:: this moment ::

:: this moment ::  A photo from the week. Not too many words. A simple moment, extraordinary, special. Something I want to remember, cherish, to pause over. If you have a "moment" leave a link in the comments for others to find and share.


inspired by soulemama.

:: Yarn Along ::

Joining Ginny, over at small things, again with yarn along. A single photo of a current knitting or crocheting project with a current read. I am really loving these posts, taking a moment to think about what and why I'm knitting or reading. I read...a lot. And I knit...not as much as I'd like but I do have 2-4 projects going either on the needles or in my brain. Leave a comment to share your yarn along.

I sit near a baseball diamond a lot these days. In the drizzly rain, in the cold and cloudy evening, and (once) in the bright, happy sun. My basket has come along with me each practice I sit at and game I watch. Between chasing kids and searching them out on the playground I've worked on rows. I've added yarn. I am making progress. I think I found a pattern I like, though it is taking more yarn than I was expecting. Not sure if these will make the easy, quick Christmas gifts I was hoping for. But I am enjoying this kind of knitting.

I stuck with The Magician's Nephew and finished it a couple of nights ago. Thank you to my commenters who told me to stick with it. In the end I think I did enjoy it. It was neat to see Narnia being created. I also saw the parallels to the Bible better in this book than I have before. I'm on to the last book in the series, The Last Battle: The Chronicles of Narnia. I've just started it so I have nothing to say about it yet.

What are you knitting? What are you reading? Leave a comment so we can share.

Rowing :: The Little Rabbit

We "rowed" The Little Rabbit by Judy Dunn this week. I thought it would be a good row before Easter. It was sweet and the boys liked it. We had a nice discussion about illustrations verses photographs in books and talked about having a bunny...we'd all like one. Otherwise it was a light week as far as rowing goes.

So light, in fact I have no pictures of us doing any activities...

We did do a little booklet from homeschool share about rabbits.

And we read some other library books about rabbits. And the boys do a narration page about the book. But I guess that's it. Kinda boring now that I'm writing it out.

Next up: Yellow Ball (out of print but my library had it) - I promise I'll do more with that one.

:: this moment ::

:: this moment ::  A photo from the week. Not too many words. A simple moment, extraordinary, special. Something I want to remember, cherish, to pause over. If you have a "moment" leave a link in the comments for others to find and share.



inspired by soulemama.

:: Yarn Along ::

Joining Ginny, over at small things, again with yarn along. A single photo of a current knitting or crocheting project with a current read. I am really loving these posts, taking a moment to think about what and why I'm knitting or reading. I read...a lot. And I knit...not as much as I'd like but I do have 2-4 projects going either on the needles or in my brain. Leave a comment to share your yarn along.

On (or off as the case is today) :: While on vacation, Las Vegas with my mother...absolutely wonderful, I cast on what was supposed to be a vest or sweater for #3. He's been patiently waiting for a vest though I think I'd like to make a sweater more. This yarn was the only green yarn my mother had. I cast on according to the pattern though I knew the yarn was "chunkier" and the needles bigger than called for. Pulled it over #3's head today and knew right away that it wouldn't work. Pulled it off the needles...could have fit Mr. Wiedz! Going to try again, using the right yarn and needles, pattern from More Last Minute Knitted Gifts.

On the nightstand :: The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis. 2nd to last book in the Chronicles of Narnia series. This one has been harder for me to read. Not sure why. I almost gave it up but I have just entered a great scene and I am over half way over so at this point it would be silly not to finish.

Rowing :: Beavers

Really there is no BFIAR book about beavers but #3 had checked out a bunch of beaver books from the library and asked if we could do beaver activities last week. Who could say no to that, especially not someone who hadn't planned anything else to do. Beavers it is!

We read the beaver books that #3 had checked out of the non-fiction section of the library, an interesting article from answersfromgenesis.org, and a myth about beavers.

I printed a bunch of activities from the homeschoolshare.com and the boys had fun with making the little books, copying words and coloring pictures.

#3 spent many minutes copying words into his classification book. I was so excited to see him try so hard and take pride in his "school work".

#4 also spent time working on tracing the letters of his name! The best he's done yet!

#2 helped #4 keep all his pieces straight and put them together to make the beaver craft. Such a helpful brother!

