Some Fall Homeschool (afterschool) fun

Happy Fall!!

 In between school and preschool here are the afterschool activities we have been doing at home.  As well as some tot school.

Tot school:  Sorting some rubber bouncy balls in halloween colors.

I obviously helped him make the rows of colors to show him, then he changed around the colors.

Preschool:  Aaron had an "A" is for apple week. First he did this seed counting activity and was able to count all the way up to the 10 seeds.

I had him make it into a little counting book, but we used the wrong kind of glue so it got to wet and gooey and had to throw it away.  Glue stick next time!

I got these "A" activities at Confessions of a Homeschooler

He didn't get this apple activity, but the idea is that you match the letters to spell "APPLE" and "apple".  I'm not sure why he didn't get it.  Maybe I'll try just one page next time.

Nature study:  I had some nature study planned for Miss April after school one day.  First she started by taking the camera out back and taking some pictures of the signs of fall in our back yard.

We have some pumpkins in our very overgrown garden: 

We have a few ears of corn.  She got a great shot of the corn!

She got a picture of the sunflowers.  We have tons of sunflowers, and I have been enjoying watching the little birds play in and around them.

April loves taking pictures, this was good practice for her.  I told her to get as close in as she could and get different views.

Here is a close up of a leaf, she thought it was neat to get all the detail.

Finally, I had her do this notebook page on the signs of Autumn.  You can find this notebooking page here.

More preschool letter "A" fun.  Here is Aaron's dot painted Aa:

Here is Aaron working on "poking" the letter Aa.  He is holding a thumb tack that is pretty big and poking through the paper.  He liked this, but lost interest after the first few pokes.

He kept going though, and poked the whole thing.

Aric really wanted to get in on the poking action so I let him poke the other apple page.

After he was finally all done poking to make it more interesting for next time I put his A up in the window and turned all the lights off so he could see the light coming through.  This activity suddenly got way more interesting.  He loved it!

Here's Aric working on the "A" magnet page (Aaron didn't have any interest in doing it, but Aric loved it so it worked out):

Aaron is doing the apple/tree pattern page.  He's getting pretty good at patterns now.

And, this is the spider craft we made.  It was a kit that I picked up at Target for $5.  They turned out pretty cute.

A little token of my appreciation

Remember a few weeks ago when I asked who reads my blog, and I said I would have a little surprise for someone if you left a comment?

Well, here it is:

It's not much, but I love journals, and I got these book corners from etsy because I thought they were such a neat idea.  So, the winner is...

Kate from K&R+X

 

Baby shower surprise!!

On Friday night I thought I was going to a "girls night out" at my friend Tish's house.  So, my good friend Emily insisted on picking me up (now I know why), and I agreed.  I usually chicken out on Girls' nights and end up staying home just because I like being home, so I knew if Emily came to get me I would have to go which is most of the reason I let her come get me.  Well, she drove to someone else's house to "pick" her up but she had already left, that turned out to be a stall because they needed more time for the other guest of honor to arrive.  By the way, this was a triple surprise baby shower for 3 of us who are expecting.  Anyway, we finally arrive and hang out in the drive-way for a few minutes, and I was just going along with the flow.  Had no idea what was going on, and didn't even suspect a thing.  So, we walk in, and Angela was the first to walk in out of the 3 of us, and I hear a great big shout of SURPRISE!!  I wasn't quite in the doorway yet, but I thought oh they decided to make girls night a shower for Angela how neat.  But then as I thought about it more, I realized I didn't know about it and I didn't bring her a gift!  So, I was really confused until I got in the door and put the pieces together, the 3 boxes of presents etc.  I'm surprised I didn't cry right then and there (pregnancy hormones have been mighty strong with this one), but I was so surprised and felt so loved!  I had been secretly hoping for a baby shower this time around just because I know that this one is my last one and it has been such a rough pregnancy.

I of course didn't have my camera AT the shower (didn't think I'd need to be taking any pictures at girls night), but I took pictures of all the cute things afterwards.  Seeing all these cute baby things really has gotten me more excited about the arrival of this new little one!

Here are the pictures I took:

This is the invitation, so cute!!  The theme was "baby essentials".  Love it!

Here is some of the loot, wipes, and diapers mostly.

I got a good selection of diapers, and have even been inspired to start packing my hospital bag.  Last time I was packing while in labor, so I have learned my lesson and will be prepared this time :-)

This is one of the homemade things from Melody.  It is soooo cute!  I can't believe the details she put into this thing.  Don't mind the boys' very messy room :-)

These are all the cute outfits, onesies, socks, foot rattles, blankets received at the shower.  I went ahead and washed and folded it all, it made me so excited!

Emily who did such an awesome job helping put the shower together and getting me there gave us the big storage box that all of our gifts were in for a gift.  Love it!  I like it's size and with 3 boys now I will definitely need it!

This is the baby's car seat.  We got it out to try out one of the gifts, a fleece cover, on it and see if it fits.  Of course Aric thought it was just for him to play in.

This is all the "essential" chocolate I received at the shower.  Good stuff!

