I found some Yogi brand stress release lavender tea, and it is simply divine. I do not know about it releasing any stress but it is yummy!
We watched some great Animated versions of poems
"The Arrow and the Song" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
We worked on Alliterations this week, now if only I could figure out how to say that!
The Fennec fox flopped face first in the snow ~ Robin
The bear bounced the ball, the beetle bounced the broccoli ~ Duck
Ants ate eight avocados and apples~ Owl
Falcon still has not done this yet and he thinks I have forgotten about it!
The little boys wrote theirs out and we did copy work from poetry books all week.
The Author of Winter Bees , Joyce Sidman has some great resources for teachers on her site to work on poetry click here to view her site When exploring her site we came across a video of a funny fox diving headfirst into the snow for a winter treat!. This inspired Robin to write the alliteration that she did. Click here to watch the video on Discovery.com.
The kids were super sad that no one sent us any mail this week even though we sent out 8! I explained to them that we should get some soon and that we just got started.
Book we read:
This is a great book from serious to silly there is something to please for all.
One that got many giggles from the Kids was Toot Toot!
I was excited to remember I had these peanut butter sandwich cards for bulletin boards that would make a great item to send along this week. Peanut poetry right on a peanut butter sandwich, how fun!.
We also sent a peanut plant worksheet to most everyone
What we ate:
We had quite the buffet today, Strawberries, sliced peppers, cucumbers, warm peanuts, and peanut butter cookies. Funny that we were actually eating peanut butter cookies click here for the gluten free recipe.
"Warm peanuts just like the Ballpark" says Falcon
Tea we drank:
The kids are really loving this tea suggest by Falcon's friend when he was over a few weeks back and saw me drinking Chai tea.
Simile fun!
So during tea time we worked on coming up with similies that went along with colors on the paint samples I had on hand. ( I always keep these suckers around for projects) The kids had some fun coming up with new ways to describe things.
Blue as a painful raindrop that got squished - said Owl
Why was the raindrop in pain I asked? " Because he is fall then got squished when he landed...duh!" Well that makes sense to me!
Green as a juicy south American kiwi - said Falcon
I really want a kiwi now!
Robin and Duck has an especially hard time with this assignment. We sent along paint samples with our new poem so our friends could try this activity too!
A few years back I started doing Tea on Tuesdays with the kids. What we did was have Tea and eat cookies while reading poetry or short stories.
Now that we are back in the swing of things I started this up again.
Book we read:
This was chosen for us by a librarian a few weeks back when I asked him to pull books with the "winter" theme. I had no idea how much I was going to love this book. It has some great poems that all contain nature facts and why that animal does what it does in the winter. I learned quite a few facts as well.
A great view front he inside of the book. This was Falcon's favorite poem.
An idea struck me! While enjoying our teatime I thought how great this would be to spread the word about Tea on Tuesdays to our friends. So I got on facebook and connected with fellow homeschoolers and brought this idea to them.
Every Tuesday sit down with your kids for Tea, cookies and poetry then mail off a favorite poem or two to your friends and only open it on the following Tuesday during Tea time. I was surprised by the eagerness. Week 1 we sent out 8 letters as we had 8 familes involved.I have a Facebook group of all interested and addresses listed to mail out.
The poem we sent was from the book Winter Bees our family favorite was The Moose
Robin typed out the entire poem herself we mailed it off with a moose track worksheet.
letters ready to go out with all sorts of additional postage! ( bonus math work, we had 44 cent stamps!)
Foods we ate:
Tea we drank:
The kids enjoyed some mint and sassafras tea while I sipped my favorite Vanilla spice blend by Yogi teas.
Brother Raven, Sister Wolf
"You are a Squawker, Croaker,
Alarm-on-the-wind.
You are a Slinker, Shadow, Nose-to-the-ground.
Fearful, and flightly,
you peck and then flee.
Bound to the earth, you leap, snap, and tumble
Silver winged-Thief,
Yellow -eyed snarler,
Stop Following me! Stop Following me!
But don't stray too far
Keep watching our woods
Don't slack off your work, Keep tracking our dinner
Eyes-of -the- forest
Heart--of-the-hunter
Raven , my Brother
My Sister Wolf"
From the book Winter Bees, this was my favorite as it reminds me of the constant bantering of my children. Who in the end love and look out for each other always. Interesting that Falcon's 2 favorite animals are the raven and the wolf . I never know previous to this that in the winter these 2 animals work together to hunt. (read from the book about the facts on the upper right side!)
The kids broke an overhead light in the rec room that is a WRECK from moving. Open boxes everywhere, baskets of laundry,toy bins. There was glass in everything I had to spend the ENTIRE DAY cleaning and dumping everything out. I wanted to cry, it was a nightmare. This is the room that baby Canary hangs out in as well as the rest of us so I had to make sure that it was clean so Canary didn't put it in her mouth. I told all the kids to get out, then grounded them all for the next week NO ELECTRONIC AT ALL!
Tuesday:
Tea and poetry
Wednesday:
A trip to see Great papa bird at his new independent living apartment. The kids enjoyed playing Shuffleboard while Robin went door to door selling Girl Scout cookies.
Thursday:
Papabird said he was feeling like he was going to vomit ( he always says that I really think he needs to eat better and see a doctor) so I did not think anything of it. While we where at zoo class he texted me and asked if I would come and get him as he was very ill and clearly had a stomach virus. Uh no, I do not think so... have you throwing up in the car with all 6 of us in it with you. So I told him to stay there until he is better. We own the bldg. and he has a huge private office with a couch blankets and pillows plus all the food he could want. Why expose all of us to that? No thanks. His employees put a skull and cross bones on his door!!! Ha! I am very sad he is sick but seriously why come home and expose us all to it if you do not have to!
After our homeschool zoo class we stopped to check on the polar bears and we got to be nose to nose and hand to paw with this big ole bear.
Friday:
A brief break from punishment to watch a movie I check out from the library. A great movie based on a true story of a girl who had her arm bitten off by a shark but stayed in high spirits and never let that slow her down from reaching for her dreams. She was homeschooled too! Soul Surfer
Oh, I almost set the dryer on fire as well. I put in a brand new comforter in the dryer and melted part it, dang thing was dry clean only. It helps to read lables! Remember my dryer fire a few years back in the old house read all about it here.Dryer Fire!
Breakfast of champs.
Falcon said I should post the recipe so here it is
Fill blender 1/2 full with packed down spinach, add frozen strawberries and a mix or some type of dark berry ( blueberries, black berries etc)
a banana ( you need this to sweeten it)
some orange juice ( i do not measure)
and coconut oil.
The smoothie will come out looking like a muddy brownish red from all the spinach
Yum,!
( green egg in the back compliments of my Easter Egger)
Remember the filtration system we bought? Well the filers are supposed to be good for 6 months here is a picture of ours after 2.5 months
New next to the old
Our water is very hard and very high in iron! We are going to have to rethink how we are using our water and the filtration system. Possibly triple filter it.
A few snowy pics from the farm covered in white!
Burning papers and sticks after sledding ( Yes, we can sled right in our own backyard on our own land!!!!!)
Cool hole in the pond
Chicken on a barrel
I love all this land... I am sooooooooooooo blessed!
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
