St. Patrick's day 2014

A little glimpse of our St. Patrick's day this year.  We didn't do any leprechaun traps, and Aaron was soooo bummed about that when he realized it the day after.  I honestly didn't have any desire to do them this year, so I was hoping he wouldn't notice.

We did a lot of the usual stuff, but this year we added in a cake.  It was last minute, so not very creative.  It would be fun to make a fun rainbow cake some year.

Our decorations on the mantle.  It was pretty simple this year.  The garland says "happy go lucky".  I made it last year from the kids' green paintings.  I was glad to see it survived!

The "green" lights were Alex's favorite this year.  He loved having those plugged in.

All the kids wore green.  Alex took a little St. Patty's day nap on the ottoman.

This was something new this year, face painting!  I had an epiphany to get the face paints out that I had from an activity at church a while ago.  They had fun painting shamrocks and rainbows all over their faces.

 

Weekly wrap-up: March 7

A glimpse of our week...

~Aric with his earth, marshmallow and toothpick tetrahedron, April's violin for lessons, a cork science experiment, a bull craft~

 We had a lovely week.  It only got rough on the few days it was super rainy, and we all got a little stir crazy.  Our main theme for the week was our row of "The Story of Ferdinand" for our Five in a row studies.  We did a lot of fun things, but we still haven't finished "rowing" it, so I'll share a post on that soon.  We also did some more ancient Greece history (read part of ch. 20 of SOTW), earth science (studying the planet earth), measuring for math, and a visit to Spain for Geography.

April started violin lessons today (Friday).  I think she's going to really love it.   We are also jumping back into our Life academy co-op since life has smoothed out a bit since Hubby's surgery.  So, we went down to Salem and April had her audition for the Shakespeare play.  She recited a monologue, and sang a song of her choosing "supercalifragilisticexpealidocious".  Although she would rather not have a singing part, she was a trooper and sang anyway.  She is so excited that we get to get back into co-op, and that she gets to be in the play in May.  I am too.  We missed going so much.  Things are going to get busy here over the next few months with rehearsals and stuff.  It'll be good for her though.  She really needs to finish out this whole Shakespeare experience by being in the end of the year play.

Math:

I gave April a math project this week, and she chose this marshmallow tetrahedron building activity from Almost Unschoolers.  She needed a little hands on fun.  She had to learn what a tetrahedron was, and figure out how to build one.  She enjoyed this project a lot.

All the other math that I did with the boys was mostly activities to go with our FIAR unit, so I'll share that math in a different post.

Science:

One of our science activities for the boys this week was the layers of the earth.  We made a playdoh earth with all the layers.  They had a great time making their "earth."

adding the layers

Aric's completed earth

Time to slice through and see the layers!

Aaron's completed earth.

Tada!  The layers looked pretty cool.

Alex didn't let me finish getting the crust on.  We ran out of the green and blue anyway.  He loved this playdoh activity.

Then Alex combined the 2 projects and made this toothpick/playdoh creation.  He called it a tree.



 Real life:

There's a lot we didn't get to this week, and a lot that I didn't get any pictures of (like history) because there wasn't much to it.  I really wish we could get more done in a day.  I sometimes wonder how some families can get so much done in a day.  I tried doing the one subject a day all this week to give it another try.  It works great for my brain, and organization, but I just don't feel like we are doing enough.  It's also that my boys are little, and they have a hard time with "doing school" especially for long periods of time.  So, that's my real life for this week...  we didn't get through nearly as much as I'd hoped we would.

How was your week?  Hope it was good!

I'm linking this up with:



Desiree

Family Home Evening X 2

I want to share 2 of our recent family home evenings.  Sorry, this is about as exciting as life gets around here right now.  Since we aren't really doing much while Daddy's back is healing, you get to hear about FHE! 

 Exciting right?

Oh well, even if you really aren't all that excited about it, I'm always happy to pull any family night off with a coherent spiritual thought, and fun.  It's memories, and something I'm really working hard at trying to be better about, so I share it here.

First FHE:  This one was about the tower of Babel.  We had been reading that part in the Old Testament, and I wanted to really expand on the story a little bit.  We did most of the activities from this post on The Family Home Evening Spot. There are a lot of great ideas there (coloring pages, songs, etc.)

For one of the activities I put word bubbles around the room with hello in different languages.  April wrote these out.  We learned how to say hello in a few ways!

 Then we played Jenga and made a "tower" which fell a few times, while eating root beer floats for the snack.

 Second FHE:  This was about Small and Simple things done for others that can bring greatness to their lives.  This was a review of a General Conference talk from the Oct. 2013 conference.  I recently gave a lesson in Relief Society on this talk, so I decided to make it into a FHE lesson for my family too because it's a great message.  Also, with conference coming up again I love the idea of reviewing past talks to get the kids ready.