State animal ::

As it turns out beavers are the state animal of Oregon. So we looked at an Oregon State flag and discussed beavers being a symbol of our state. We also mentioned that the University of Oregon's rival Oregon State University's mascot is a beaver because of it being a symbol of our state.

It was a fun week with beavers.

Links ::

coloring page
paper craft - I used the "tough" beaver
interesting features book - really fun way to understand what they remembered from our reading
answer key - I wouldn't normally think I needed this but it came in handy for the classification and interesting features books!

:: this moment ::

:: this moment ::  A photo from the week. Not too many words. A simple moment, extraordinary, special. Something I want to remember, cherish, to pause over. If you have a "moment" leave a link in the comments for others to find and share.


inspired by soulemama.

Project :: coffee cozy

I found and read through a blog a couple of weeks ago, house on hill road. Lovely. Fun. Inspiring. Wish I had more time in the day, kind of blog.

But when #3's soccer season ended this week I knew just what I wanted to give his coach as a thank you.

Here's the instructions and pattern. So easy. Even when I was sure I'd done the elastic wrong it turned out alright. Fabric is some awesome stuff in my stash I got from my mother...I have scraps of the whole line that I'm working into a quilt for a family member who got married (I can't really say recently got married anymore either...they may be waiting awhile for their wedding gift quilt...).

Soccer coach was on a trip and missed the last session so her coffee cozy and gift card are waiting on her desk.

:: Yarn Along ::

Another week with the yarn over.


Ginny, over at small things, has a great idea going. A single photo of a current knitting or crocheting project with a current read. I thought this was great! I read...a lot. And I knit...not as much as I'd like but I do have 2-4 projects going either on the needles or in my brain.

This is my knitting and book that I keep in my little league box. Last year I made dishrags for Christmas gifts for my mom and mother-in-law. I'm wanting to try out a pattern for another possible useable gift for this year...maybe not only for them... I spent a long time on ravelry searching patterns. Saved quite a few and trying them out. I've started this one with some left over cotton yarn, colors and yardage when I settle on a pattern to use for sure.

I've thrown The Read-Aloud Handbook into the box as well. I heard about this book on BlogSheWrote's site. I'm loving the reading aloud we're doing this year. And reading aloud is going better than ever before but I was hoping to get some more pointers and knowledge to make this time of our day even better. The book also has a book list so I'm hoping for some new read-aloud ideas.

What are you knitting (or crocheting...or crafting)? What are you reading? Leave a comment.

History is Alive :: Volcano of Medes and Thera

I saw this post languishing around in my lists of posts, figured I should finish it!

Our history hit on how the island of Crete's people just suddenly stopped thriving there. How they moved on and the record of the Medes stops. The theory being that a eruption of the volcano in Thera caused the air, soil and water to harm the islands and the people left.

We also touched on Atlantis and Plato.

Of course we needed to make a volcano. I didn't have my stuff together well enough for the kids to make the actual structure. I cut down the bottle I had so the little bit of clay I had would fit around it. As the clay dried there were big gaps and cracks but that just gives it character, right? I got out the paint and mixed up some brown and let each kid have a turn painting it. 

Love his costume and his tongue sticking out...

When that was dry I got out the book and all the necessary ingredients.

By the way, that's a different costume on the same kid in the background...

I poured everything together and really...it exploded! The kids thought it was great. It oozed and put on a great show; getting our books, pencils and papers all gooey. I wished I had gotten a picture of it "going" but I wasn't quick enough.

Rowing :: Blueberries for Sal

We rowed Blueberries for Sal this week. What a great book! I had never read it before and LOVED it! (Now I understand Soulemama's title for blueberry picking last summer.) Little Sal goes blueberry picking with her mother which is something my kids are very familiar with and gets all mixed up with another mother and child who are also at Blueberry Hill. Both boys told me when we did their narration about everybody being all mixed up - so that part must have stuck.

Scrapbooking ::


Since we couldn't go blueberry picking right now I thought it would be fun to make scrapbook pages of pictures from last year's trip. I printed some of the general photos for each boy and printed ones of themselves so their pages would be just them and would be a little different. I got out my personal trimmer, and though it drove me crazy, let them trim their own photos. I put adhesive on the back of each picture and let them place them where ever they wanted to on a 12x12 piece of paper. They had a great time with this and felt proud of their pages.

Math :: 


I printed off the Math Mat activity from homeschool share. We didn't "pick" the berries but the boys both liked this. #2 helped #4 as this was a little over his ability and #3 had it a little easy but they enjoyed the activity.

