writing we’ve had 2 of them (with my family and our own celebration).

So, I give you photo evidence of the chaos that ensued, and Aunt Tara was kind enough to take pictures that day, so I’m actually in pictures!

The highlight for the kids was seeing Aunt Jenn open the presents for “Baby C” as they are eagerly awaiting the birth of a new cousin. The most amusing part for the adults was watching my Mom eagerly wait for everyone to open their presents so she could remember what she got them.

I love that the kids were so excited about what they were giving other people. They were very impatient for me to open my presents from them, and it was fun to open them and see.

Princess was super proud of finding a nativity night light for me, “It’s special because it has baby Jesus.”

We got a lot of laughs out of Mom’s wrapping this year, she decided to use newspapers to continue an old family tradition, but since she didn’t get the newspaper she was limited to what came in the mail. So, I got a young black man on one of my presents, Princess had guns from Academy……….. Not that our unique brand of wrapping is much better……..

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, I’m about to leave for Dallas to see Jeff’s side of the family.

Christmas story bracelet

2011-12-23T09:13:00.001-06:00

Little Wonder Days did this adorable bracelet for her kids for Christmas, and I loved the idea and knew I had to use it for my Sunday School class. She used beads she had on hand, but since I only had various shades of red and clear beads I had to go out and buy mine, so it’s slightly different than hers.

White- for the angel who came to Zechariah and told him his wife would have a baby.

Blue- for Mary who believed what the angel told her and trusted God.

Brown- for Joseph who was going to divorce Mary, but stopped when an angel told him to trust Mary.

Grey- for the donkey Mary rode to Bethlehem because of the Roman decree.

Gold bell- for Jesus, the bell rings to remind us to tell everyone of the Good News, and it’s gold because Jesus will wear a gold crown.

Star- for the star that appeared above Jesus.

White- for the angel that appeared to the shepherds to tell them of Jesus’ birth.

Green- for the shepherds who ran to see the newborn babe.

Light purple- for the magi who traveled so far to see the baby Jesus.

Yellow, purple, and red- for the gifts the magi brought. Gifts fit for a king.

Merry Christmas to all of you, I’ve no guarantee I’ll be posting again until after Christmas, I have a wonderful Merry Christmas post I’d like to write, but I don’t guarantee it.

So, just in case:

Merry Christmas to all!

Bible Alive: Nehemiah

2011-12-20T09:13:00.001-06:00

The kids and I read about Nehemiah last year as part of our history, then we acted it out with Legos. This time around was a much bigger hit for everyone. They haven’t stopped asking to play it again.

This time I had the kids build the wall with the “mass 'o’ boxes” we have stashed away for some reason. The parents job was to try and knock the wall down while they were building. I encouraged the kids to defend their walls with pillows like the Israelites built with spears in their hands. They quickly figured out it works better if everyone has a pillow and is building because then they could keep us away.

The only thing is defending yourself from a pillow fight means you don’t have much ability to take good pictures. It’s more hold your camera out and then duck as they try to kill you with a pillow.

Kentucky: Muhammad Ali

2011-12-19T06:15:00.000-06:00

One of the things I love about doing this is what I learn too. For instance I never knew where Muhammad Ali was from, or really anything about him beyond he boxed and his catchphrase.

After reading it, of course we had to come up with our own catchphrases like Ali did.

Of course their catchphrases weren’t polished or metered.

It was more like:

I run fast and punch hard

I’m like a master ninja and will defeat you!

I can run and dance faster than anyone

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Science Sunday: I got nothing

2011-12-18T05:08:00.000-06:00

I had grand and glorious plans, but life got in the way. It’s been a rather tumultuous week at our house with various family things going on and Christmas preparations going on.

We were going to learn a whole lot about dinosaurs on Friday going to the Children’s Museum and trying out their current exhibit, but instead we spent it with me at the doctor’s and are now waiting for various test results. In cause you’re wondering, I’m fine, just a few oddities going on.

The only real sort of science activity I have is from our Advent activity. We read the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal and their little competition. That story cracks me up every time as Elijah sits there and insults the prophets of Ball and makes all these remarks and they spend hours trying to get their god to light the fire. Then Elijah stands up and in less than a minute God lights the fire.

Well to go with that we showed that only God can light a fire on soaking wet wood, this also worked great to explain why it’s not so dangerous right now for someone to have a fire outside. We’ve had about a week of drizzle and pseudo-rain. You know that rain storm that’s just enough for you to almost need an umbrella, but it’s not really raining. After a week of that all of the twigs in our backyard were soaked.

And despite trying many different ways we were not able to light a fire.

Jeff mumbled something to me about getting phosphorous and lighting it that way. I mumbled back about ruining the whole point of God being able to light a fire that destroys the rocks and everything.

Learning in Mayapur shared about Cobras, a good reminder that a good animal study doesn’t have to be complicated.

Creative Connections for Kids had a fun idea of making flower seed ornaments. I’m thinking of changing it up and using it for Valentine’s Day cards.

Oh and THERE WILL BE NO SCIENCE SUNDAY ON CHRISTMAS OR NEW YEAR’S DAY! I know scheduled learning will be taking a break, and so I figure I won’t stress about it all.

50 State Study: North Carolina

2011-12-17T06:58:00.000-06:00

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As you can see North Carolina was not heavy on printable activities. Actually it wasn’t super busy this time through, most of the books I found were checked out of the library and didn’t straggle in for a while.

North Carolina state symbols

Design our own airplane-of course a favorite activity

waterproofing- what is the best way to waterproof your paper

If I had thought about it, I could have put a pocket in to save their protest signs…….

Of course I don’t know that I want to encourage their protesting……….

The other activity from North Carolina I couldn’t put in was their drowning Blackbeard puppet.

My two posts I have saved on North Carolina:

All Things Beautiful has a North Carolina post.

Weiser Academy has one on studying rocks.

And I’m going to link this over to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns and All Things Beautiful (who I’m still waiting for her button )

Kentucky: Daniel Boone

2011-12-16T06:43:00.000-06:00

I found this fabulous book, but then as I was preparing I got an email from Colonial Williamsburg with their “Primary Source of the Month,” Daniel Boone’s surveying equipment (you may need to register to see the picture, I’m not sure).

I still read the book, but I totally changed our activity.

model of Daniel Boone’s surveying equipment as done by Batman. The string is used to measure a distance, the compass is used to ensure you are heading in just one direction.

Supplies: foam board or cardboard, yarn, brad, paper/cardstock, markers

Prep work: cut two pieces of foam approximately 4 inches by 6 inches, and a piece of string about 2 feet long, from the cardstock cut a circle and an arrow shape

Step 1: Put a large amount of glue on the top of the first piece of foam board (I have lots and lots from the boys’ birthday party last year). Place the second piece of foam board on top.

Step 2:Take the piece of card stock and write the compass points on it.

Step 3: Punch a hole in the middle of the circle and put the arrow on it using the brad.

Bonus points if you have time to color the rest of the case or paint it.

Subtract points if the boys automatically start demonstrating how you can swing it above your head like a weapon.

Not that anyone I know would do that……….. Not at all………..

I’m gonna link this over at All Things Beautiful and A Mommy’s Adventures

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Kentucky: Young Abe Lincoln

2011-12-15T10:00:00.001-06:00

I love Abraham Lincoln, and also tall tales, so a book that combines the feel of a tall tale with Abraham Lincoln is a good find.

The story tells the tale of young Abe Lincoln and his first best friend as kids in Kentucky, and actually does tell an incident that really happened in Lincoln’s youth, but with a fun light-hearted feel, which is important because it is a scary time where he almost dies.

After reading it we took some time to write “what makes a good friend,” (link to printable). Their answers were amusing, things like “play with them” or “makes me laugh,” but they were very true. It shows that being a friend doesn’t really change from being 5 years old to being a grown-up. Or so called grown-up.

