Summer {waning}

Ahhhhh. I bet anyone that has checked back in here in the past 4 months (!) has gotten real tired of looking at that yarn along picture. Here's a cute baby playing at the water's edge to look at instead. 

We spent a couple of nights last week camping with my extended family. So fun! Such good memory building. 19 cousins to play in the water all day with. Shared dinners and running around during a wind storm trying to save camp. Good times.

But it is good to be back. Good to get the last of summer wrapped up. Our list of "before the rain starts" just seems to get longer even when we are able to get a project done from it. My school preparations are going good. I'm still needing to get some of my books (I'm so jealous of moms who know what they're going to use and have it ready in the spring - I'm still trying to survive the current year in the spring...I never know what I'm going to do or use for the next year yet!). I now know what I want to use and where to get it and I'm starting to get a look for how our days are going to go. This prep stuff is my favorite, wish I had days of uninterrupted time to get it done.

I'm hoping for more hands-on this year. Pull out the activity book for history more often, make some great arts or crafts, read good books and enjoy them with each other. And I'm hoping to record it on the blog again this year.

So here's to the last weeks of summer. To getting those "before it rains" projects marked off the list and to keeping the fun in school prep.

Rowing :: Night of the Moonjellies

I've been trying to catch up...and I'm nearly there! I blogged about our row of Mike Mulligan here and our row of Storm in the Night here last week. They were fun rows, though not as fun as...

For our last row this year we did Night of the Moonjellies and it was perfect! It was a great way to kick off our summer break and a nice easy row without a lot of extras, the boys didn't miss them and I didn't feel too guilty about not providing them.

This is such a sweet book!

I think every activity we did centered around food for this row. We had a hamburger and milkshake dinner and #3 opened his own diner for lunch one day with hot dogs, homemade onion rings and orange soda. We invited some family that was in town for the day over to share our special lunch and had a great time, just like the boy in the story.

I wanted to go to the aquarium to see jelly fish with this row but it just never happened.

Links ::


bhoomplay.wordpress.com - jellyfish in a bottle tutorial (we didn't get to this either, sigh, so many good ideas out there)
delightful learning - inspiration
homeschool share - lapbook and printables

Rowing :: Storm in the Night

We rowed Storm in the Night in April. To be honest, it wasn't my favorite book. I didn't love the way it flowed and it just could have been a better story. The boys were a bit wishy washy about it. They liked parts and *got* it but didn't *love* it. I did what Michelle did and read Thunder Cake to go along with it, I saw it at the library and I remembered her mentioning it and how well it went with our row. I'm with her, wish we had rowed Tundercake instead.

We made a rain gauge and tracked our rain for a couple of weeks. It rains A LOT here in Oregon so we were not disappointed though I'm glad we kept going for a couple of weeks, just when you want it to rain it doesn't for a few days.

There was a lot of these rain clouds in a jar on pinterest and of course I pinned one then tried it for our row. I just used straight food coloring but I think that I should have made colored water. I think the food coloring was too heavy to work through the cloud but they got a kick out of it and it did "work" in the end.

And what row about clouds (or snow really) would be complete without playing with shaving cream on the table. I even got them to write sight words and their names in the cream! Yay for learning!

Links ::

Delightful Learning :: inspiration, really where else would I look first!

Homeschool Share :: lapbook and further inspiration

Rowing :: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

The boys and I rowed Mike Mulligan at the end of March/beginning of April, it was the first book we did after our baby break. It was such an easy book to row, such a sweet book. And there were so many ideas to make the row a great learning experience and full of memories.

We talked a lot about squares and #3 completed a lapbook piece about squares, drawing one, the definition of a square, and cutting a square from a magazine.

Of course there was a lot of time spent on steam. I think this little science experiment was from the manual but it could have been from anywhere :). The boys thought it was really cool that steam makes my teapot whistle but also turns the pinwheel (not to mention that I allowed them close enough to the stove to do this).

And we watched videos of steam shovels and steam engine trains in action on YouTube. We watched a lot so I can't link to what we watched, I just searched steam engines and tried to find ones more than 30 seconds long that they would enjoy.

I think I got this idea from Michelle. And the kids thought it was so fun! I just made a yellow cake with chocolate frosting (a favorite combo around here) and used chocolate sandwich cookies crushed up as the dirt. I found the little digger in a matchbox set at the toy store, we won't tell Mr. Wiedz I made a stop at the store *just* to look for a digger to finish my cake :). Michelle suggested putting the cake in the freezer to make it easier to cut. Since the freezer is also a handy place to hide a surprise cake I left it there and decided I LOVE frozen cake.

We also worked on our Animal ABC's, letter E. I let the kids decide a lot of the time how to color their letter, this week it was watercolor. I was trying to match everything up, ABC Animal, All About Reading and our rows but it wasn't working. We were going to slow. I also thought I'd keep up with our letter stuff over the summer - not! I'm not sure what to do, keep #3 doing alphabet crafts or just do a breeze through with #4. Sigh...another thing to think about.

Links ::

Delightful Learning :: inspiration

YouTube :: steam engine search results

Homeschool Share :: inspiration and lapbook

Rowing :: Clown of God

The Clown of God was such a great book. I was really surprised when we got to the end the first time but the boys and I enjoyed the book and our week of activities with it.

Seatwork ::

We did quite a few printables and mini books for this row, I just didn't take pictures of any of it. We did a map and a flag for Italy of course and learned some Italian words. I even played Italian music on Pandora during center time.

Fun & Extra ::

 I love this picture, it is so him.

Face painting to look like clowns. Giovanni paints his face for each performance so we got out our face paints and made ourselves look like clowns. The boys thought this was great :: I'm not really great about getting out this messy activity. They added their own costumes throughout the day and stayed dressed up for the rest of the afternoon.

We also made stained glass cookies (not the same link I used but similar approach and type of cookie) which turned out tasting pretty good but didn't look as pretty as I thought. I think we needed more life savers and perhaps not as finely smashed but everyone liked them. 

You can see I ran out of week and did face painting and cookie baking on the same day...I blame end of pregnancy tiredness on not getting it done earlier that week but mommy-guilt of wanting them to have these experiences so let's do it all when mommy has any amount of energy. Something must be working, as I started this post #3 saw the cover of the book at the top and said, "Oh! I remember that book." That's the point, right?

We rowed this book February 27-March 2, 2012

Links ::

Homeschool Share :: printables and ideas (when I went to get the link I saw that the site is set up differently, I'm sure there are a lot of the same/wonderful printables in the link but it's not the same way I found it when I was doing my planning/printing.)

Rowing :: Madeline

Who hasn't heard of Madeline? I had heard of her of course but hadn't actually read the book in my memory. But it was such a fun row. The boys and I all enjoyed it and even had a certain 3rd grader/8 year old sitting in to listen to our story. This book was rowed during the last month of my pregnancy and I think some of these rows were a bit lacking. Madeline seemed to go well though. I think getting a little Madeline doll for #6 when she rows this book will be in order.

Memory Making ::

Madeline has surgery of course to take out her appendix. We talked about the appendix and looked at pictures from when Mr. Wiedz had his appendix out. The surgeon gave me pictures taken inside of him of the oozy appendix and the intestines after they were stitched up to repair the damage done by the oozy appendix. Then I drew an appendix scar on anyone who wanted one like Madeline's and Mr. Wiedz's

Seat work ::

I printed the Madeline toilet paper roll doll from DLTK's site. No one did a great job with coloring but they enjoyed putting it together and we displayed them for the rest of the week as we read Madeline.

I found a mini-book, Tour de France, with landmarks and buildings that are iconic to France. We tried to match up the photo of each with the drawings in the book. #3 agreed that going to France someday to see all of these places in person would be awesome!

You Can Read ::

I can't remember if we added more words this week or if we just used this week as a review. We did pull out a lot of the sheets and used them during our time together. #3 made sentences with his flash cards and read some sentences I made for him.

ABC Animal ::

We combine our All About Reading Level Pre1 with an ABC Animal each week. I try to let the boys try different painting methods or other art mediums for their letter then we add the animal when its dry. We are hanging them around the room and it is looking really cool as we finish each letter.

Links ::

Homeschool share  -  flag, map, tour de France book

1plus1plus1equals1 - You Can Read and ABC Animal