Nature walk and Fall Nature notebooks

Since most of my children are small I have decided for now that I am going to have them make nature notebooks for each season because they couldn't quite grasp the concept of a nature note book.  Also, this way they are excited to fill up a new notebook each season.  So, we started this month by making a Fall Nature study notebook.  I printed some pages of things they can do, and I also put lots of empty pages in there for them to fill up.  We took a large piece of construction paper and folded it in half for the cover.  Then, I let them decorate the front however they wanted.  They took the time to cut out pictures of things that they liked/wanted.  Most of it turned out to be nature related:-)

This is Aric decorating his notebook.  He just loved cutting, cutting, and more cutting. 


Aric's finished notebook.  (Mom made a few minor changes to his final decorations:-)


His first page is a leaf printable page from Handbook of Nature study.  Then he has some tree printouts (all 3 notebooks have hazel nut tree printouts).


Here's Aaron's notebook.  He had no interest in decorating it until I started doing it and then he came over to see what I was doing and decided he really wanted to do it after all.


April's nature book.  She has some cute pictures on hers.


I love how she put all the beautiful butterflies on the inside of hers.  Then she came up with the genius idea to tie the notebook strings inside the notebook so they didn't stick out.  That girl is so smart!  She also has a poem in hers called October's party, and a few extra printables that are more advanced.


Nature walk

We have been having some beautiful fall weather!  Sunny almost everyday, which is very rare around here at this time of the year.  So, we took a walk at a park down a little trail to see what we could find.  We weren't really looking for anything in particular, just enjoying our outside time.

Aric is showing me his leaf.  He thought it was huge.


I just love this picture.  We were getting ready to start walking.


I didn't realize how sideways this picture was, sorry.  Here they are walking down the trail.  Quite honestly we didn't really see anything that interesting.  The kids just had fun walking, but we had to turn around because the trail got too rough (I didn't put baby in the backpack, just the stroller).


After the walk we stopped to write in their nature books.  This is a time where they can choose what they want to do, draw something or pick an activity that is in the book.  Aaron chose to practice writing his hazel tree page.  April was drawing, and Aric was just doing whatever he wanted.


Aric loved looking at all the pages in his notebook.  He was talking about his tree page here.

I am linking this to the Handbook of Nature Study's outdoor hour blog carnival.

pumpkin school

Our pumpkins waited very patiently to come to school with us...

But first, here are the before pictures of our pretty little pumpkins...

The pumpkins were first welcomed into the class and put into their appropriate seats...

Then they were introduced to their new buddy for the day...

Then they were put in a luke warm water bath to see if they would sink or float, washed, and measured by height, weight, and circumference...

The pumpkins were looking much better, and almost ready for their final test...

Their final scores in the pre-tests were perfect, and their new faces were drawn up...

They were happily carved and made into jack-o-lanterns...

They turned out to be perfect students in our pumpkin school and were very happy to get back to their spots on the porch ...

From left to right:  April's, Aaron's, and Aric's

sick baby update...

To finish the story from Wednesday...

I took sweet little baby Alexander into the Dr. because he just seemed to be in pain, and last time he acted like this he ended up with a ruptured ear drum.  He was up all night Wednesday night which led to another sleepless night for me.  I decided on Thursday morning to just go in and have his ears checked, and sure enough his left ear (the same one that ruptured last time) was all infected.  After the Dr.'s appointment I decdided that it would be okay for us to head to the pumpkin party after all because he didn't have anything contagious.  The kids were very HAPPY and had a blast at their party.

After only 2 days of the antibiotics he's already feeling better, and his fever is down. 

A glimpse of our day

Well, I feel an itch to just write.  I want this blog to be more journal like...so here goes a glimpse at our day today and maybe a little bit about the week.

I had a very sick baby today.  His fever was 101.6, and he just wanted to be held all day.  I went back and forth all morning between wanting to go ahead and get our schoolwork done or calling it a sick day.  My thoughts were, I have a sick baby, that should be an automatic get out of school card right?  Then, I thought well, we should at least try and get something done besides only the baby is sick, and we're stuck at home anyway.  At around 10am it was looking like we might not get anything done after all.  Finally Alexander was winding down for a nap.  A 4 hour nap!  What a great time to have some one on one time with the kids.  I feel bad for poor little baby, but wow that was nice to have such a big chunk of time!


Part of that time was April's online homeschool American Girl club.  She joined for free.  It's a live class offered through currclick.  She had a good time.  They made a craft, and talked about the book. I was able to sit with her through most of it while making lunch and peeking in on the boys who were watching "Frankenpooh" all the while.

That about wraps up our day.  We really didn't do much more except for go outside for a bit to ride bikes, and watch too much Frankenpooh and Phineas and Ferb  (that's what happens on sick days around here, the tv comes on a little too much).  Oh, and we made halloween cupcakes too!  So, there's a real life day for you!  It really was a nice day, besides the sick baby.  I hope he's better by tomorrow so we can go to our pumpkin party that our friends invited us too.  It's not looking good though.  Even Aaron prayed this morning that he would be better so we could go to our party. We shall see!