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I’m gonna link up over at All Things Beautiful, with her history/geography Meme. I have zillions of posts I need to link up there.

Vermont: Champy

2011-12-14T06:12:00.000-06:00

I have to admit I love anything and everything Stephen Kellog, he just write and illustrates some of the cutest books. I’m lucky and went to a conference he was at and he signed a book for me.

A couple of years ago when Superheroes and Princesses wrote about Vermont she mentioned Lake Champlain has an inhabitant rather like the Loch Ness Monster, she actually found a book about him, but my library didn’t have that. However I own the next best thing a book not specifically about the Loch Ness Monster.

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Well, after reading it and talking about Champy, we took some time to make our own versions of him.

Isn’t if funny how they each have their own very distinct Champy?

And here’s the printable, if you want it: Vermont: Champy

Advent Days 7 and 8, I think

2011-12-13T04:41:00.000-06:00

Sigh, I know where these fell, but I’m totally not remembering the exact day.

We talked about the story of Jacob and how he tricked his brother and had to run away. Then we talked about Jacob having his dream with the angels coming up and down.

Afterwards we created our own Jacob’s ladder. I had planned to take another stab with the bubble dying, but I was not feeling up to it, and my second plan was missing parts. So, regular old blue paper it was……

Since they didn’t know about my more ambitious plans they didn’t care one bit.

Princess was quite proud of her creation, and so were all of the kids, but she was the only one who posed with hers.

I love how everyone had a different interpretation. Superman literally built a stairs out of popsicle sticks, and Batman had huge numbers of steps. Princess wanted her angels to be pretty.

Now on to the next day, acting out the story of Joseph with popsicle stick puppets, which was a huge hit. Other than I had to sit through 3 renditions of it all, which got to be rather “creative,” yeah let’s say creative.

You can see a not really tutorial on how to make the puppet theater here. You can find the printables for the Bible story and craft at part 1 of my Advent project.

When Santa Lost his Ho Ho Ho!

2011-12-12T04:29:00.000-06:00

When Santa Lost his Ho Ho Ho! is a seriously cute book about Santa not being able to laugh. Santa and all the elves spend days trying to figure it out, and the letters start pouring in from worried little kids. Finally one child saves the day in a most adorable way.

After reading a book like this what can you do, but write a letter to Santa? Now I need to make sure they get mailed………

The boys predictable wanted Imaginenext toys, their absolute favorite right now, and Princess wants Barbie.

They all tried to cheer poor Santa up with humorous pictures, and I think they would have done a pretty good job if the guy had lost his “ho ho ho.”

And then we proceeded to decorate our presents. This year rather than paint and then wrap, I opted to wrap them and then let them stamp with red and green stamp pads. Then we went through my scrapbook papers and cut them up and glued away. Next step to teach them about ribbons!

Oh and here’s some proof that all is not always well in our household, I don’t remember what made him mad, but boy was he mad about something.

Science Sunday: Crabs and Lobsters

2011-12-11T03:39:00.000-06:00

I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably mention it several more times in our science studies: Do not underestimate the value of a good field trip to the pet or grocery store.

We just read up about the various body parts of crabs and lobsters, so while I was out with the kids on Friday we stopped by the pet store and looked at their little brown crabs. I was hoping for some hermit crabs, but this store didn’t have any. You can see the crab down by Princess’ hand

That’s him all blown up. It gave us a chance to look in real life and find eye stalks, his carapace, his walking legs, and his claws. I had intended to go and check out the lobsters at the grocery store as well to compare, but the kids were not quite ready for that.

All Things Beautiful posted what happens to air when it gets cold.

Changed by the Maker shared about hermit crabs and has a cool video about molting (and yes I’m showing this to my kids on Monday).

So, do you have a favorite place to go for field trips?

Thank God for small miracles

2011-12-10T14:04:00.001-06:00

We went to go to Lowe’s Build and Grow clinic this morning to make part 2 of our trains, and I had written down the wrong time. They sadly told us they were out of trains, but we could do puppet theaters. Just as we were about to start our theaters, another family decided they would go to a different Lowe’s and gave us their sets, exactly enough for all 3 kids.

Thank God for small miracles.

Vermont: Nora’s Ark

2011-12-09T03:39:00.000-06:00

I was badly burned by a “Noah’s Ark” retelling a year or so ago, it was horribly written and didn’t work for us at all. So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I checked this book out.

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This is a well written and illustrated story. It takes place during the 1920s during a flood in Vermont. The actual story may not be true, but similar incidents happened. Nora’s house was the one house in the area high enough to be out of the flood waters. By the end of the story Nora had cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, and people in their house.

It’s a great lesson on what is truly important, and what isn’t. As she says in the story, “The rest is just gravy.”

After reading the story I challenged them to fit as many things in their house as they could. They had to have at least two of each different item Nora had in her house. So, at least two cows, two horses, two chickens, two men, and two women.

Not too surprisingly they fit a lot of chickens in. But, that’s just what happened in the story, she had over 100 chickens in her house.

Inside they had to write what they would save from their house if it flooded.

Can I just say it made me smile to have the kids all say they’d save their Bibles.

Here’s the printable for anyone able to find a copy of Nora’s Ark.

Vermont: Tricking the Tally Man

2011-12-08T03:27:00.000-06:00

Tricking the Tally Man- it’s a super cute story about a town that sees the tally man coming and they don’t want to be taxed, so they lie about how many are in the town, only to discover he’s counting for the new government. There’s several rounds of this, and it ultimately comes out right.

For our activity each of the kids got to hide a handful of peg dolls in one of the “cities.” Afterwards we took turns finding all of them and counting them using tally marks.

Everyone enjoyed the mad dash to find and record the citizens. Our littlest one even helped by bringing over random extra ones she found.

To make it simple I just made a small chart. Obviously you could make it into whatever format you wanted, but this was our different cities. If you want to use ours, you can just click on the picture and it will take you to the download.

Vermont: Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream

2011-12-07T15:25:00.000-06:00

My kids have been asking for ice cream for ages and ages. I was glad to have this excuse of getting some, but I have to admit I didn’t get Ben and Jerry’s. I’m too loyal a Texan and I got Blue Bell. Shocking and horrible.

So, I don’t really have any pictures from us actually doing this activty, because this is a clean version of my kids eating ice cream. When you add in toppings and syrups……. It was more of triage and keeping sticky hands off stuff.

We read the book, and talked about Ben and Jerry’s funny names they come up with for ordinary flavors. Then the kids all happily designed their own flavors complete with funny names.

This is the printable we used, but Ben and Jerry’s website also has some fun games you can play, which we didn’t really get a chance to do.

Messiness and all that……..

Well, this is two posts in one day, but neither of them are particularly inspired, but putting them together in one post seems rather shoe-horned. Or it does to me, and I know I have weird opinions, especially when I have a headache. I’m gonna go eat something.

Vermont: John Deere and tractors

2011-12-07T03:08:00.000-06:00

I actually don’t particularly recommend the book we used, it was okay, but it was just a generic book about tractors and didn’t hold their attention to well.

I can’t even find it on amazon…….

Well after reading all about tractors and talking about John Deere and his plans to make farmers lives better, we all went to the table and designed our own wonder-invention.

It was amusing to see what all they came up with.

This is Superman’s (in the picture above), his invention helps you get corn. That’s the farmer riding inside of the corn growing machine.

Here’s what the printable looks like. If you’d like to download it, just click on the link and it’ll head right over to Scribd.

Family Christmas Tree

2011-12-06T08:34:00.001-06:00

I was going to include a picture of this book cover, but the image from Amazon was horrid.

Family Christmas Tree- Basically this story uses a family talking about getting their tree to cover different traditions and how our tradition of a Christmas tree came about.

Of course, I read it to them because I knew we were decorating our own tree that afternoon (sneaky me).

