A Pretty Fall Day

Fun in the sun:

Our Little Project

We've been trying for a while now to fix up our basement for the kids. We have a finished basement and it has been everything from a movie area to a school room to it's current status as store room ;) We had our work cut out for us!

There's two rooms down there. One is a playroom and I was able to get that painted and spruced up a bit last winter. The other room is bigger and we've been up in the air about what to do with it.

One of the things holding me up was paint. The room was baby blue and I hated it. Basements are cold, in my opinion, and the wall color made it even colder. I'm convinced of it! But I couldn't decide what color I wanted. I finally chose a green color but when I brought the samples home I hated it too. Finally I found what I wanted and, with help from my mom, got it painted right before we left for vacation! I knew if we waited until we got home it wouldn't get done at all. There's just too much going on during the school year.

We also have alot of big things down there. Like a ten foot counter top. Couldn't decide to keep it or not. Then it dawned on me that it would be the perfect place for my Little Builders! It's now a Lego table :) We'll be putting up a couple of shelves so they can display their work too.

Here's the half of the room that's done:
Nicky and Megan are sitting at the Lego table. Isn't it great?! We have some of their video games down there too and the perfect place to curl up with a book. That's my favorite rocker :)

Teh other half of the room is still a little messy but nothing compared to what it was! Our old kitchen table is down there for a craft table and my wonderful (lonely) treadmill.

We still have pictures to hang and a few other things to clean out. There are two closets down there that need attention. But I think it's finally coming together! We can start moving more toys down right away! :)

We bought the stools for the Lego table today and Nicky and Megan were helping Todd put them together:

It's Fun to Be a Girl!

Everything gets to be pink!

Megan's new boots :) Yes, I tried to talk her into the really cute brown ones, but she would not have it! She loves her pink :)

More Co-op Fun

This semester, I signed up to teach a class on pioneer life to the k-1st grade group. Then, when it looked like we might need another class in the afternoon, I volunteered to teach gym. While teaching two classes has been a bit stressful (I do NOT know how others do it!), I've really had fun!

Teaching little kids has it's challenges, of course. They all really have alot to say! Just getting everyone to sit and listen for a minute can be tough! I think this is why the school day is so long! The teachers spend all day just trying to explain something! They actually have some very cute, although sometimes irrelevant, things to say. They keep me giggling :)

So yesterday, we read about how Pa Ingals managed to get a cow on the prairie for the family and then we made butter! At first, I wanted to let each of them make a small jar of butter all by themselves so they could take it home and show their parents. Then I remembered how much shaking is involved. It takes awhile and I was thinking little arms would get very tired. So I spilt them into groups of three so they could take turns shaking. This worked out very well except they all really wanted to take it home :) I wish I had thought of bringing extra jars so they could each take some! They really were excited!

I took pictures of everyone shaking their jar of cream so I could share their fun at the showcase in a few weeks, but I thought I would post a few here for my friends who read my blog :)

When it wasn't their turn to shake, they had a coloring page of a pioneer mom and daughter churning butter to work on. Let me just say, I've been impressed with some of the coloring done in my class! I can't wait to show the parents!

When the butter was all done, we served it up on homemade bread for them! The kids have been pretty good about trying the food I've brought in. There's always someone not very interested though and that's ok too :) Thomas let us butter half his bread with every intention of trying a little, but he changed his mind when he got to it. He liked the unbuttered half though! You can see their jar of butter there too.

Most everyone loved their little snack and asked for seconds! I had enough that everyone could have another half piece and they were thrilled! (probably no one ate their lunch after filling up on bread and butter! Sorry!)

I have really had fun teaching them about some of what the pioneer life was like. As an adult who truly loves her modern conveniences, I'm just amazed at their self reliance! I mean, forget the fact that they had no T.V. or things like that...they didn't even a grocery store! Can you imagine?!?

A COSI Adventure

Today was our much anticipated COSI field trip! Each of the boys had workshops for a short time in the morning, so we planned to have lunch there and spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around indulging ourselves in the World of Science. And that's what we did :)

I apologize to all of you who are not grandparents to my children :) There are alot of pictures here! I really couldn't help myself. We love COSI!

I remember this pendulum in the atrium of the old COSI building from when I was in gradeschool. Yep, it's been around awhile :) Do you see what my angel is doing?? UGH!
First up were the workshops. Brandon's was called Pumpkin Science. There was alot of things exploding from chemical reactions so he loved it! I'm raising a new generation of Mythbusters :)
Nicholas' was a study on magnets. He was so very excited when they brought out Legos with magnets on them :)
While we waited for our younger kids to start their workshop, we played! We spent a good deal of time in Gadgets. It's very hands-on and the kids love it!

