Back to blogging - What we are up to this week.

We. made gingerbread cookies for the firefighters at station 17 that helped put the fire out in our house on Thanksgiving morning. You can read all about it here. We came at just the right time the  ladder truck was just coming back from some weekly maintenance. Every week they have a "tool" day where they test all the tools on the truck and make sure they are working properly. They checked the ladder and extended it all they way up then rotated it and checked all the nozzles on the top. They shoot out 1000 gallons of water per minute! The kids were so excited to see the ladder go up so high. The fire captain then gave us a tour  of the fire truck and explained to us what all the tools are used for and the different types of trucks. I was very entertained by all the information he gave us. It was a really neat experience.

My 4 little birds all lined up from tallest to shortest (so cute that never happens in a picture!) watching the ladder going WAY up.

Robin is doing well with her school work we just added vocab and spelling to her weekly work. She also started reading eggspress and is having fun with that.
On Monday morning after we did a bit of school work I shut all the drapes and got all snugly with the kids on the floor with loads of blankets and pillows and watched:

Chimpanzee -  A Disney Nature Series Movie

We love nature shows!

We read the FIAR book Down Down the mountain and read all about mountains
My 3 younger kids made mountains and we looked up actual mountain ranges and some facts about each one Robin choose K2 because it is in China and she loves anything China, Duck chose Everest because its the biggest and  Owl chose a mountian in Argentina  (that I  cannot pronounce or spell for that matter) because he liked the name of it. I had the kids cut up white paper and glue snow at the peaks.

Here is a picture of our mountains ( the facts are on the index cards) our elf  Peppermint decided that it was going to try and climb K2 last night!

Robin checked out a huge pile of Panda books  from the library (she has an obsession with all things China)

We finished up our short unit on ancient India we still need to go to the store this weeked and get some sand and dirt so we can make mud bricks like the ancient people of  India.

Speaking of India, Robin wants this Indian Barbie for X-mas but it is $47! Makes me think that the American girl doll ins't so bad of a deal for $120 When this barbie is $47. She also wants the $40 2012 Holiday Barbie for $40. Crazy expensive Barbies!

For Science we finished up out unit Matter
Robin loved making a Matter book that I printed out from Teachers Helper magazine I get them from the library and make copies of items I want to use, they have the best worksheets.

We  had a  "3 states of Matter snack"

Solid - ice cream

Liquid- root beer

Gas- carbonation 

Robin Joined Webrangers, Falcon did it may years ago and really liked it. She really liked that she got an official WebRanger ID to carry in her purse. If you are not familer with Web Rangers it's a cool site that kids earn badges and such my completing lessons based on historical sites and national park information. It's a lot of fun and free. I had forgotten all about this site until earlier this week I was borrowing Falcon's library card ( the only card with fines) and saw his ID in there.

We studied Abraham Lincoln  this week by going over greatest accomplishments, then we had a discussion on why John Wilkes Booth shot him. It was pretty ironic that the day we discussed his assassination was the day we actually went to the theater to watch A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. We had a silent  moment in the theater where we thanked Abraham Lincoln for all he did to improve our country.