No amazingly great pictures because my camera battery was dying. Superman is the one with the moose. He was so happy to find that moose in the box of Christmas stuff where it accidentally got packed last year.

When do you get your Christmas tree? I like to get ours the day after Thanksgiving, but circumstances conspired against me this year and we had to wait a few days.

Advent Calendar part 2

2011-12-05T09:59:00.001-06:00

We’ve completed the first few days of our Advent project. The kids happily search through the Christmas tree to find the day’s activity and box. It’s a bit of a challenge because some of the numbers are on there as words, and they don’t know all of their number words yet. So, this has been great practice.

Day 13- Solomon, God said Solomon’s wisdom would be greater than the sands on the shore. Make “sand pudding.” I don’t have any extras with this one because I have no movie or book in particular for it at this time.

Day 14- Elijah, God kept his prophet safe even when all else seemed to be against him, and Elijah was able to show others the mighty wonders of God because of this. Same for this one, for some reason there’s not a lot of movies about Elijah, which is a shame because he has some great stories.

Day 15- Esther, God used Esther to keep His people safe so that His BIG Plan could go forward. Make the princess pretty using markers and glitter and whatever else you have. Watch the Veggietales: Duke and the Great Pie War. If my kids had an amazing attention span and were older we could watch “One Night with the King.” I highly recommend that movie if you have any interest in Old Testament history, or want to watch a true romantic movie. It is wonderfully made.

Day 16- Nehemiah, God used Nehemiah to bring His people back to Israel, so eventually His Promised One would be born where God promised. Build a wall like Nehemiah did, try to keep others from knocking it down. Again no movie, another sorely under represented figure in animation and books.

Day 17- Zechariah and Elizabeth- play charades. I also loved the idea from over at Fantastic Five of making edible peanut butter and HONEY play dough (get it because John ate honey), but since I’m making this for others as well I didn’t want to include something their kid might potentially be allergic to.

Day 18- Mary and Joseph, got told Mary and Joseph beforehand about Jesus’ coming. Create a song of praise like Mary did to God. As a side note I opted to go with the traditional colors for the Nativity figures and just paint them solid. Therefore Mary is blue for purity and mercy, Joseph is brown for humility. Many thanks to Nicole from Tired, Need Sleep for helping me figure that out.

Day 19- Journey to Bethlehem- play the game. We’ll also read “Donkey’s Dream,” a very cute story that is beautifully illustrated about the donkey carrying Mary to Bethlehem. He dreams he is carrying many different things that are all names for Jesus or come from Catholic imagery (this is my memory from reading it last year, it’s not one I’ve read zillions of times).

Day 20-Shepherds, while reading the story eat your candy canes that look like shepherd’s crooks. I painted the shepherd figures green for their traditional color, but couldn’t find what it is supposed to represent. Any ideas people? Any Godly Play people know? Maybe life or growing? I’m planning to read Crippled Lamb, if I can find my copy. I think it might technically be my Mom’s…….. So maybe at her house.

Day 21-Magi, the magi are painted yellow to represent wisdom or preciousness (maybe, anybody know for sure?). I included popsicle sticks to make a star and decorate it to hang on the tree. I’m thinking of teaching the boys how to make this, because I’m a glutton for punishment.

Day 22- Simeon and Anna, I love this part of the story and it is so rarely included when we teach it. We tell about the shepherds and the magi, but we leave out these two simple people who waited their whole lives. In that vein we will each have a cookie place in front of us and have to wait 5 minutes to show us how hard it is to wait like Simeon and Anna did.

Day 23- Flight to Egypt, Dixie cups in a Pringles can. I’ve made my kids eat a lot of Pringles recently. The cups are to stack to make a pyramid. How big of a pyramid can you make?

Here is part 1 of the Advent project

Here are the updated Advent printables (including a master list of what to do each day).

I meant to get this up before December 1, but I quite literally finished all of these on December 1, and I already had posts scheduled and I haven’t had time to sit down and write until now……… All right, I’m off to start school for the day. We’ve already gotten our Advent acitivity for today done. I quite literally got out of bed and they pounced on me saying, “We have to find the 5!”

Science Sunday: review Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day lap book

2011-12-04T06:08:00.000-06:00

Whew, that was a mouthful, but I thought I’d show you what we’ve been using with our science pick for the year.

This is a printable lapbook created by “A Journey Through Learning” on Currclick. I got it during one of their periodic 50% sales, at some point I should join their affiliate program because I talk about them frequently enough.

There is also a black and white version, but I liked the appeal of color, and if I want I can print it in black and white.

Besides my kids are very back and forth on coloring.

What has been working for me is printing off a chapter’s worth of materials at a time. The picture here is showing Princess holding her drawing of what she thinks a mosasaurus looks like. Apparently they’re pink.

Very pink.

She thinks a lot of stuff is pink. But, it’s been an interesting window into their world having them tell me what they got from the readings for the day. Some days it’s been insightful, others it’s “They eat fish, Mommy.” Thanks kid, anything else?

All in all I really enjoy this. I especially enjoy that if we go back to this textbook I can just print off the material again and they can fill it out again.

Here’s a couple of fun things ya’ll did this week:

Journey to Josie shared about their leaf field trip and I LOVE how they spent time picking up trash first.

Fantastic Five shared how they tested for starches in their food using iodine.

Do you have anything you’ve found super helpful like this? Something that went with what you’ve been using and made it so much easier?

FYI: I changed how long the linky was open, I thought the people who linked up later in the week weren’t getting as much traffic as other people, so I decided to close it earlier so the people linking later in the week can instead be one of the first ones on Sunday morning. Oh, and this forces me to visit people earlier……….

One of the advantages of homeschooling

2011-12-03T06:37:00.000-06:00

Birthday parties at Chuck E Cheese in the middle of the week, and you practically have the place to yourself!

To quote Princess, “BEST DAY EVER!”

stART: A Dragon on the Doorstep

2011-12-01T06:57:00.000-06:00

“A Dragon on the Doorstep” is a cute story about two kids who find a dragon and they hide from it, and proceed to find several other animals in their house, and eventually play hide and seek with them.

One of the things I enjoyed about this book is seeing hints of the upcoming animals they’d discover.

After we read the book the kids wrote a sentence about the animal that was hiding in our house, and where it was hiding. Then they wrote a picture.

Superman didn’t follow directions completely, so he only wrote “monster.” Batman said, “Cheetah is hiding in the attic.” Princess never let me get a picture of her horse hiding on her bed.

I had plans of starting a book of their writings for the year, and then they went and hung it up on the dining room wall. So that’s obviously not happening……..

Review: Kid Concotions Magic Bubble Art

2011-11-30T09:33:00.001-06:00

I was given the opportunity to try out this fun kit for Growing Tree Toys.

It comes with papers, punch out shapes, stickers, and various other odds and ends to make several fun crafts.

But the key to it all are 4 small paper cups, several straws, and 3 bottles of dye.

It took a bit of experimenting, the instructions weren’t that clear, but we finally got it all worked out.

You fill the cup about an inch full of water, maybe a little more. Add in about 10-15 drops of dye. The more you add the brighter the color.

Then you add a few drops of soap. Stick the straw in and start blowing. After you’ve created some bubbles you put your paper on top and it creates a cool marbling effect.

The kids had a lot of fun happily playing with this for an hour or so.

They never produced any of the projects from the kit, but we came up with some cool marbled papers and projects. My favorite is Superman's “sunset.”

Doesn’t it look pretty?

Here’s my observations of it:

PROS

1. It’s a really cool idea, and the kids enjoyed the process.

2. There’s enough in the kit to have several rounds of making this. Just get more cups.

3. You can see instant results.

4. The projects in it are open-ended enough for non-project following kids like mine, but there are specific projects and ideas for kids who need more structure.