I tied small and simple things into colors by talking about the primary colors and how they start out simple (red, yellow, and blue) but can become something great by being mixed together.  So, here's Alex leading our opening song "The Primary Colors."  (Yes, he is holding the ipad, it's our music!)

 I made a sheet with the quote for the kids to color a rainbow on.  I loved the color theme of this FHE

 In case you want to do this FHE with your family, here is what we did:

Small and Simple things FHE

To go along with the conference talk by Elder Arnulfo Valenzuela

Supplies: For lesson--Red, yellow, blue, green, orange, and purple paper. For activities—colorwheel printable, food coloring, paper towels, jar. Optional: Copy of talk by Elder Arnulfo Valenzuela from October 2013 General Conference.

Opening song: Primary colors (Children's songbook, p. 258)

Scripture: Alma 37:6-7

Lesson/Story:

This talk is about how the small and simple acts of kindness that we can do for others can have a big impact and bring good and greatness to them. The small and simple things that we can do each day may seem very small to us, but it can be a very great thing for someone who is in need. What are some ideas of a small and simple thing that you can do for someone? (smile and say hi, any kind of service or love, a hug, be a friend...)

What are the primary colors? Red, yellow, and blue right? (hold up red, yellow, and blue paper or color wheel) These are pretty simple colors. Are they the only colors we have? No, but we need these colors to get the other colors, green, orange, and purple (hold up green, orange, and purple). The primary colors start as a simple color, but when 2 primary colors are mixed something great happens. Do you know what that is? They become a different color! The small and simple act of changing the primary color by mixing it gives us something great, a new color to enjoy!

This is like the small and simple acts of service we give. We can do something simple that might not seem great at first, but will be great for the person you are giving it to no matter how small. So, next time when you think your small and simple act of kindness won't help, think about the primary colors and how a small and simple mix of 2 colors can become something great. Your act of service can become something great too!

Activities (choose one or both):

1. Make or print a color wheel to see the mixing of colors in action. There are many free printables online if you search color wheel printable.

2. This fun color experiment from the Nov. 1982 Friend magazine called Black to black.

Black to Black

Begin by mixing together in a spoon over the sink one drop of yellow food color, three of blue, and seven of red. Because the strength of each color varies, you may need to experiment to get a true black.
Next, cut a paper towel or another kind of absorbent paper into 1″ x 1′ strips. Then use a toothpick to place a drop of black liquid about 3″ from one end of each strip. Hang strips in a jar containing a little water as shown. Ends of paper must touch water, but black spots must not. Bend upper part of paper strips over jar’s edge, and tape strips in position.
In a few minutes, black spots will move up the strips with the water and become a rainbow of color. Both the primary colors—yellow, blue, and red—and the secondary colors—orange, purple, and green—can be seen. Eventually, secondary colors disappear, leaving only primary colors. Then primary colors become separated on strips.
After the colors separate, it is possible to get them to form black again on strips. Begin with shorter strips this time, and don’t bend them. Instead, poke a straightened paper clip through upper end of strips—with black spots above the water—and suspend strips in center of jar with paper clip wire reaching across jar’s mouth. After the first color reaches top of strip, it can go no farther; soon the other two colors will join it to make black again—if you wait long enough.

Craft/coloring page:
Have children draw a picture of the rainbow with the following quote:

“Let us reach out to others

with faith and with love.”

Closing song: Give said the little stream (Children's songbook, p. 236)

Snack: Make some monster cookies with colorful M&M's, or some other colorful treat (we ended up having colorful popsicles).

 

Pointillism painting

Our art lesson last week was about Pointillism.  We were going to learn about this with our homeschool group at the library, but I was sick so we did it all at home instead.  We started off by watching this video.  My boys were super excited to get to work after watching it.




We looked at some George Seurat paintings.
Including this one.



 Then we worked on a few art projects.  I pulled out the paints, and let them choose a few colors.  We started out by trying to create a flower like in the video above.

Then we did a color wheel project from Harrington Harmonies.

 Aaron asked if he could create his own pointillism picture.  Yes, of course!  He made this chicken and egg.

 

They all really enjoyed painting by dots.  It took some patience for the 2 younger ones, but they really did good!


Desiree

Sunday gratitude

Today I am thankful...

• ... that the kids love to have the missionaries over for dinner, and the spirit that they bring into our home each time they come.
• ... that I was able to take the kids to see the LEGO movie this weekend, and that it was such an awesome movie.
• ... for those yummy cookies picture above.  I wasn't feeling well, but so desperately wanted to have some cookies.  It took some determination, but I made them!
• ... that April will be starting violin lessons this week.
• ... that Aaron is looking forward to his baptism.
• ... that I can be content with where I am right now even though I had hoped to be somewhere different.
• ... for art lessons with my kids.  That's pretty much my favorite subject to do with them.
• ... that spring is almost here.

