Sunset in the Graveyard

Fun toilet paper turkey we made next to the Trio block Robot. I have these cute little turkey's all over the house!

I have not been blogging lately  my life has been quite busy with the many trips back and forth to the Hospital to help care for my dad for the last 3 weeks.It  feels like I have been  treading water in rough seas and just barely keeping my head above water.Schooling has bean rather sporadic, I have been unable to keep a routine in  my day due to the needs of my father and the many long phone calls I have had to make to get medical insurance stuff dealt  with.

This week I was able to get back in a routine. Well for 2 days I did. Then my printer ran out of ink causing  another kink in my plan. Life never does go according to plan does it?

As a family I have been reading the American Girl of the year in 2006 Jess. We did a fun jungle bird art project from this great art book.

On the far left was Falcon's  the middle one Duck did (I was so excited to seem him actually want to take part in a project we were doing) Robin's is on the right.

Falcon has been working on writing his memoir on the speech he wrote for our library and his interview on the news about it.

We had a fun  afternoon playing pop for letters,  Zingo  Boggle Jr., and Mermaid island 

I came across this wonderful letter recognition program on pinterest. I was sad to find out that I needed to purchase it but I did so anyway and am glad I did.

Duck working on with the  new letter program, he loved it. I even bought the hand pointer that they use which was such a hit. Duck loved using it and pointing to the letters with it.

I am reading...

 Almost through with this one!

 I am reading this for the boys tween book club I started.

I just finished this book, I LOVED it! So glad I cam across this series.

Beautiful sunset that I shot while watching the sunset in the graveyard

The Joy Journal

A wise Friend of mine who moved to Thailand last year with her family posted  the following message on facebook

 

"Yesterday, I learned about the death of a boy I had never met and only knew of him and his family through their facebook page I had been following. After feeling so sad yesterday, it hit me. Whenever his mom wrote, no matter how terrible things were, she would always have a positive spin on her post. Because of them I am going to be challenging myself (and I hope others do this along with me) to... look for the joy in each day. Life can be so frustrating, stressful & busy, but there are joyful moments in each day. I know some days I will really have to search for those moments and other days I will have trouble choosing, but I am challenging myself to find 3 moments of joy in my day. I would love to hear if you would like to do this with me too.:)"

This post came at just the right time in my life. I have been looking at the negative to much and not looking for the positive. It has been my experience that most people focus on the negative in life and not look at the positive. I will try hard to do the same everyday.

My 3 moments of joy today

1. Watching my first born son blow his candle out on his birthday cake celebrating the start of his 12th year of life!

2. Seeing my husband hug and kiss Duck numerous times when we were out to dinner tonight. ( Papa bird doesn't usually show much affection to the kids or I so this was an amazing sight)

3. Enjoying the cool breeze and slight warmth from the sun on this beautiful fall day.

As I write this I think I may go buy a journal tomorrow and call it my Joy Journal and write down 3 moments in everyday that have brought me joy and leave out for everyone to read. Moods are contagious infectious even, maybe this new found positivity will spread beyond this post and to others..

It all started with

A stranger on facebook who  inspired my friend

My friend now inspired me

Now who will I inspire??

Homeschool Mothers Journal

In My Life This week...
I got hit with bad bad news that was quite emotional. I lost my mom to cancer 5 years ago and my dad is now struggling with Cancer, and a broken back. He is not dealing with the pain well and the doctors won't give him any more pain  meds. It's frustrating because the meds he is on to keep the cancer at bay is causing his bones to soften therefore causing bones to break in his back causing him great pain and back surgery. It's no fun to see your parents in pain and unable to care for themselves. When I was giving my father a bath yesterday he was screaming and asking me to get his gun for him so he could end the pain. I was half tempted to do it just to call his bluff, but that's a risky game to play and I wasn't 100% positive that he wouldn't do it. Its frustrating to me because I believe in natural medicine not traditional Western medicine and my Dad is hard core Western medicine. When he was 19 he had Hodgkin's lymphoma and they gave him 6 months to live. With and insane amount of chemo and drugs he beat it, so he very much believes ANYTHING  that the Doctor tell him.

In Our homeschooling week (well 2 weeks I did not post last week)..

We had our first American Girl book club this week and are studying New Orleans in 1853 with Marie-Grace and Cecile. I am working on a longer blog post on that to post next month after our last meeting. The moms and I have some great ideas planned for next month.

We had a great opportunity to stop by and visit a house that in still under remodel that was part of the underground railroad. Which was great timing since we have been reading and studying a lot on slavery recently.They rebuilt the basement but used all the original stones from the house to keep it authentic. The house had to be moved about  500 yards to east due to the fact that a church (of all places) wanted to tear it down and build a parking lot. Thank goodness it was saved and moved, but it has been closed and under construction for over 6 years. They are almost though now and should have it up and running by next fall. ( fingers crossed)

Falcon and Robin touching the original stones on the newly built wall. If these stones could talk oh the stories we would hear!

 The secret steps leading to the basement.

Here you can see the original tree truck beams (with bark and all ) that were used to support the house.

The double fireplaces, the one on the left has a hidden door that leads to a secret room.

The city is ripping up the road near our house so have have spent countless hours sitting in strangers driveways watching all these big machines work! Duck and Owl were super excited to get up close and clean big chunks of dirt of the treads.