CONS

1. The cups that came with it are paper and will deteriorate fairly quickly under strenuous kid testing. By the end of our lengthy crafting session the structural integrity was compromised.

2. The instructions are not very specific. They give pictures of what you do, but don’t give specific instructions like “Add 15 drops of dye for a light coloring,” or other information like that.

3. It can be fairly messy, so keep that in mind, and it is a dye based project so if it gets on your skin it will not come off right away.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Would I buy this kit myself?

Yes and no. I’m sure I will be buying this for future birthday parties we go to. My kids would have enjoyed opening this as a present, and I will enjoy giving it.

This is a great, “Mom I’m bored” winter activity once you’ve covered it up with lots of newspaper or that old sheet for craft projects.

Owning this kit already, would I buy this kit again? Probably not for my kids. My kids weren’t as intrigued by the specific projects in this kit, but they loved doing it. I know SOME KIDS would love to redo this kit over and over again, but that’s not MY KIDS.

I’ve bought some other Alex craft kits from time to time for my kids, and I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed with them. You can get this kit from Growing Tree Toys for $15.95.

FYI: I’m planning on using this kit again for Jacob’s Ladder in my Advent Calendar.

Disclosure: I received one for review purposes through Blogtricity to review it for Growing Tree Toys. I did not receive any money, or any other compensation. The opinions and tips expressed are my own.

All About Reading Level 1 comes out today

2011-11-29T12:44:00.000-06:00

And I’m super excited because I’ve been waiting for it for a while. Now to ensure there’s money in the budget for it…….. But, All About Reading Level 1 is on sale right now!

Why am I so excited about All About Reading Level 1?

1. We love All About Spelling, and this looks to be in the same genre.

2. I’ve been using the sample of the program with Princess for the past few weeks and I haven’t had any fights recently about reading.

3. Did I mention I love All About Spelling?

4. I’ve looked at the samples of the book online and the length of the stories are a good length, as opposed to some of the other early readers I’ve gotten.

5. Another use for my spelling board……… Which by the way is working marvelously!

Now the only thing I’m debating about, and I’d love your thoughts, should I order the entire kit or just the teacher’s manual and workbooks?

Here’s my dilemma, I’m trying to be a good steward, and I have a lot of readers already. So, I probably don’t need them, but I want them.

I need opinions fast because IT’S ON SALE RIGHT NOW THROUGH DECEMBER 6!

Bible Alive: Baby Moses

2011-11-29T06:13:00.000-06:00

Earlier this year I studied Moses with my 2nd/3rd graders (there’s a ridiculously detailed post explaining the original project), and since we’ve started on our grand “Study the Bible in 2 Years” plan we’re going to be covering it again soon, so I’m trying out the lessons on my kids to start out.

Well, the other day Batman was happily running a dungeon with Jeff on a computer game, so to make Superman and Princess happier I let them make our craft. I got out some of the wooden babies from Casey’s Wood Products and an egg carton and let them have at it decorating their craft.

Of course we tested if our baskets floated in water, which they did quite successfully. This then led to the kids NEEDING to take a bath right then with their peg dolls.

That ended our Bible lesson until the next morning.

At which point we acted out the entire story using our peg dolls. Princess quite happily shared the mommy and little girl she colored, I contributed some of the ones I colored, and Superman contributed the basket.

Once there was a family who had a baby boy. It was against the law to have a baby boy, and the soldiers were going to come and kill the baby. So his mommy and daddy hid him for 3 months. It’s very hard to hide a baby that long because babies cry and are noisy.

Finally, they could hide the baby no longer, so they made a basket and covered it in tar (you could bring in this science experiment), and Miriam watched over him in the reeds.

While the basket was floating in the reeds, Pharaoh’s daughter came down and found him there. “A baby!,” she said, “I’ll name him Moses because I drew him out of the water.”

Miriam came up to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Would you like me to find someone who can take care of him for you?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Pharaoh’s daughter, “and I will play her to do it.”

Miriam brought her mother and Pharaoh’s daughter said, “I will pay you to take care of him, and when he is grown bring him back to me.”

One of the things I noticed when I was preparing for this lesson that I had never noticed before, Miriam was sitting right there watching over Moses. Admittedly, she was hiding, but it’s not like the scene in “Prince of Egypt” where he’s just randomly floating down the Nile river. He was being watched.

Have you ever suddenly noticed something in a story you’ve read many times?

Christmas traditions: buying presents for your sibling

2011-11-28T06:31:00.000-06:00

For the past several years we’ve had a Christmas tradition of taking one kid out at a time to do their Christmas shopping. We make a fun outing of it, letting them choose a place to eat, and getting things they usually don’t (desert).

This year we’ve done our shopping early, because Jeff took Batman to work and he got his shopping done the other two desperately had to do that as well. But Jeff got sick, so he couldn’t do that, instead I took Superman and Princess out on the same day, but different times.

It’s fun because you get to see their different personalities as they choose for different people. They all have a plan and are quite sure they know what they want to do. I don’t always understand their plans, but it is interesting to see for me.

We do the same thing for birthdays, and I love to see how much they love each other. These past few weeks I have been so thankful to see how well they play together. It’s really helped that it’s cooled down and they can go spend hours outside. I do mean hours. My neighbors must think I’m crazy, my kids are always in the front yard playing. What is it about front yards?

Science Sunday:

2011-11-27T06:55:00.000-06:00

Way back when we were studying Thomas Edison I got Snap Circuits Jr. to do with the whole group, but one of the other moms convinced me not to because of the large numbers of kids involved at the time. So, I’ve been saving it for the perfect “Mom, I’m bored….” activity. Aside from my standard response of “Go clean _________”, that answer they don’t like so much.

Well, earlier this week Jeff took Batman to work with him, leaving me with Superman and Princess. I was at a bit of a loss what to do with 2 of the 3 kids, I knew if I did any art projects Batman would be sad he missed it, and I didn’t want to do any lesson from our curriculum because then Batman would be missing out on the work…… You get the idea.

I got the kit out and we got to work trying out different experiments with it. I have to say I highly recommend this as a way to introduce early engineering and electricity, you can’t really hurt yourself or seriously cause any problems because of the design.

The projects are straight forward (or at least the first few), Superman and Princess were able to do them with some help, and after completing the first project once were able to repeat it without much help from me.

I foresee this being something we fiddle around with from time to time as we delve into it more. This will also be great for answering their many questions about electricity and such stuff…….

Cool posts linked up last week:

Cloud in a bottle from All Things Beautiful.

Solids and Liquids using melted crayons from Learning in Mayapur.

Pine Cone Hygometer from Tiger Chronicles.

How about you guys? This is probably the most open-ended science kit I’ve ever seen. It has about 100 projects you can do in this one kit, and there is a lot of opportunity for hands on learning. Have you found any kits like this one? There’s several others in the series that I can see eventually buying, in particular the one for making cars.

Advent Project part 1

2011-11-25T06:12:00.000-06:00

So, I showed you my plans and pictures of bits and bobs that I had completed, but I’m going to show you step by step and pictures of what it looks like completed, because I figure there’s got to be quite a few of you who are visual learners. Also, my plans are still revising as I go along.

Supplies needed for days 1-12: cardstock, 6x9 manila envelopes, small boxes to hold peg people, plastic animals, green felt, pipe cleaners, green fabric, popsicle sticks, blue paper, peg people (3 men, 4 women, 2 babies, 1 boy, and 1 giant [I get my peg people from Casey’s Wood Products]), acrylic paint (for peg people, could use markers)

Day 1: Creation- 2 peg dolls for Adam and Eve, and various small plastic animal toys from around the house, and a fat quarter of green fabric (could also be a sheet of felt). Additional activities: watch What’s In the Bible DVD 1, part 1. Potentially also play with the Creation bean bags.