For more real life fun, here is a picture of our table after a morning of working on workboxes, crafts, and playing games, aka school.  This is what it looks like most days since we all work at the same table.  It gets cluttered up real fast!  This wasn't our table from today though.

Thankfully this table can be cleared off real fast!  What does your table look like at the end of the day?

Wordless Wednesday: Leif Ericksson

First history lesson.  Vikings craft.  One 5th grader a little more excited about doing history.

Baby's first sensory fun

What could possibly be funner than some soft, colorful, squishy balls?

 Maybe a soft squishy tiny tot to play with them!

We were working right along one day and these little balls were out for Aric.
So, I put Alex in his high chair and sat right next to him so I could watch him very closely.  He had a great time just moving the balls around and playing.

Friday field trip at the pioneer farm

Last Friday we went to Homeschool day at a really neat pioneer farm called Philip Foster Farms.  They had all kinds of hands on activities for the kids to experience what it might have been like to live during a time when we didn't have all the luxury and technology we have now.  It was different, but fun at the same time.  Really, it was different.  When we first arrived and it seemed pretty quiet I thought, maybe this won't be a very exciting field trip, and the kids might get bored real fast.  But, they didn't!  I pressed on even though I wasn't sure at first.  Once we got started going around to all the stations I was glad we stayed.  It was a drizzly morning, but not pouring so it was nice.

First we went in a tiny little store to pay and they had a lot of old fashioned things to buy.  All the people that were there helping and working in the store were dressed in old fashioned pioneer clothes.  It really added to the whole feel of the pioneer time.  Even some kids came dressed up.

After we paid we stopped off first at the apple grind and press.  This is certainly a lot slower than Bauman farms apple press!  You put one apple in at a time, grind it, and then when you have enough apples you press it to fill up that little bucket.  Aaron thought grinding the apple with the crank was pretty fun.

Then, the kids noticed a tree swing.  They had to try it out!  It was so picturesque.  My kids would love to have a tree and a swing like this in their front yard!

Of course all my pictures are blurry!  I couldn't get them to stop swinging for a picture.

April kept saying over and over again, why don't we get a farm?  I would love to!

They looked so cute swinging together.

Each kid got a piece of corn and had to put in something to get all the kernels off.  It was a really interesting process.  Another thing to crank.

Aaron would crank all day if you let him.  Maybe he would have been a perfect pioneer?

Then they took their plate of corn kernels over to the corn grinder to make some corn powder.

Puttin' the kids to work again!  He loved it.

Then they had a hay bail tied to a rope with some pulley's.  The kids had fun trying to lift the hay up.

That's how far they got it off the ground, but I saw some kid really get it up in the air by himself.  He must have been pulling the right way!

They used an old fashioned drill. and looked at some other old fashioned tools (non-powered).

Then they got to build a log cabin.  There were lots of kids here doing this activity.  Mine didn't get to do much building.

Aric felt so strong!  He loved moving the logs around.  Love this boy!

They even got to try out sawing a log!  It took them a while, but they cut off a whole section of the log.  Aaron loved that too.

Some other things I didn't get pictures of were the house and blacksmith.  They preserved the old farm house and modeled it after what it might have looked like when the Philip Foster family lived there.  It was really neat to see all the old fashioned things inside the house.  Some things we thought were interesting on the tour were that the kids were not allowed to go into the parlour unless there was company over.  The upstairs had a landing where the family would spend most of their spare time (what spare time) knitting, sewing, cross stitching, and there was an old fashioned baby cradle for the baby in the middle of it.  No electronics devices anywhere, it was all from the pioneer times.  The rooms had very little "toys" or non-useful things.  Just a few trinkets, and books.  The boys room had a real fur from an animal that the oldest boy had to shoot.  The house tour was very neat.  I forgot to take my camera out while we were in there.  We also didn't ever make it to the blacksmith station.

To learn more about Philip Foster farm you can visit their website by clicking on the name.

Pinkalicious and the pink pumpkin

I have a girl who is well out of her everything pink stage, and 3 boys, but we still find it a lot of fun to read pinkalicious books.  All of us, even the boys.  So, we picked up this copy of Pinkalicious and the pink pumpkin in the book section at Wal-mart recently because we liked all the other ones and this one intrigued us.  A pink pumpkin?

Well, it turns out that they go to Mr. Pink's farm and so of course Pinkalicious thinks that there must be a pink pumpkin.  There does actually turn out to be a pink pumpkin, but it's not what you think...

I thought it would be fun to make pink pumpkins out of construction paper, but the kids had a different idea...

they wanted to make their pumpkin out of their own favorite color.  We also made a door in the pumpkin with a picture of whose pumpkin it was inside the door.  They loved doing this.  It goes along with exactly what happened in the story too!  I won't give it away if you want to go read it.  Aric's is blue!

Aaron's is green!

April's is Orange!

(She wanted silver but I didn't have any silver paper)

Oh, and then they decorated with little cut-outs of pictures of things they like, too.  It really was a fun story and art time.  I am linking this up to: