winner!

I'm pleased to announce that the winner of my Zoology 1 giveaway!  The number that was picked through a random number generator (random.org) was:

Comment # 49:  Amy
"I've been wanting to try this curriculum. Thanks for the giveaway!"

Thanks for all the comments.  I wish I had more to give!  

The Beach!

Camping

Fort Stevens, Oregon

Labor day weekend.

So much fun!

This picture is just soooo cute!  Brothers are so fun!

The nice big grassy area next to our site...

We took a trip to the Tillamook cheese factory, and had some ice cream.

So cheesy, ha ha!

The view from the door of our trailer.  We did end up moving spots after everyone left on Labor day so we could be close to Grandma and Grandpa.

The Beach was so fun!  Alex loved the sand.  See the blanket in the background?  He wanted nothing to do with it.

It was so beautiful.  We were able to just drive right onto the beach, so we had all kinds of toys.  Aric liked chasing Uncle Marc's remote control car.

Still chasing the car.  He kept up pretty good!

Of course there was lots of burying...

Kids love to be buried.  I remember loving it when I was a kid.

Aaron had fun pushing his dump truck all around the water.

This had to be the cutest baby on the beach that day!

He loves his dump truck and he loves the beach!  What more can a boy ask for?

Alexander decided he wanted to crawl to the water too.  He loved the sand!

Aaron loved doing the Junior ranger program.  Look at these great pictures he drew!  It was a fun little nature study while camping!  The picture on the left is of the lake and the canoe, and the dock with a person on it.  On the right he drew three things he saw at Fort Stevens, trees, deer, and crows (he really did see lots of all those things).

Close up.  I am amazed at how well he can draw.

The secret that he had to figure out was the lake, and he drew that.

We also made it to one of their programs at the campground, it was a nature scavenger hunt.  Thanks Junior ranger for a nice nature program!

A lot of historical sites are at Fort Stevens.  The kids liked this demonstration of the "disappearing gun".

We walked through a few of the old military batteries.

Saw some big old guns.

A close up of the battery.  These were interesting cement forts that were used a long time ago by the military for defense at the mouth of the Columbia river.

We had fun at Coffenbury lake.  Baby Alex just loved the water.  It was a bit chilly on this day though.

It was a fun trip!  We definitely want to go back to Fort Stevens!

Weekly wrap-up

Just a quick wrap-up of last week!

This is April's note booking journal to go with apologia science, zoology 1.  I didn't get this at first, but found that it would be much easier to have to go along with April's science.  She immediately got right to work filling in the first few pages to catch up.  The book is laid out nicely and has some great ideas for keeping notes.  What a wonderful supplement!  So far I'm glad we picked it up.

We had some fun making these"magic" wands.  They were supposed to be Harry Potter like, but April wanted hers to be more of a Wizards of waverly place type wand.  My kids haven't really gotten into Harry Potter, but we watched part of it after making the wands to see how they might like it now.  I think when we get to the books they'll like it better.  I found the idea for these wands at Sea Star academy, her's are definitely more Harry Potter-ish.  Basically, they are made with a rolled up piece of paper, tapered to one end.  Then glued with hot glue to make some bumpy designs, then painted!  The kids wanted to add glitter, and they also decided they wanted different color wands. 

Pick and Draw was out this week!  We had fun drawing faces over and over again.  I think this is now one of Aaron's favorite games to play.  He can actually do some of the faces, though some are still a bit hard for him to follow.  Here is one of his faces, hmmm do I see a resemblance?  I had to help him with the shape of the face on this one.

For those who aren't familiar with pick and draw here's how it works.  There is a card for each part of a character's face.  First you take the face card for the shape of the face, then you do the nose, etc.  You draw whatever is on the card, but you can make things big or small, fat or tall.  It's fun to see what you get.

On the lines at the bottom of his paper I would write what he told me about his faces.  A fun activity!

The Library was a fun trip this week.  There are some times where we don't find much, but this week the kids kept picking up things they saw.  This picture doesn't even include all of April's books!  She got a pretty good stack too.  Oh, and we also checked out the new Phineas and Ferb movie.  We got lucky and the librarian had just gotten it in the library system and asked if we wanted it from her desk.  The kids were very excited.

 

To finish off the week we went on a family hike on Saturday.  We decided to go up to a local falls.  It was beautiful and green!  There we are under the falls.


See this fuzzy thing, it's a moth.  We thought it was a butterfly. 


The sound of the waterfall and the cool moist air was so nice while sitting underneath it.




That's all I have captured in pictures! 

Apples! Cinnamon Apple Cookies!

Well, we finally did it!  We went apple picking for the first time!  I've wanted to take the kids to do this for a few years, and we even drove a few years ago to where I thought we could pick apples, but couldn't find the orchard.  Funny thing is we drove by this orchard too on that drive a few years ago,  but I didn't stop because I wasn't sure about it at the time.  It turns out to be the best little place to pick apples.  Less than 10 miles from us!  The apples were easy for all the kids to reach.  We will definitely be going back sometime.  I found their blog searching for apples to pick in Oregon, and they keep up to date on the different apple varieties and when they are ready.

We are just starting to get some rain and cooler weather so we went this morning when it stopped raining for a bit.  I wanted to get there and pick before it started again.

So, after our morning stuff we headed out when there was a break in the rain.  We picked about 40lbs of Gala apples.  They are delicious!

Gettin' ready to pick!

Found a nice one!  These trees had a lot of apples!

This little guy sat and watched happily.

Some apple picking action

Aric was so funny, everytime he would get one he would say "I got one!"  He was so amazed with himself.

Each of our buckets was like carrying Alex, he weighs about the same as one buckets worth.  I ended up carrying one on each side so we didn't dump the buckets.

Such beautiful fruit!  It really went pretty fast.  We were there less than an hour.  Now, what to do with all these apples?  Well, there's caramel apples, apple pie, applesauce (which my kids don't like), apple stamping, apple butter...

...even cookies!  Here is one of my favorite cookie recipes.  It uses fresh chopped apple and tastes heavenly.  I got it at a recipe exchange from church so I don't know where it originally came from.  Also, the cinnamon chips that it calls for are pretty hard to find.  I found them at WinCo a few years ago during the holiday's, and maybe you'll be lucky to find them at your local grocer now with Holiday's coming.  If not, I know you can order them online somewhere.  Here it is:

Apple Cinnamon-Chip cookies

3/4 cup butter

1 cup light brown sugar

1 egg

1tbsp. apple juice

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cup flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cup quick oats

1 10oz. pkg. cinnamon chips

1 cup peeled & chopped apples

1/2 cup raisins (good with out raisins too!  I usually omit this)

Cream butter, sugar, apple juice, egg, vanilla.  Mix dry ingredients in separate bowl and then cream all ingredients together.  Stir in by hand: oats, apples, cinnamon chips, and raisins.  Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

We made these today and April said they smell just like Christmas!  She got a little excited after that. 

curriculum give away: Science--zoology1

*this giveaway is now closed*

Exploring Creation with Zoology 1

I have been waiting for a chance to give away some of the things I have and don't need or use!  The curriculum clean-out hosted at Homeschool Creations came at the perfect time!

Somehow I ended up with 2 of these books in our curriculum package, so I have an extra one!  This book has never been used.  We just started it this year so I don't have much more to say about it, but we like it so far!  If you'd like to win this curriculum, leave a comment (be sure to leave your contact information).  I will ship within the U.S.  This giveaway will be end in one week, September 28.

If you would like to see what others are giving away click on the link below.

weekly wrap-up: yellow ball

We had a very busy and full week.  We rowed the book Yellow Ball.  Which means we read the book every day and did activities to supplement the book.  This is a great addition to our daily school work.  It's a lot of fun to really get into the book and see what you can discover.  Our week was also very busy with a full schedule of activities.  April has started back into piano lessons.  She is also still doing her horse lessons one day a week.  She has also had another opportunity to join a cross country team and decided to give it a try.  I am amazed at the opportunities that have opened up for her.  We have even had to say no to some other things because it's just too much.  She is also starting a 4-H horse club, and the first meeting was last Saturday.  We are very excited for that new adventure.  I don't really have much for the boys that's extra though.  I wish we had some sort of co-op for them.  So, I took them out to the BMX track on Friday and they got to ride their bikes.  Aric even loved trying to go over the hills and around.

On to the pictures!  I certainly didn't get pictures of everything.  I mostly have pictures of the yellow ball activities with a few other randoms from other things.

We cut down our one huge sunflower so the kids could explore and pick the seeds out.

Dot painting yellow Y's for yellow ball

April likes to participate in the yellow ball activities too.  She id a color by number ball.  Not very challenging for her, but fun.

This was my favorite activity.  Re-creating the cover of the book with pastels.  It was a nice art project and all the kids could do it.  Pastels are something new to us, so this was pretty exciting for all the kids.

...ta da!

All of the finished art work.

The Oregon Garden had a homeschool day so we had a fun field trip in the middle of the week.  This is the only picture I got while they were playing in the kids garden area.  It was really a rush for us to get through the whole garden before April's horse lesson.  I wish we could have enjoyed it more.  It's such a beautiful place.

I loved the idea from Our Homeschool fun to get some lemons and make lemonade as part of our row.  So, I gave hints as to what is shaped round, and yellow, and makes a refreshing drink.  They of course said lemonade, which means we picked up a bag of lemons.  Then they got to squeeze their own lemonade.

Aaron's juice squeezer.  This is actually his squeezer that he wanted for Christmas (which he got).

Aric, April, and I just squeezed them by hand.

Some of the printables we worked on.  Lacing yellow yarn balls from Confessions of a homeschooler, and the Y color by number too.

I love these moments.  April was helping Aric color his picture.

Aric lacing his yellow yarn ball.

I made both boys a Yellow ball lapbook from homeschool share.

I think their favorite was the throw and catch baseball players.

Aaron working on coloring his.

Science fun.  We made a little styrofoam ball levitate on a straw by blowing into the straw.  The kids had fun with this.  I just realized too that it kinda goes along with our yellow ball week!

April could keep it up there pretty long.

April practicing in her cursive writing book.

April refilled the bird feeders

That was our week!  Now onto a new one.