Day 2- Fall of Man- felt leaves with pipe cleaners for the fig leaves, a small “fruit” made from beads and pipe cleaners, they’re going to make a snake from play dough for acting the story out. I hot glued the beads on to make it “more” child friendly, but it’s still not the best for little guys unsupervised. Also watch “What’s in the Bible DVD 1, part 2.”

Day3- Noah- play Memory or Go Fish with the cards found for this game (I printed two copies of the each page) and act out the story using animals from Day 1, and the 2 new peg dolls. Watch “Veggietales: Noah’s Umbrella.”

Day 4- Abraham- Abraham’s Journey game and act out the story using the peg dolls. Watch “Veggietales: Abe and the Amazing Promise.”

Day 5-Isaac- ram craft from Little Blots. I currently don’t have any random extra stories or videos aside from one I wrote.

Day 6-Jacob, Jacob’s ladder craft, read the story of Jacob and Esau.

Day 7- Judah, act out the story with popsicle sticks. I’m planning on emphasizing Judah’s growth from planning to sell Joseph to making himself responsible for Benjamin’s safety. Also watch “Veggietales: The Ballad of Little Joe” or listen to the Adventures in Odyssey.

Day 8- Moses, since I want this also to be the story of God’s Redemptive history, I’m including people not specifically in Jesus’ lineage. We’ll act out the story of God acting to save Moses as a baby. Afterwards we’ll watch “Veggietales: Moe and the Big Exit.” Or possibly “Prince of Egypt.”

Day 9- Rahab-make a red bookmark by braiding yarn. Thanks to Annette for this suggestion! We’ll watch “Veggietales: Josh and the Big Wall.”

Day 10- Ruth- We’ll build an obstacle course and go through it in pairs, like Ruth stayed with Naomi. We’ll also watch “Veggietales: Duke and the Great Pie War.”

Day 11- David- Read the story and act it out with the peg dolls. Then we’ll watch “Veggietales: Dave and the Giant Pickle.”

Day 12- King David- Read the story of David bringing the Ark back to Jerusalem. Make crowns for ourselves and decorate them.
And here are the printables I’ve created so far for this project, I have a small paper for each day that goes in or on the container, the dolls for acting out Judah’s story, and the angels for Jacob’s ladder.
Advent Printable
And that is all I have done to show in pictures. I’m hoping to get the rest of it all finished tonight/tomorrow to share on Saturday. I’ve changed my original plan somewhat. Tightened up some parts, and added in some others.

Quick tip: Calendar time

2011-11-24T21:24:00.001-06:00

Use double sided calendar cards (or just use single-sided ones, but double sided have more interest), and when it actually reaches that day turn it around.
Okay for whatever reason this has really helped my kids with keeping what day it is straight and they really like turning the card around.

I’ve tried adding in the days as we reach it and since we’re not good about doing calendar every day (how was I so good at it when teaching and not now?) it rather confuses them. This is BRILLIANT! If I do say so myself.

Rhode Island: Nathaniel Greene

2011-11-23T09:01:00.001-06:00

So, one of the famous people from Rhode Island is Nathaniel Greene, Revolutionary war hero and general. My library had NOTHING on him. Or nothing that is age appropriate, so I made something up.

I took no pictures of us working on this because I was busy reading, and it would just be pictures of heads looking down. But, I have a nifty printable, and a short Lego battle totally unrelated to him to share with you:

Nathaniel Greene Rhode Island

The Battle of Fort Ticonderoga as enacted by Legos!

The British soldiers thought they were safe in their fort, so they all went to sleep in their beds. Or bent over like they are bowing because that amused my boys.

The American soldiers attacked and took the fort with no shots fired.

Then came a scene of general carnage and destruction so horrible no pictures could be taken. Or if you followed the real history they looted the cannons and took them down to Boston through an amazing feat of engineering.

Oh, I forgot to say. I’m linking this up to All Things Beautiful and their geography/history linkie.

Rhode Island: Carousels

2011-11-22T03:37:00.000-06:00

Rhode Island is famous for carousels, and I LOVE carousels, so I was eagerly looking forward to this idea.

I searched my library and found 10 books there about carousels, and thought I’d hit the jackpot. Then I actually went there and all of them were checked out except for this one.

And luckily it’s a very cute story. Not great, but cute. It’s a story of how times change and how friendships change, but stay the same. I loved the ending, and how the friends worked together.

Afterwards I decided to have the kids make their own carousel horses, and after a quick Google search I found this great site of carousel coloring pages. I chose the gif one and shrunk them down to the size I wanted and printed them on cardstock.

I set them to happily coloring their menagerie of carousel creatures. Here’s a few carousel facts:

1. If all 4 feet are on the ground that means the animal does not go up and down.

2. The horse with the most color and the most style is the lead horse.

3. If the carousel has more than just horses on it, it’s called a menagerie.

When they were done coloring we used q-tips dipped in water and smeared them for a lovely paint effect.

As you can see ours was a menagerie. Including mythical creatures, which I am very proud to say my kids could properly name all of them.

Yes, I am a geek.

Once I can get them to sit still again. I swear someone poured ants down their pants and they haven’t been able to sit still for longer than 10 minutes at a time….. So, once they’re sitting still again I will have them cut out the creatures and glue them to popsicle sticks for their very own carousel figure.

Princess is 5!

2011-11-21T09:58:00.001-06:00

Who wouldn’t love this face?

I love her freckles. I think she gets away with stuff just based on those freckles. She is so full of life and energy. She sings all the time. I have more videos of her singing than you would believe.

I haven’t been doing gratitude posts, though I enjoy reading them, but when I think about what I’m thankful for it always comes down to pictures like those up above. I’m grateful for a mostly happy and healthy family. They love to hang out together and are so loving and helpful to their siblings.

Science Sunday: frogs

2011-11-20T07:00:00.000-06:00

I thought it’d be good to review our study of frogs.

We read this book and also reread the section on frogs and toads in our science book.

Afterwards we talked about the differences between frogs and toads.

Earlier I had gone over to my swimming creatures pinboard and found this idea by Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational (printable included there). She had linked it up to Science Sunday right after we’d studied frogs and toads, so I didn’t do it then, but saved it as a review activity for a day when the kids wanted a craft and I wasn’t up for a big craft.

So, they happily colored and talked to me about the differences.

Frogs have longer legs for hopping, and have smoother skin (generally speaking).

Toads have shorter legs and have bumpier skin.
We also looked at the difference between frogs and toads for more information.

By the way my boys decided their frogs were poisonous, so they colored them bright colors to warn predators they were poisonous.

It was even more impressive when we found a toad in a neighbor's front yard and they correctly identified it, and then spent 10 minutes chasing the poor thing around the yard.

It’s so much fun when they show off what they’ve remembered from earlier lessons.

I'm also going to try and start showing off some posts that were linked up in previous weeks. So, here's a few that stood out to me:

Changed by the Maker showed off her artificial gravity experiment.

And Next Gen Homeschooler made plastic using milk as part of her Letter M studies. I know it is bad grammar to start off a sentence with a conjunction, but I'm lazy.

That's it for this week, I can't wait to see what ya'll have done!

50 State Study: New York

2011-11-19T08:28:00.001-06:00

Amazon.com Widgets

This is one of those states that I know we spent several weeks on, but there wasn’t much that was bloggable about it. And yes bloggable is a word.

So…… let’s see what’s in their books:

Norman Rockwell- on the inside is the story written by that kid. My kids only wrote one sentence, but for older guys you could challenge them to come up with more.

Building New York- one of the non-bloggable activities. We read the book, and then put the timeline of activities in order from the page at the back of the book. I liked this one because it does a great job of providing a nice timeline activity to look at.

Under New York- a great story about what is happening underground. I learned some great things from reading it, and was very amused by it.

Tenth Avenue Cowboy- A wonderful story about a boy who dreams of being a cowboy, and how his dream comes true. Everyone wrote how their dream came true, but most of the kids wrote rather silly answers.