 

Weekly wrap-up: of 2 weeks

I missed posting last week so this wrap up will include it as well.  But, I'll start with this week...

In life this week...

I ended the week with a bang by catching a cold from my little guy.  I could feel it coming on Thursday, and by Friday it was bad.  It's hard when Mom's sick.  I just wanted to lay down all day, bleh!  Friday morning I was okay enough to squeeze in some art time though.  Some other highlights from the week are roller skating on Monday, signing April up for violin lessons, and a trip to the A.C. Gilbert children's museum in Salem.  April also made it to the library and her Harry Potter book club on Friday afternoon.  I love that she's old enough that I can send her off to her things so she doesn't have to miss anything just because I'm sick.


Projects...

April made this Harry Potter shirt this week.  She picked up the black shirt at the craft store.  She cut the picture from contact paper, stuck it to the shirt, and then sprayed it with bleach water.

 Spraying...

 The end result.  Guess I didn't get anypictures of it after she peeled the contact paper off.

 April has also been working on teaching herself to crochet!  I have been very impressed with the things she is picking up and doing lately.  If I had the time I'd totally learn how to do this better with her.  I tried to teach myself to crochet once a long time ago, but gave up. 

This is a project that Aaron picked out at the craft store.  He did it all on his own.  I was so impressed that he could do it all on his own.  It turned out pretty cute, and he was so happy with his work too.

Geography:

We finished our Mexico paper quilt finally.  The end result is always fun.  Aaron worked on a few things in the Mexico lapbook, but it's still not done.  Hoping to finish that soon!

History:

We are still plugging along in ancient greece.  We finished chapter 19 in SOTW!  I am loving that we are picking up the pace in history a little more.  I am glad that I have stuck with this one too.  It's reassuring when my boys make comments about something they remembered a few chapters back, so I know they are understanding/listening at least a little :-)  The key has been lots of coloring pages!  They really like to have coloring pages that relate to what we're reading.  So, they colored a lightning bolt, a war horse and chariot, Grecian vases, and King Minos.

I still feel like we haven't really delved into ancient Greece yet.  We have only skimmed the surface a little.  I now have more books for next week as we continue on in the next few chapters.  But, for this week we read The Librarian who Measured the Earth, and D'aulaires' book of greek myths (we've only read very little from that one).

The boys liked hearing The Librarian who measured the earth.  Although some of the math was a little over their head, I explained the general concept.

Reading and Literature:

We've started getting into the Dr. Seuss mood here.  The boys have been pulling the Dr. Seuss books out since I told them it's almost his birthday.  We have read a few new ones this week too.

For a book and craft we read The Cat in the Hat, and made these stick puppets of thing 1 and thing 2.  Oh, and Aaron made the hat with a red cup and white duck tape.  That was his own creation.

They were a big hit.

Science:

The boys are studying the planet earth in their astronomy studies right now.  We just picked up where we left off.  It has been fun getting back into the astronomy.

We picked up this paper planet earth kit from Costco this week (a lucky find since we're studying earth).  It was pretty fun to make, and not really as hard as I thought it would be at first.  The boys mostly helped punch the pieces out, and I did most of the glueing.

This is what sold me on it...the flap that pulls out and shows the layers of the earth.  It's his favorite part too!  We'll be focusing more on the layers of the earth next week.

We also made these sun catcher tissue paper earths.

We talked about the perfect mass of the earth, and played with our balance scale to look at the mass of different objects.  This was not a perfect science because I could barely even get the buckets to be equal, and with the buckets the whole thing had to be up off the table because they would hang too low.  We just had fun playing around with it.

We also did some magnet experiments from the sonlight science curriculum.  It tied into earth's gravity too, so we talked about that.  My boys love doing these experiments.  I'll have to try to catch more of those in action on camera.

Art:

The 3 older kids did sketch Tuesday this week.  The theme was the letter L.

Aric's lollipop

Aaron's Lobster

April's lamplight

Math:

This is from last week.  The boys decided to trade their math pages.  Aric liked Aaron's skip counting better, and Aaron was happy to pass it off to him.  So, I suggested Aaron do his 100 chart, and he was happy to do it.  I don't mind as long as they are doing their math!  

 
Nature:

We made it to the local farm this week to see the new baby goats.  They are so cute!

 I snapped some nature shots while the children played.  I thought these seeds or buds(?) looked very interesting.

 Field trips:

Last Friday we went on a field trip with our local homeschool group to the Mcloughlin house in Oregon City.  We learned a lot about someone who made a great impact on the settlers in this area.  It's nice to learn about good people of the past who made a big difference.

 Fun times:

April was playing hide and seek with Alex, and this was his hiding spot.

 That wraps up the last 2 weeks!  Hope you had a good week!




Desiree