Playdough ::

I made blue play dough. Using this recipe. I used berry kool-aid for the coloring...gave it a GREAT smell as well!

The *best* thing about play dough? They were busy for over an hour! I took this photo while #1 and #2 got their math and grammar done...still playing, getting along and happy. (Don't mind the kitchen...)

Food ::

One thing I found for this book was bringing in some food to tie in. And that was fun. Of course we had frozen blueberries with lunch on Monday. Freezing is my preferred method for saving our blueberries each year though I am thinking a batch of blueberry jam is necessary this year. 

On Wednesday we had some blueberry jell-o. A huge hit!

And on Friday while we read our book we tried dried blueberries. Only the baby liked those. I'm not too heart broken...I don't have a good way to dehydrate berries and they are over $9/pound at the store! 

The dried berries did provide us a great way to talk about all the different ways of preserving food to last for winter. Our method of freezing, Little Sal's mom who cans her berries and Little Bear's mom who eats the berries to store for winter and the store's way of drying the berries. A little bit of real life learning and a little bit of hibernation discussion.

Art ::


Of course, no unit on Blueberries for Sal would be complete without some blueberry painting. I drew a quick bush shape on the papers and invited them to color the bush while I got out the paint. I gave them each a little bit of blue paint and a unsharpened pencil. Showed them how by using the ereaser the blue paint would look like a berry. I think the different method was fun but a little frustrating. They had to be more controlled and couldn't just smear paint around. #4 lost interest more quickly since he didn't have enough paint nor a brush that would allow him to just spread paint over they entire page. #3 was very systematic about his blueberry placement and was very proud of his finished work.

I had gotten this book as an audio book as well from the library so they listened to it while they painted.

Links ::

delightful learning - I got SO many ideas from her!

counting coconuts - play dough recipe

homeschool share - math mat

Linking to:
 

:: this moment ::

:: this moment ::  A photo from the week. Not too many words. A simple moment, extraordinary, special. Something I want to remember, cherish, to pause over. If you have a "moment" leave a link in the comments for others to find and share.


inspired by soulemama.

The group sibling gift

I shared awhile back about the sweet sibling gifts that have started around here for each birthday. I'm loving this new tradition and want to encourage the thoughtfulness and caring that they each put into their gift. That said, with #5 celebrating his 1st birthday I was a little aprehensive about the time I would have to devot to the gifts. Usually there is only 1 or 2 kids who are "into" gift making. I can handle an extra craft or two. But I knew all 4 would be wanting to create something for their little brother and I didn't think I was up for 4 different craft projects with 4 different "bosses" wanting help and supplies.

So I brought up to the group an idea of doing a gift together. Each getting to decorate a fabric panel and I would put them together in a love-y style quilt. Not big enough to be an actual quilt but just right to be carried, snuggled with, cherished as a gift from his siblings.

During morning nap at then end of circle time we got out the supplies and set to work. The lovely thing about creating for a baby is the abiltity to do it right in front of them so when #5 woke up there was no stress about ruining the surprise.

#2 was having a challenging day so his chair looked like this for a lot of our creating time.

We've been dealing with a lot of copying of artist work around here. As we started our project #1 asked how many letters were in the alphabet and with that figured out had decided on a design that involved letter blocks stacked up in a pile. Wouldn't you know it that #2 started on the same design as soon as he got supplies. To avoid WWIII I turned his square into a truck and told him to figure out another design. While avoiding a huge blow-up between kids I created hurt feelings with #2. So he spent a lot of time being upset.

In the end he was able to pull together a design all his own that he was very excited about. And everyone else was proud of the work they did.

Of course we traced the alligator, then he added the alligator hunter with mohawk and ax and the big net.

Again #4's drawing came with explict directions that it said "a brown boat".

Baby was thrilled with his gift from the siblings!

I didn't take any photos of the complete gift all laid out, but it is loved. I grabbed a bunch of 2 inch pieces from my scrap bags, sewed them together and sewed the long strip that made between panels, trying for a scrappy not uniform look. I just made a quilt sandwich out of stash pieces my mom had given me. There was enough of the Clifford fabric for the back and the binding. I even put it back through the machine to quilt around each panel, sewed the binding on the front and finished on the back by hand the next couple of nights. Getting the top together and quilted took about an hour one evening then the binding was two nights in front of American Idol.