My Ideal Park- we tied this into “What to do About Alice,” but it’s not supremely related. Teddy Roosevelt founded our national parks, and so we talked about that a lot.

Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt pages- These are just a simple 2 flap book with their images glued on top. If the boy from the book pictured above had written smaller he would only have one book with something written about each of those presidents written under the flap. But…. he’s six, and has rather messy handwriting.

Statue of Liberty- We measured it out and saw the relative sizes….. link to the printable is there as well as a link to the site that had the measurements.

And finally: New York State Symbols

Well, now I’m staying current, more or less, with our state study reviews. I just need to go back and add in the ones I haven’t done yet……..

North Carolina: Blackbeard’s Last Fight

2011-11-18T06:32:00.000-06:00

We read this when we first studied North Carolina, and the kids were a little weirded out by it then because it’s a little scary, but they’re older now, and a bit more bloodthirsty, and besides our geography group skews heavily to the boy side of things, so anything with pirates is good.

When I read it 3 of the boys (including mine) were absolutely spell bound and kept creeping closer and closer to me, so they were almost on top by the time I was done reading it.

At first I didn’t have a great idea for a craft, and then as we did the protest signs for “Freedom on the Menu,” it came to me! Blackbeard’s corpse sinking into the waters, yes that was our craft.

So, I got out small Dixie cups, popsicle sticks, and cut index cards into little bitty pieces to fit into the cups (approximately fourths). Then I set the kids to drawing their Blackbeard, when they were done they glued their card to a popsicle stick and we stuck it through the bottom of the cup.

They happily sat there pulling him up and down in the cup, and watching his body drown….. Yes, they loved this craft.

Afterwards Superman had a blast stacking cups and making pyramids.

Advent season

2011-11-17T06:05:00.000-06:00

This year I am going to try and be more focused in our plans for Christmas and the Advent season, and towards that end I have a plan.

Hopefully the plan will go well.

Day 1- God creates the world, play a Concentration game using cards from Adam Names the Animals. For other things we have done with Creation, go to: Creation book part 1(follow the link trail), Creation book 2, Creation game. This is going in an Altoid tin, I’ve altered somewhat…… Mainly gluing scrapbook paper all over it.

Day 2- Adam and Eve peg dolls, along with a snake and a garden of Eden play mat (also known as a handkerchief colored with sharpie and food dye). The idea is from Our Country Road.
My plan is to use the play mat for the others days in general.

Day 3- Noah, I’m still debating on this one. The kids are advocating for another play set and an ark…… You know another one.

Day 4- Abraham, Sarah, and baby Isaac, story of Isaac as the promised child.

Day 5- sheep- tell the story of Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice.

Day 6- Jacob’s ladder. I probably will put the supplies in to do this craft. Now to figure out how to do that……..

Day 7- Joseph and Judah, since Judah is the one who is in Jesus’ line, I’ll probably emphasize how Judah offered to be responsible for Benjamin.

Day 8-Moses in a basket- to show how God is keeping Israel safe even in the worst times.

Day 9- Rahab and the spies (one of 4 women mentioned in Jesus’ line, including Mary). I’m still debating on what I’m going to do here. I don’t want to do an endless line of peg dolls, but at the same time the kids love them.

Day 10- Ruth Boaz and probably Naomi- another of the women in Jesus’ line, I find it interesting that most of the women mentioned are not actually Hebrew.

Day 11- David and Goliath- more peg dolls

Day 12- David as king, probably the story of David and the ark of the covenant- make crowns

Day 13- King Solomon- King Solomon and how he asked for wisdom

Day 14- Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1:5-25)

Day 15- Mary (Luke 1:26-44), Mary nativity doll

Day 16- John born (Luke 1:57-80)

Day 17- Joseph (Matthew 1:18-25), Joseph nativity doll

Day 18- Journey to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1-7), board game from Living Waters (printable)

Day 19- shepherds (Luke 2:18-20), shepherd nativity figures, possibly drummer boy

Day 20- magi (Matthew 2:1-12), magi nativity figures, maybe frankincense and myrrh

Day 21- Simeon (Luke 2:25-35)

Day 22- Anna (Luke 2:36-43)

Day 23- escape to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-18) pyramid puzzle or stacking cups

Bolded items I’m still debating on what will go in those particular boxes. My plan is to wrap them in individual boxes and hide them all over the house with numbers on them. I deliberately ended it on the 23rd because I’ve found for us that Christmas Eve and Christmas tend to be fairly busy so I don’t want to try and plan a special event that we won’t be able to do. I’d rather finish it up early and just read stories on the last two days.

Over at Tired, Need Sleep she also has a great Advent calendar which I’m going to print out for my Sunday School class. I also have a ton of ideas over on my Christmas board and my Advent board.

Linking over to: Ten O'Clock Nativity Post

North Carolina: The Flyers

2011-11-16T06:13:00.000-06:00

“The Flyers” is a very cute book with several kids who have been watching Orville and Wilbur Wright trying to fly. Each of the kids dreams about what might happen sometime in the future if they are successful.

Most of their dreams have come true, not always how they were thinking. The back of the book gives examples of how their dreams came true.

I thought this was a super cute way of telling this story, interspersing what actually happened during the first flight with what the kids are dreaming about.

After we read it, each of the kids drew a picture and wrote a sentence about their dreams for a future plane. Wright Flyer printable

There were lots of plane/car creations or plane/helicopter hybrids.

I did this first because I knew once we started

flying paper airplanes, there would be no going back. This was also our last activity for the day. I especially loved that our littlest one got in on the airplane throwing fun.

Our last time around we made this a science experiment (over at Almost Unschoolers she showed me a much better plane), which I could tell my kids still remembered because they tried to make all sorts of modifications to their planes to see if that worked.

Of course a few ended up in trees.

North Carolina: Greensboro sit-ins

2011-11-15T06:21:00.000-06:00

Freedom on the Menu is about the Greensboro sit-ins that happened during the 1960s. It mainly focuses on a family and the daughter, who is about 7 or 8, and tells it from her point of view.

She talks about how unfair it is to not be allowed to sit at the counter on the swivel chairs and eat an ice cream sunday, and how proud she is of her brother and sister for participating in the protests.

This led to some great discussions in our group, what is fair, and what isn’t. How can you protest something unfair without being violent or disrespectful.

Afterwards we made protest signs with index cards and popsicle sticks. I could tell they really got it when they started their own protests.

Snow Doggy joined in too.

Linking up to: All Things Beautiful, Journey to Excellence

Something wet fell from the sky and it mocked me

2011-11-14T06:13:00.000-06:00

No really it did.

See I’ve been waiting MONTHS to draw with watercolor pencils and leave the picture out in the rain. I saw the idea somewhere (this is why I needed pinterest, because my Evernote had gotten way too full and loaded two months later), and knew I HAD to do it.

Well……… It rained and after we’d been running around like madmen for a couple of minutes because we could feel drops of rain every minute or so. Yes, it’s that bad.

I remembered this craft, and I got out my watercolor pencils and some supposedly water-soluble markers, and we got to it.

AND THEN IT STOPPED RAINING! Even feeling raindrops once a minute.

So, here’s what happens if you lay your pictures on the wet floor. Not quite the cool droplet effect.

BIG SIGH, and the saddest part of all? It didn’t even rain enough to make mud or really make any puddles.

IT MOCKED ME!

Science Sunday: North Carolina: tar and water proofing

2011-11-13T06:25:00.000-06:00

North Carolina is nicknamed the “Tar Heel state,” I read a couple of reasons for this but it all boiled down to there is a lot of tar there. Tar was originally used for water-proofing boats. I don’t have any boats to try water-proofing with, but I have paper.

North Carolina Tar Heel State

First, I smeared the various things that have been used for water-proofing onto the papers and let that soak in for a while (I gave it about 30 minutes).