Shelly and Carla entertaining some Little Builders:
Nicholas loves this...gadget ;) You throw a ball in the funnel then turn the wheel until the weight drops shooting the ball up into the air and over to another then down the wall in a series of trays and tunnels that you can desgn yourself.
Here's what the other side looks like:
He even helped his baby sister :)
My boys seriously love science. You can see their minds working; absorbing and sorting all these experiences. I love that!
Nicholas and friends working the pulleys. That's Kyle, Colin, and Rhyse has a hold of the rope pulling Nicholas up.
Brandon pulled himself up. Those pulleys are tough!
This is the pulley outside. I didn't get the other side of it but they are pulling up a car!
Progress is one of my favorites. It's really neat to see how far we've come.

Brandon, Nicholas, and Eli at the horse and buggy station:
We had just left Oceans and my crew played like crazy people in the water! Check out how soaked they are!

Megan for Mayor!



This show is really fun. That guy is using liquid nitrogen which is so cold it instantly turns to vapor (it boils at around -320 degrees or something crazy like that):
Taking off into outer space:
We had a great day! Thank you, Angi, for planning such great outings for our group!

A Party for the Birthday Boy

We were finally able to have a few friends and family over to celebrate Brandon's birthday. He was really anxious to get everyone outside for a game of capture the flag and because of the mud, we did all the indoor stuff first ;)

Poor, little Megan was the only girl at the party...
We don't drink soda, but we wanted to serve the kids something besides...water ;) While shopping, I remembered a friend of mine had put Izze on her blog and that it was all natural so I picked up a couple of cartons to try. They were a big hit! Thank you, Angi!

As far as the kids' cakes go, I bake and Todd decorates. Brandon chose a football this year:
I didn't go outside to take any pictures of him running around with his friends. I also forgot to get a picture of Brandon with his grandparents. SHEESH! I'm really slipping in the picture area lately...

Even though the weather could've been better, he really had a great time! Better late than never!

The Mystery of History

I love history. If you'd asked me while I was in school though, I would have told you that it's the most boring subject to have to study! I didn't realize how very interesting and fun history is until I was grown.

Kristen was three and we were in Fort Myers visiting my mom (she had a winter home there at the time). As I was driving to the beach one day, I drove right past a sign for Thomas Edison's winter home. It had been turned into a museum and they had tours. I thought that sounded like a nice break from the sun and we made plans to go check it out. Well, it was amazing! I learned so much more about him and his very interesting life and inventions that I ever learned in school.

Now that I homeschool my kids, one of my goals is to make history fun and interesting to my kids. I realize that not everyone will have a passion for it, and that's ok, but I think they'll learn it better if the can have some experiences that are memorable. I do this largely with field trips. There really is no better way to get a hand-on experience than that. But we are limited as to where we can go. We can't experience European history or the pyramids or the Great Wall of China. (although I would love that ;))

What I've done instead is carefully chosen our history curriculum for the year. I read and research, go to curriculum fairs and talk to other parents trying to find the perfect combination of good literature and factual information. I've tried Beautiful Feet which I loved, but the "textbook" part was somewhat over their heads and difficult to follow. I do still use alot of the books though through the elementary years. They are fantastic!

We've also tried Sonlight as well. This is a literature based curriculum and the reading books for language arts go along with the history lesson being taught. So many books! I was so very excited and sure I'd found the perfect one. But the "textbook" part of the year that we tried was the encyclopedia on the computer. Now I'm not against using encyclopedias; in fact as I kid I used to read ours all the time! But this was on the computer and I found it very difficult to operate. We would spend half our day just trying to find the answers to the questions in his workbook which left very little time for the literature part. We ditched the encyclopedia and just read the fantastic historical fiction and nonfiction for the rest of the year. We very much enjoyed the books, but it still didn't have the balance that I wanted.

This year we are trying the Mystery of History. It is a very detailed history program that incorporates the happenings in the Bible into secular history to give you a full, chronological history of the world. When I started reading it, I thought "Perfect!", but after we started I was having doubts. Were there enough facts for my fact-loving boy? (this is Brandon's history curriculum) I dug out my Abeka history book and prepared to switch.

But I think we'll continue giving it a try. Brandon seems to enjoy it more and more each day. There are activities listed after each days lesson that I thought would "bring history to life" for him and he's really getting into them! So we'll see how it goes :)

Here are a couple of his favorite activities:

He read about Stonehenge yesterday and the activity was to make a large circle outside so you can see how difficult it was for them. You could use anything you wanted to make your circle:

We have lots of Legos ;)

This one was when he was learning about the Sumerians and their false gods. His assignment was to build a ziggurat which was what they called their temples:

I love the detail of this one! We have some Indiana Jones Lego sets that include some idols. They really came in handy!

Of course, any curriculum that allows him to build using Legos is ok in his book ;) (there have been other activities...he got to use clay the first week) but I do think it's thorough enough also. I have the first two books which should take us up to the middle ages so we'll get a pretty good look at it. We'll let you know!