:: 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.

I do love seeing what others are knitting and can always use some reading suggestions! Leave a comment so I can see what you're up to. And go over to Ginny's to see what others are up to.

On the needles :: Not too much on the knitting front. I spent my daylight car hours over the holiday weekend knitting the second half of the Christmas present. I've made good progress, they should be all finished and wrapped up in time for the big day. I cast on another puerperium a couple weeks ago and haven't gotten much done on it. I took it to our Pack meeting last night but when I got to the parking lot I realized the instructions had gotten removed from my bag. A real disappointment since it meant having to just *sit* during the meeting. I'll be double checking my bag from now on! I also think I'm adding these to my make for Christmas list...we'll see if I find the right yarn and needles in time. Looks like they'd knit up quick though...

On the nightstand :: I finished Penelope's Daughter. What a GREAT book. I loved it! The kids and I did a lot of Greek mythology and versions of Homer and the Odyessy last year so this was such a perfect grown-up go-along story! Love. After that I picked up another book from my stack from the library. Take One is just the kind of book I was looking for. I've read plenty of Karen Kingsbury to know I can read it quickly (so as to move on to other books in that library stack...they all look so good) but that I'll enjoy every moment. Already it is proving to be a good one...not staying on the nightstand like a good book!

:: 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.

I do love seeing what others are knitting and can always use some reading suggestions! Leave a comment so I can see what you're up to. And go over to Ginny's to see what others are up to.

On the needles :: I finished the first half of the Christmas gift. We have a 2 hour drive to our Thanksgiving festivities tomorrow so I'll cast on the second half and get to work. This is really my only knitted Christmas gift so I'm feeling pretty good about it.

I finished the last hat, now everyone in the family has a mama-made hat, except mama. #4 likes his hat and enjoyed taking a minute to ham it up for the camera.

On the nightstand :: I finished the The Red Pyramid and had already gone to the grown up section of the library so I had a whole stack of books to chose from when I was ready to move on. I settled on Penelope's Daughter and it was such a good choice! I'm really enjoying it so far. It is definitely a take-everywhere-I am kind of book. Can't wait to read again whenever I have to put it down.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Enjoy the long weekend!

Science Sunday :: Skeleton

Oh...I'm far behind on our science posts. Well, from where we left off.

Week 2 of our Science Meet-ups was at our house. My friend had gotten chapter 1, cells, and had a great snack/craft. How was I going to come up with something cool like that? My friend suggested the halloween deptartment.

And was she right! My Family Fun magazine had just come and when I flipped through that I had all the ideas I needed to complement the lesson from the book!

The first thing we did came from the book. I had cooked some chicken wings ahead of time. The kids donned rubber gloves to take the meat off and pull apart the bones. We looked at the similarities between our arm bones and a chickens. We found the tendons, the cartilage and muscle. We broke a bone in half and found the marrow. The kids thought this was completely disgusting but we did learn a lot. We took some bones and placed them in a jar a vinegar and a jar of water so we could see what acid does to bone.

After we washed our hands and cleaned up the chicken stuff we got our bone snacks. This is one of the things I found in the magazine. Mini marshmallows stuck on to the ends of a pretzel stick then dipped in white chocolate. Yummy! They were more difficult to make than I anticipated...that white chocolate is a little bit of a bear. So everyone only got a couple of "bones".

Lastly, we made our own "skele-toni". Another Family Fun find. I bought a LOT of different pastas. I separated what each kid would need into a baggie then we went head down to create a fun little pasta skeleton. Both our friends and ourselves still have our cute skele-toni creations up. They turned out so awesome!

Rowing :: A Pair of Red Clogs

Currently we are working through some social studies units focusing on fall and Thanksgiving. But I saw that I had never posted about our "row" of A Pair of Red Clogs so I thought I'd throw it out into blogland. I love blogging about our "rows". One, I have gotten so many of my ideas for our rows from other's blogs, I hope maybe someone can get a nugget of idea from mine. Two, I love the way I'm documenting and saving the work the boys do (I'll try to write a post about it, but I totally got the idea from Michelle) but I really like looking back at these posts as a glimpse of the memories we made around the books we read.

Anyway, back to the book.

After our row of The Story about Ping we stayed in the far East by rowing A Pair of Red Clogs. I did enjoy this story and between the manual and the finds on the internet I think it was a good "row".

photo by #3, he loves taking a picture each time we add a new flag

We colored the Japanese flag. Two of them actually, one for our wall of flags by our world map, and one for our book of work.

The character in the story breaks her clog by playing the weather-telling game. We talked about how weather is predicted now. And we observed the weather and temperature each morning. We marked the temperature and our weather observations on charts I downloaded from Jolanthe's site. At the end of the week I made a worksheet to make a bar-graph from the data we had collected.

One of the ideas from the manual was to discuss the use of colors that the illustrator used. Bright colors to show happy and dark colors to show sad. We talked about the mood of colors and we did a color-wheel activity. I tried to find a prettier color wheel but I just couldn't and couldn't spend any more time on it so I used the poor little one I'd made up.

After the boys were done with the color-wheel they filled their paint trays (paper plates) by mixing all the colors and getting a brownish-purple color.

Overall this was a great row. I'm really enjoying our little fall mini-units but I am missing the predictability and memories of rowing with FIAR. Can't wait for our next one, Grandfather's Journey.

Links ::

Homeschool Share - all the printables this time around. I used the honesty book, the map and flag.

Linking up ::


I forgot to mention that I'm linking up over at



and



Wanna find some more fun ideas and kid stuff? Go on over and see what there is to see.

History is Alive :: Chinese Dinner

Wow! I didn't realize how far I was behind in documenting our history adventures until I looked back and saw I still needed to record our awesome Chinese dinner.

Weeks ago now, our history and the little boys FIAR book The Story about Ping coincided like I planned them to. We were studying ancient China while the little boys and I read a book set in China. So one of the field trips I planned for that week was to eat out at Chinese. Mr. Wiedz thought it would be fun to eat at the restaurant we used to go to in college, right next to campus.

It was one of those precious family memories where everyone behaved beautifully (we even had two separate people tell us how beautiful our family was and how nicely they behaved - proud parent moment!), where we enjoyed trying something new, listened and communicated well together. I left the restaurant full.

Full of my wonderful family...

Full of learning opportunities...

Full of delicious Chinese food!

To see what else the little boys and I did during our "row" that week, click here.

:: 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.

I do love seeing what others are knitting and can always use some reading suggestions! Leave a comment so I can see what you're up to. And go over to Ginny's to see what others are up to.

On the needles :: I tried so much to get halfway done with this Christmas present, but last night as I was knitting along it just didn't *look* right. I had no other choice but to have the receipent (who was sitting across the room and had totally already figured out what was going on) try it on. Sure enough, my decreases didn't decrease enough (Mr. Wiedz has really narrow feet) so I had to rip back to the gusset shaping so I could decrease more. I'm hoping for some good English/knitting time and Math/knitting time and even some evening/knitting time. Maybe half of this Christmas present will be done tonight. Ravelry link.

I also cast on these little booties. I have never made booties for any of my baby's before but now that I've started, I just can't stop! Using left over Paton's 100% wool in grey that I used for #2's sweater. I'm not sure I've got the right yarn or the right needles but the first one seems to have worked out. Ravelry link.

I spent a fair amount of time working on both projects while my family celebrated Christmas this past weekend. N Family Early Christmas has become a treasured family tradition. This year was no exception. I traded my time between taking care of any number of the 18 children there, making Chex Mix and knitting. A great weekend!

On the nightstand :: I'm reading The Red Pyramid right now and really enjoying it. I'd been told it wasn't as good as the Percy Jackson series that Rick Riordian has written and while I agree it is still a great book. I'm enjoying it. A sign of a good book for me is one that cannot stay on the nightstand. If I start to bring it around the house with me to read as I'm doing other things or to read instead of doing the other things then it must be a good book.

:: 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.

I do love seeing what others are knitting and can always use some reading suggestions! Leave a comment so I can see what you're up to. And go over to Ginny's to see what others are up to.

On the needles :: Still working on the Christmas present and hoping to make some good progress on our drive up to Early Christmas this weekend. I'm going to get to a point with this project that I can't work on it when certain people are around PLUS Mr. Wiedz thinks everyone needs a hat this winter. So I cast on some chunky wool I had that didn't work for another project on some big needles and I'm working on a hat for #3.

On the nightstand :: #1 got The Red Pyramid at the library the other day. She's read it already but wanted to again. I hadn't read it so I've taken it over...so far, so good. Not as awesome as Rick Riordian's others I think but good.

I *also* got a project done this weekend! I'm so excited! I'd been holding on to this pattern for a few months. While I was at my mom's this weekend, helping with an eye surgery, I was able to cast on and FINISH these adorable mary jane booties for #6.

Of course I made them to coordinate with the puerperium cardigan I made already...I've just got plans for a hat then I'll have a complete set of cuteness for #6 to come home from the hospital in (if she's a girl, of course...if she's a boy then I'll have to do some quick thinking).

Ravelry notes here.

Rowing :: Autumn Week

We didn't "row" in our normal sense this week. But I loved Jolanthe's Fall printables she offered awhile back that I mixed some of the preschool version and the kindergarten version with some of our favorite fall books and we had quite a week!

Books we used this week ::



Writing Practice ::

I've never used any handwriting tracers before but printed it out and put it in a plastic sheet protector so the boys could work on it through the week. Totally worked. Not only did #3 practice but #4 did an amazing job with making his letters!

Math ::

I don't think I took any pictures of the cool wheel that is part of Jolanthe's pack but it was awsome! #4 counted the items on the wheel then matched the clothespin with the number written on one side and dots on the other! He loved it!

I did print out apple addition. #3 didn't love it. I wish I could have laminated the numbers, they were difficult to keep track of. Also wish I had little apple buttons or wooden apples to use...that would have been cute.

Puzzles ::

Jolanthe's packs had two puzzles that I got out for the boys on our last day. The preschool one was just perfect for my #4 (4yo) and the kindergarten one was great for #3 too. We glued them down to cardstock to save in our book. They really enjoyed the whole process.

Craft ::

I had pinned tons of craft ideas on pinterest for fall/thanksgiving/halloween. I really didn't want the week to focus on Halloween (since it would be over and isn't really our "holiday") so I went with the cute Indian corn craft. The boys really did a good job and took their time placing the tissue paper. We even went ahead with the "My favorite part of fall is..." on the leaves. They turned out really cute!

I have plans to keep up with this type of rowing for the rest of the month. Next up: the "Mayflower".

History is Alive :: Hanging Valley of Snakes

So far, and by far, everyone's favorite history "character" has been Sinbad. During our study of the rise of Islam the author talks about the city of Bagdad becoming a beautiful place and that many philosophers, scientists and writers came to Bagdad. She relates some of the stories from Islam's most famous books, The Thousand and One Nights. The stories of Sinbad quickly became a favorite around here.

So for our craft to go along with that chapter we made hanging snakes. Funny that when I was making my plans for the school year I only planned this craft because it coincided with plans to take a road trip to Grandparents D's new house in Arizona. I thought this craft would travel well and would be something doable while we were gone.  Instead it is a favorite place in our front room/school room. The snakes turned out wonderful and everyone loves them.