Carrot week- so many fun things to do with carrots

My 5, 3,and 1 year old had a blast this week all about our favorite orange veggie.

Monday- we read the Book Muncha Muncha Muncha by Candace Fleming it's a great story about a man who wants to have a backyard garden and the rabbits keep eating his veggies so he keep building different walls and fences to keep the pesky rabbits out. After we read the story we built our own garden walls using legos. As they were building I wound up a furry wind up bunny toy and they had to try to build it high enough before the bunny got to their garden. They had a blast!


My 5 year old's garden and wall around it.


My 3 year old's wall with the wind up bunny heading right for the good stuff!

At lunch time we cut the top off of a carrot and put the carrot top in water to try and grow leaves on the top again (fingers crossed)then I let them take turns pealing whole carrots when they decided they wanted to keep the skin on and eat the carrots like bunnies. they ate like 2 whole carrots a piece! YaY!


Other carrot projects we worked on the rest of the week
1. We cut up orange strips of paper and made pretend carrot soup.
2. We made our favorite super moist and delicious carrot bread.
3. We talked about different vegetables and cut some out of magazines then we used brown paper bag crumpled it then spread it out them painted over the entire paper with brown and black swirled paint (this was the dirt) then we pasted the vegetables we cut out and made our own paper vegetable garden.

For an art project we studied Degas and used oil pastels to make our own Degas works of art. My 2 older kids did a picture of a tree the 2 littles didn't care to make pictures. My 5 year old later made many pictures of ballerinas just like Degas did,

April Showers

My oldest had a homeschool class at the Zoo today and since schools are out the zoo was holding a fun Easter event. Despite the fact that it was cold and rainy I couldn't convince my children not to go to the zoo early. So we packed up all our zoo gear and snacks and headed out. The 2 middle kids were super excited to use their umbrellas!

The first stop we made was at one of the indoor exhibits to take shelter from the cold rain. My kids had a lot of fun running around in the Arctic exhibit and watching the seals. My oldest pointed out to me that we could see the rain falling from the bottom of the water, due to the underwater viewing of the seals, it was very cool.That was one of my favorire moments of today.

One of the special events the zoo was doing today was hiding egg themed goodies in animals exhibits and watch them find it. They put plastic egg filled treats in the octopus exhibit and we got to watch him open them and find the snacks. My daughter got to decorate a paper muche egg and fill it with goodies then watch a zoo keeper place it in one of the zoo's bird exhibits. My oldest was able to see the tortoise feeding. He said the were running to their treats super fast and fighting over them. I couldn't get my double stroller and 5 year old through the crowd but they did get to pet a lizard, snake and turtle while they waited.

My oldest when off to his zoo class while I hung out with the little ones in the indoor kids play area were they had so much fun.WE played in the indoor sand box digging for bugs like we were birds with tongs that we were pretending were beaks, decorated paper bunnies, painted our faces and so much more.

I was really surprised at how much fun I had with the kids today even though it was cold and rainy and very crowded (I hate large crowds)But it really was a great rainy April day!

Edible Book Festival

The edible book festival is an event our homeschool group just started 3 years ago. It is an annual national event usually held around April 1st which is also known as edible book day, "edible books" are created and displayed by participants to create create an "edible book," which can be inspired by a favorite tale, involve a pun on a famous title, or simply be in the shape of a book (or scroll, or tablet, Ltc). it's totally up to you. This year my 4 year old is doing The Girl Who loved Wild Horses


my 10 yr old is doing The Sword and The Stone.


I am a big book nerds so I totally LOVE this event it's fun and YummY!
Here a few others that we thought were neat!

Finger prints, and The Rag Coat FIAR

For Science we started using Play and Find Out About the Human Body by Janice VanCleave Today we did the first 2 projects about why our fingers have ridges. They were fun experiments we tried to pick up dimes with and without tape on our fingers. Then we inspected our finger prints with magnifying glasses to find our patterns, Whorl, arch or loop. We all had arch's in our prints. Lastly my 4 yr old drew green lines for stems then we used ink pads and our fingers to make buds on the stems for flowers. We then discussed what plants need to grow and we added raindrop fingerprints to represent that April Showers will bring May flowers.

We read The Rag Coat, part of our Five in a Row books then made our own paper doll. We traced and measured to make and cut out a coat for our doll then used pieces of fabric and scrapbook paper to make the jacket. We then discussed the history of quilting and that many times groups of woman would get together and quilt in a large group. So we sat together and chatted while we quilted our coat and made up stories about where each piece of cloth came from. We also went to Goodwill this week and looked for spring coats. While we were there we discussed and talked about why buying used is better than new and we imagined all the fun things that the previous owner did with that coat on. We did not find a lightweight jacket but we did get some cute t-shirts and 3 brand new Webkinz with tags and all still attatched for $1.00 each! SCORE! I love thrift stores it's like a treasure hunt!