Now, here are the pictures I borrowed from Dana's blog.  She was another one of the ladies who put this whole thing together.  You can read her post about it here.  I hope she doesn't mind that I borrowed her pictures, but I really wanted to show you what an awesome job they did.  I was so impressed.

Here are the pictures at the shower:

The food was delicious!

These cake pops are so cute, and I love the pink and blue.  It was so fun to see some pink even though I'm having a boy.

We each got to take home a diaper cake.  I can't remember if I had the green one or the blue one, the kids tore it down before I had a chance to take a picture, oh well!

The decorations even had little goodies attached.

Diaper cakes are so cute!

The cucumber water.  I never had a chance to tasted this because I didn't realize it wasn't lemons until later after I had already drank tons of the lemon water.  Looks so refreshing though!

Here's the lemon water.  I drank a lot of it.

Opening all the gifts.  I really liked that all the attention wasn't focused on just me because we were all opening at the same time.  It was so fun.

This is Stephanie who is having a girl.  She's due next month.

This is Angela who is due around the same time as me.  She's having a boy too!

Little Lambs preschool beginnings

Okay, this boy has been in preschool for 3 weeks now (on MWF's) and he's lovin' it!

I didn't get too many pictures of his first day with my camera, but they had a first day picture taken at the school that I will get later.

This boy loves his new preschool routine!  He hasn't skipped a beat so far, and he's had no problem telling me good bye.  In fact I went to help on his 3rd day of Preschool and he told me after that he had fun, but that he would have more fun when I wasn't there next time.  It was pretty funny.  I think he really LOVED having me there though, he showed me everything with so much excitement!  I love that I can help out at his preschool, and I probably will continue to do so about once a month.

Some of his favorite activities so far at preschool have been:

1. Picking sunflowers off of a big huge sunflower, and after they are dried he's very excited to get to bring home the seed in a cup of dirt.

2.  Being the calendar counter

3.  Playing trains in the block room

4.  Race car painting

5.  Snack time!

On his 2nd day he got to bring the snack to share with his class.  He chose carrots and ranch dip, and Handi Snacks crackers.  We also brought grape juice for the drink.  He thinks preschool is pretty cool.  Oh, and the name of his class is the "helicopter's".  All of the classes have a transportation theme for their name, it's very fun.

Some recipes

Banana bread

Really Moist Banana Bread 3 c. sugar 3 eggs 1/2 tsp. vanilla 3 c. bananas, or more (I use 5-6 bananas) 2 tsp. soda 1 1/2 tsp. salt 3 1/2 c. flour 1/3 c. water 1 c. oil 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 c. nuts (we do chocolate chips instead of nuts) I mixed the wet ingredients first, combined the flour, soda, salt separately. Added dry to wet. Stirred in chocolate chips last. Makes 2 large loaves of bread. Put in 2 greased and floured loaf pans and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

 I have been searching for a good banana bread recipe for a long time and I think I finally found it with this one!!

Pork chop casserole

 Ingredients:

• 4 pork chops
• 4 cups sliced potatoes
• 1 can cream of celery soup
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons chopped onion
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper, or to taste
• grated American cheese

Preparation:

Brown pork chops. Place potatoes in greased 2-quart baking dish. Mix together soup, milk, onion, salt, and pepper. Pour over potatoes. Place pork chops over potatoes; sprinkle with cheese. Bake uncovered at 375 degrees for about 60 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.
Serves 4.

This pork chop casserole was absolutely delicious!  I wish I had a picture, but it was eaten too fast before I had a chance to grab the camera.  I wanted a way to make some leftover pork chops so I searched for a casserole and found this somewhere on the internet, sorry can't remember where.  I used Cheddar cheese instead of American cheese because we all like Cheddar better and it tasted delicious!

Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire

A few weeks ago we took a step back in time to the Renaissance Faire...

We all dressed up...

(except for Aric, and in this picture Aric is guzzling the special root beer.  He loved it!)

Miss April asked Grandma to make her a dress and Grandma even made a matching one for her doll...

There were horses to look at...

There were games afoot...

See the lovely game host all dressed up, there were some pretty spectacular costumes...

(I wasn't brave enough to really stop anybody and ask for their picture though I wish I would have)

There were lots and lots of treasures to find...

Someone did ask for a picture of April and her doll though...

Lots and lots of delicious food...

(we even tried Haggis, lets just say most of us won't be trying it again)

A nice Jolly round of Jousting and games...

Dueling to the end...

April came home with a wooden shield and Daddy bought a wooden sword...

She said she wants some of these for Christmas...

I have to admit she was pretty good...

Aaron says Aaarrgh, he liked the nice selection of dressed up pirates at the faire...

I was dressed up too, but stayed behind the camera safely the whole time.  It wasn't much anyway.  We had such a good time, and since Grandma and Grandpa Winz had their trailer there because they were vendor's we got to spend the whole day there comfortably and go back when we were ready for more.  Then we had a nice pulled pork dinner at their trailer at the end of the day with their friends.  The kids really enjoyed everything!