Then each of the kids got to take turns putting water with an eye dropper onto the various pieces of paper.

As you can see it was very exciting results. I was even surprised by some of them.

I wasn’t too surprised the butter and oil repelled water, those I expected because they were used in the colonial time periods to make cheap semi-translucent window coverings that were somewhat waterproof. The paint also didn’t surprise me because we used paint to seal wood against water for our houses. The rubber glue and the Elmer’s glue did surprise me. Elmer’s because it is water-soluble, and the rubber cement because I only put on a very thin layer.

Of course the plain old paper immediately soaked up the water. I want to repeat the experiment and keep checking back to see if it has soaked in, that was my original plan, but some of the papers were thrown away right away.

How about you guys? Anything fun this week? Any surprising new discoveries?

Ren Fest 2011

2011-11-12T17:31:00.000-06:00

It’s time for my annual Renaissance Festival post. This year was probably our best year because there were no melt downs and the kids were so excited about it! And we got to see the joust 3 times!

My last minute cloaks I slaved over for hours because it was going to be cold, and hten it was too warm for them. Also this is the only time that the boys tabards even resemble being on right. I didn’t have time to line them, and it really needed a belt to keep them in place.

Here’s my other major sewing project for this year’s festival. Jeff’s pants and vest. The vest didn’t come out the way Jeff envisioned, so I’m going to be switching out the lining. That and for some reason the trim made the fashion fabric pucker. Okay, I have theories on that one, but not going to go into it for your sanity’s sake……

Okay, end of sewing related comments.

Princess was happy as a clam because she got to spend a lot of one on one time with me or with Tara and I. Lots of girl time! And she got to pick out an early birthday present, she picked a crown.

And a necklace. The girl was quite the bargain shopper.

We actually saw the Grand Parade, which meant I got to take lots and lots of pictures of costumes, and then I sit there and think about what I could change on my costume.

Highlight for the boys day: Getting to meet the German knight and have him sign their pennants.

Princess and Superman both stuffed dolls there, Princess a pink unicorn, named Unicorny, and Superman a troll, named Trolly. It goes with his blue dragon, Dragony.

Of course there are the required messy eating shots:

Also known as “meat as big as your face” pictures.

I’m actually even in a few pictures. Okay, I included that one of Princess because I really like it.

That was our festival for the year.

50 State Study: Virginia

2011-11-12T06:41:00.000-06:00

ARGH! I had this almost 100 percent done and then it disappeared on me! Evil evil computer. Now to reconstruct, but how will I rewrite the brilliant quips?

Amazon.com Widgets

George Washington- I’m still amused at how much they liked making fake teeth. But I guess any activity with play dough is fun. The piece here is a 3 page book with one fact on each page.

Chincoteague pony- or in the boys’ case, the amazing Technicolor pony

Thomas Jefferson-or design your own house. The boys houses still amuse me, dedicated Halloween room indeed……

Patrick Henry- Two months later my kids still remember that he failed as a farmer and a store keeper but he was good at arguing.

Robert E Lee- I’m still amused and find it interesting that he was actually against slavery, but felt he should help his fellow Southerner. Imagine how much sooner the war would have been over if he had fought on the North’s side. Or maybe he was a child of Rome, and that’s why he fought on that side (okay, who got that reference?). If you want pictures to make your own piece, they can be found here. I just folded half a piece of paper and had them write a fact about him.

Civil War soldiers from Junior General – I also found a copy of the Monitor and the Merrimac, which I was very happy to find. They’re two of the famous battleships from that war, and I was very sad my library didn’t have any good books on the subject.

Promise Quilt- I think this was almost Princess’ favorite activity, cut paper into lots and lots of small pieces and glue it on, yes please.

And finally, the state symbols booklet:

Virginia

Now before it crashes on me again, head over to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns for other books people’s kids are reading. All of these were big hits with my kids!

American History: Lexington and Concord

2011-11-11T06:37:00.000-06:00

The militias had been warned in time, and were ready and waiting for the approaching British soldiers.

The British soldiers approached eagerly. They were sure the colonists would surrender at the first sign of a soldier, no shots would be fired and their victory was assured.

Meanwhile, the colonists had been joined by a medieval knight, who was armed with a crossbow and was twice as tall as everyone else.

The soldiers kept approaching and the colonists realized this was a moment that would make history, but they were ordered not to fire, maybe it could be talked out if everyone remained calm.

But someone didn’t listen. No one knows for sure who fired the first shot, but shots were fired and there was casualties on both sides. The British and Americans left the battle with no clear winner, but obviously at war.

The British troops continued on to Concord, this time the Colonists were aided by a zombie spearman. He is formidable in battle.

Again the hope was for no shots to be exchanged, and again hopes were dashed as colonists and soldiers exchanged shots.

I was really impressed at how well my kids remembered all of this lesson, some of it was from reading it, but most of it was from watching Liberty Kids. If you haven’t seen the show, it’s currently available on Netflix streaming or you can buy the DVDs (which we have done). It gives a very accurate and unbiased (there is a main character who represents the British side) view of the whole thing from the Boston Tea Party all the way to the signing of Constitution.

Jeff and I have watched pretty much all of them with the kids and have gotten into arguments about whether it was accurate, and then looked it up and discovered they were right and we were wrong.

So, I’m gonna link up to: All Things Beautiful, and Journey to Excellence.

American History: Troubles in Boston

2011-11-10T07:03:00.001-06:00

So far this year I’ve been feeling uninspired by our history. I couldn’t figure it out, and then a light bulb went on. Most of what we’ve done has been paper and pencil stuff, and that’s not my kids. They need to move and do stuff. So I give you “Troubles in Boston,” as acted out by our American Revolution soldiers set and a few random zombies.

The British soldiers were guarding the town from rowdy colonists.

The colonists didn’t like all of the extra soldiers, so a mob of them came and started crowding the soldiers.

The soldiers panicked and shot into the crowd wounding and killing several people. This led to more anger in the colonies, particularly after the famous wood cutting made by Paul Revere.

In response to other things as well as this (which I won’t go into here) the British government raised taxes on several different things, including tea.

The colonists (accidentally played here by Redcoats) were infuriated and boycotted tea, and one night protested by storming one of the ships in the harbor and throwing all of the tea overboard.

Well, Britain couldn’t let this stand, so they imposed the Intolerable Acts which was yet more taxes and more things to make everyone angry.

The British were tired of all of this American rabble-rousing, so they planned to secretly go out at night and arrest several of the leaders of this crowd and take away the guns of suspected rebel towns. Paul Revere and others heard about this plan and rode off to warn the people.

Paul Revere was arrested by the British soldiers and was forced to stop for the night, but not before word got out. His friend, who did not get a poem written about him and therefore is not a household name, was able to warn everyone else about the British plans.

Stay Tuned for the ensuing battle…….. While you’re waiting head on over to All Things Beautiful for more history/geography posts.

New York: Measuring the Statue of Liberty

2011-11-09T08:03:00.001-06:00

Just like we did for whales, we measured out how big the statue of liberty was. We measured several different parts of her using information I got from the Statue of Liberty information site. It is fascinating to see how big she is.

I wish I could say the kids were suitable impressed, but there were more interested at that particular instant in running around like mad men and trying their very best to see who could be the silliest.

I am sure this news totally shocks you.

So, for me this activity was spent with lots of, “No, look over here! No really, if you pay attention we’ll get done very quickly.” At which point I imagined all sorts of ways I could glue them to the floor. Which probably would not have been a good idea.

Instead I’ll leave you with our printable:

Statue of Liberty New York

New York: Tenth Avenue Cowboy

2011-11-08T05:07:00.000-06:00

Tenth Avenue Cowboy is about a boy who moves from his ranch out west to New York City during the early 1900s. All he wants is to be a cowboy, and one day his dream comes true, but not the way he wanted.

After reading it we talked about dreams that came true, but not the way we wanted. Boy K had a great example, and Princess had a decent example, but my boys…….

After the discussion I had the kids all draw a picture of their dream coming true and write how it was different than expected. Well……. Batman dreamed he was opening presents and the present was him. Superman dreamed he was eating all sorts of food.

Princess was the primary one who understood the assignment, but her answer was very personal, so I’m not going to share it here.

That day the boys were just silly. Silly Superman, Silly Batman.

New York: Oh Alice!

2011-11-07T08:47:00.001-06:00

“What To Do About Alice”- is a cute picture book about Alice Roosevelt, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt. It covers her life from birth to sometime after her father leaves the White House.

I highly recommend the book both for its wonderful pictures and for its great vocabulary. Oh, and she’s so darn plucky!

But once we were done reading I was struggling to think of a good activity to do with the book. I don’t really want to encourage the kids to follow her example…….. So, I alighted on the oh so boring and oh so great for educational purposes write a sentence about her…… We glued a picture of her on top and called it good.

I know boring, but then we talked about her Dad, Teddy Roosevelt. For some reason our library didn’t have a particularly good one for reading aloud, it had several very good ones for 3rd grade and up, but nothing that was a good picture book. Instead we talked about who he was and what he did.

Most notably of which is creating our national parks service. If you’ve ever visited a national forest thank Teddy Roosevelt. At this point my kids started being impressed because Batman loved the Grand Canyon.

After talking about that they designed their perfect park.

They happily drew and drew and drew, and you can tell their personalities. Princess’ dream park has flowers and pretty stuff and her friends.

Superman and Batman’s dream parks have AWESOME playgrounds, and Superman added the extra detail of trees and water.

Sigh, water, I’ve heard that it can fall from the sky from time to time and get the ground wet. Is that true?

Science Sunday: Prehistoric water dinosaurs

2011-11-06T05:22:00.000-06:00

This past week or so, we’ve been learning about prehistoric water creatures like the mozosaurus or the elasmasaurus. You know the problem with most dinosaur names is they’re not in spellcheck, so you can’t be sure if you spelled it right or not.

Well, we were talking about the elasmasaurus family and how it had two distinguishing features: a long neck and many many bones in their hand.

First we examined the long neck and tried to hold up a broom by the end of the handle.

We discovered it was much harder than it looked and all declared that we wouldn’t really want to have a long neck like that because it seems like a lot of work to hold your head up. Then we brainstormed why it has such a long neck.

Our theory, because it helps it get into small spaces to find fish.

Than we examined

Okay, I interrupt this post to share a funny quote I just heard “Bad dog, bad. Shame dog, shame.”

Shame?

Okay, continuing on. So, next we looked at our hands and counted how many finger bones we had and how many joints. The Elasamsaurus had 20 something joints in its hand, giving it amazing maneuverability. It could turn on a dime and give you five cents change.

Mwa ha ha ha, I crack myself up.

And finally we drew what we thought they looked like based off of the skeleton. Surprisingly enough Princess’ dinosaur had pink skin.

Shocking I know.

So, what’d ya’ll do this week? I’m still slowly going back and reading all of the posts from last week. I love seeing what everyone does, and try to comment on all the posts, key word is TRY. But please do remember this is a SCIENCE linky, not general crafts, I’ve had to delete a few posts that had nothing to do with science (and I’m pretty forgiving on that science front).

Local legends

2011-11-05T06:06:00.000-05:00

Do you ever investigate or look into local legends? We have a local newspaper that does a semi-regular feature about local legends, heroes, villians, and the like. I’ve found out about the guy that the street in front of my house is named after and things like that.

Well, this past week we went to Hutto, a small town near us and while we were there we had to pose at the famous Hutto Hippo.

Here’s where local legend comes into play.

There are several versions of how hippos came to be the town mascot. I mean you don’t tend to think of hippos when you’re talking about central Texas.

The “official” version, or the one I usually hear goes like this:

Once a train stopped in town to reload and get water and such stuff. Well, a circus was part of that train and they took the opportunity to water and feed their animals, and suddenly a cry went up, “The hippo has escaped! The hippo escaped!” (Now, I’m picturing this with crayon drawings, aren’t you? Maybe like kid stick figures.)

Well, there was a frantic scramble, and the railroad station is suddenly sending a telegraph up and down line to Taylor and Round Rock to “stop all trains, there’s a hippo loose in Hutto.” Of course there was some doubt on the other end, but they stopped the trains.

Eventually the hippo was found in a local stream, up to its hocks in mud and quite happy. After several hours of enticing the thing, it finally waddled out and back onto the train.

That’s the story I usually heard, but when I was asked by my in-laws how the mascot came to be and I looked it up to confirm I also found:

1. Back in the early 1900s (same time period as the first story) their football team would take the field and being big burly ranch boys the other team took one look at them and said, “We can’t play them, they’re as huge as hippos!”

2. The final one is that Hutto didn’t have jerseys and they went onto the field wearing feed sacks, and the opposing coach said they “looked like hippos in those uniforms.” The Hutto players decided to make it a badge of honor.

I don’t know which story is the real one, but I think the circus one makes for the best story. They really take pride in their hippos, you’ll see people with a hippo statue in their front yard, most businesses have one somewhere. You can even buy your own hippo statue from the chamber of commerce. If Jeff didn’t think I was crazy I’d be kinda tempted to get on, that and it’d be disloyal to our “round rock”…. round rock just isn’t as amusing a story. Well it is, but it was like the fourth or fifth name choice the first few were taken.

Oh and as a side point, don’t you feel sorry for those girls? The Lady Hippos? I kinda do, but if you’re smart, you really don’t want to mess with a hippo, they are deadly.

Take me to your leader

2011-11-04T22:52:00.001-05:00

After saying that they went into my car and zapped Princess with a ray gun.

It was HORRIBLE! Horrible, oh the screaming, the screaming. The memory pians, it even PAINS me to this day.

And the winner of Momsense is #5:

Digital Memories: The Schleicher Family said...

For me, Momsense is the ability to simultaneously cook dinner, clean the bathroom, change a diaper, practice spelling words, and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and feeling an amazing sense of accomplishment about it!

I’ve left a comment on her site and am waiting for her to get back to me. If she doesn’t get back to me by Monday I’ll be picking a new winner.

Halloween, the post my Mom has been looking forward to

2011-11-03T08:57:00.001-05:00

I’ve gotten several not so subtle comments about a lack of seeing Halloween pictures, “Where’s my grandbabies? Why haven’t you put any pictures up?” So on and so forth………

So Mom, this post’s for you!

It’s amazing how kids change from year to year. Last year the kids kind of willingly helped out, this year they were more willing to dig in, with the exception of Princess who was just not down wit this whole idea of getting her hands dirty…….

I tried the idea for the extra pumpkin we had of using the cookie cutter and a mallet. I discovered: 1. It needs a metal one to work at all and 2. This plan destroyed my little cookie cutter, and I probably needed a better mallet.

Maybe I should have read the directions on the post instead of just looking at the picture on Pinterest…….

I made the bat wings using more or less the same plan as last year. Sigh, it’s formatting all funny. Fixed it by deleting the pictures and re-putting them in.

As per usual for my kids they of course changed their minds right up until the last minute, which is why I didn’t start making any costumes until last Friday…… And then spent an afternoon mumbling under my breath about tucks in little girl dresses and why don’t they cooperate?

This year the kids were really into it, and so there are fewer shots of them in action. But, they were happy to glom onto a group of neighbors and run excitedly from house to house. Princess is the only ones in the pictures because she was the slowest moving of them all.

There were less houses with lights on this year in our little loop, so we actually expanded beyond it to the next few streets.

All in all they made a good haul, and I rather think our pumpkins have a lot of character, what do you think?