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Here is our fingerprint picture and our Rag coat doll we made

Fairy Houses

The weather here has been very dreary, gray, rainy and cold. We are so sick of being in the house. So,today after I put the baby down for a nap I got myself and the kids dresssed and I said for art today you are going to build a fairy house using only items that you find outside. My 10 yr old was not so excited but by the time we were finished he asked me when we could do another project like this again (smile)This is the one my 10 yr old made.



My 4 yr old was so excited she placed a stepping stone in front of hers that says wonder she said "I put it there because I wonder if the fairies will come or If I will see them." So cute! Here is her fairy house



For our Homeschool girl scout troop we also made fairy houses. We used a castle bank from a Home Depot kids workshop that we never put togather. What fairy wouldn't love a princess castle house? So we built it then painted it with pink glitter. My dad then used his drill to drill out 1.5 inch hole for the fairy door.

Here is our finished indorr fairy house.

Chile and Mermaids

This week we studied Chile my 4 yr old and I read the book Mariana and the Merchild a folk tale from Chile.This was a great book, full of rich vocabulary and metaphors. We are going to purchase a copy from amazon since we loved our libraries copy.

We then make a pocket out of a manila envelope painted it with watercolors and glued sequins of the sandy bottom (her idea for sunken treasures). This pocket was made to put her mermaids in that I pre drew and cut out she just glued them together, colored them in and added glitter to make it shimmer.(Shimmer was a new vocab word for her from the book.)This weekend I plan on writing some of the vocab words and definitions on the back of the Mermaids then getting them laminated and using them as book marks.



We will be using this book over the next month to do many more underwater type crafts about the vocab words to enhance her learning the rich vocabulary such as...Indigo,crept,dazzled,aquamarine,crimson, shimmered, and many more

A favorite of our Chile studies was the Chilian Shrimp that I made- so yummy!

My oldest did his basic core studies as well as present the information he learned on Chile at our homeschool group event. He also started researching swamps for his research paper he just began.

Arctic week- FIAR

Today is a lazy Sunday for me I am still in my pj's. I cannot recall the last time I stayed in my pj's all day but at least I match, pink plaid fuzzy pants, pink striped shirt, and fuzzy pink socks! The kids are having movies afternoon right now and watching Legend of the Gaurdians while eating freshley popped popcorn
giving me the opportunity to write in my blog.

So with the 4 yr old we started rowing The Very Last First Time, a book from the Five in A Row lessons. So we are going arctic this week....

On Monday we painted ice fishing holes with oil pastels and watercolors then I gave my daughter an Inuit outfit I bought from Build a Bear a few months back. We then talked about the weather in the Arctic and the clothes they wear, and the types of foods the Inuit eat. Then her bear went Ice fishing.


We are lucky enough to have a great zoo close by that has many polar animals so we attended a Zoo class that I set up today for our Homeschool group on the Arctic. The kids got to feel real polar bear fur and seal fur plus learn lots of fun and interesting facts on Arctic animals.

Building our own igloos out of sugar cubes after reading Immi's Gift were much harder than I expected to make due to the fact that they won't melt and hold together. Our igoos kept falling apart! It was still fun and we got to discuss how a real igloo is put together and how it keep the inuit warm. My daughters decorated hers like Immi did in the story.



Making our own Inuksuk's and some Arctic creatures out of white model magic air dry clay. The small animals were made for an Inuit game that you toss them in the air and whichever lands on it's base you receive a point for. The person scoring 30 points first wins.



My oldest is studying Wolves and reading Julie of the Wolves for his Literature unit this week. He is also doing a research paper on the Black swamp.

In addition to our arctic unit the children also got to see physics in action by watching the tree company cut down 3 huge branches off of our huge 200+ year old Scarlet Oak in our back yard. they thought it was cool how they directed where the linbs fell by using ropes. They also are having fun just counting the rings in the tree limbs. The limbs they took off are bigger than most average size trees. Now my husband and I are brain storming what we can build with all our natural wood. a log cabin for the kids, stools and tables, a fortress, totems, so many ideas. Right now its a fun jungle gym for the kids to climb on.



My 4 year old has been working on her handwriting by writing thank cards to put with all the boxes of Girl Scout cookies she sold.

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The Arctic was a lot of fun, next week we are studying Chile and a few other assorted topics.