This weeks documentaries we  watched

Great one about Religion and government conspiracy ( on netflix)

 Falcon has been interested in this war so he watched this 2 disk set and wrote a summery on  Desert Shield and Desert Storm.  He didn't seem to comprehend a lot of what he read so we went to the library to get books for him to read.

 An interesting self help type film ( on netflix)

A great one that goes along with our studies on Egypt

I needed some laughter in my life so I watched this stand up comic and laughed my butt off! ( not a homeschool thing, just a little something for my sanity).

My favorite thing this week...
A quick trip to the beach, there is just something about the waves and the water that calms me. It's definatly my happy place. The kids ran along the beach, threw sticks in the water, collected shells, climbed on the rocks and sat  with me and watching the waves crash against the pier.

What I am Thankful for....
I am so thankful for the awesome group of moms who I know who go out of their way to help each other and keep all our homeschool events running, fun and smooth.

{FIAR} Mrs. Katz and Tush

 

 

Paper Driedel we printed and assembled from enchanted learning. 

 

 

We made a paper menorah and used the center candle to light a new candle each day we studied Judaism.

 

 

We used to be part of a yahoo group called flat travelers, it was like a Flat Stanley project. We had sent our polar bear Louie to Israel and while there he stayed with a Jewish family and celebrated Hanukkah. It was fun to go back through and read all he did while staying with his host family.

 

 Some fiction and non fiction books we read to go along with Mrs. Katz and Tush.

 We watched this fun DVD,now the kids want a kitten! Robin then drew Tush and her 4 babies.

Some fun fiction books about cats. Color kittens was a fun one for  Duck and Owl. We painted after reading this book and worked on color mixing in our egg cartons, then added some more painted papers to our pile for future art crafts.

We made a Cheesy Potato Kugel

We Celebrated Sukkot!

The kids decorating the baby gate that will be the roof of the Sukkot with paper fruit.

Playing Stack the States on the Ipad in the Sukkot hut, who doesn't love hanging out it a fort//hut?

Robin made signs for our pets to hang up on a telephone pole if they were ever lost like Tush was in the story.I didn't get a picture of them because when I tried to look for them they disappeared and were nowhere to be found!

We spent quite a bit of time going through Jewish holidays. We really felt like we related to this book. We had a Manx cat ( they have no tails) for many years before she died. Out neighbor came from Poland  many years ago and speaks very little English. And of course we just read about slavery so this tied in well. Tomorrow we are going through a house that used to be part of the underground railroad and see were they hid the slaves in the basement.

This was one of the more difficult FIAR stories  we have done due to all the confusing words and Jewish holidays but we all learned quite a bit. We actually rowed this book for 2 weeks instead of 1 partly because we had so many field trips interrupting our day, and partly because I really wanted to go deeper about Jewish holidays.

Non-Traditional Learning week.

It's been one of those weeks that were so busy I felt like we spent our days in the car. We had back to back field trips and events each day of this week that I am just so tired, and a bit behind in my weekly goals. Here a just a few of the things we did this week I am to tired to post it all!

What we were up to this week.

Live animal Sketching at the zoo with our homeschool friends. All the kids came prepared with a lot of interesting facts on reef sharks, I even learned a lot of new facts.

I love chipmunks, they are so cute and the zoo always has them running around. We found this little guy (or girl) running around in the bathroom, lost in the giant labyrinth of toilets, sinks and stalls  panicked by all the people. The bathroom has an open door so I am assuming that this poor chipmunk found its way out after we all left the bathroom.

 

We went back in time 150 years to  historical village that I haven't visited since grade school. We had so much fun.Here the kids are pictured with Mark the retired racing horse who now pulls the buggy around the village. My kids were enjoying themselves so much that while we were they they were already asking when we could go back. Hopefully we will plan another trip back this fall.

We spent the day at the water park, My dad and Falcon were enjoying the large hot tub.

The Red and White Kings of Egypt were battling it out to see who would take both crowns and rule Upper and Lower Egypt. - Using Story of the World for History.

 

 

We read : Build It!: Structures, Systems and You and have been using books in this series for easy science lessons for my little ones.

 Then we got busy building structures, our first was a cracker house with cream cheese as glue to hold it together.

 Next we built spaghetti stick/ marshmallow structures and gumdrop/ toothpick structures

 

Testing how our structure hold up to weight. This structure never collapsed but the tower would tip over.

This structure would only hold 1 CD.

Homeschool Mothers Journal

 

In our homeschool this week

With my little ones we worked on the Five on  a Row Story "Wee Gillis" you can read about what we did here.

 

We went on a tour through a candy factory with our homeschool group. That was a lot of fun!

 

We also started our Animal Adventures monthly zoo sketching event. I started it last year and wasn't very organized but this year I am much more organized with the event. I have already planned out all the animals we will be doing sketch's of all year.

Our 3 ring zoo folders and matching pencil cases. The kids used fabric markers to add names and decorate their pencil bags and decorated the outside of their folders with zoo animals. What we do is bring clipboards and printer paper to the zoo then when we come home we use a 3 hole puncher and add it to their folder.

Falcon's is on the top right Robin's is at the bottom. The little boys didn't really understand the idea of sketching so when we came home I  printed out some pages for them to color. I asked them to remember what the elephant looked like and color it the right color. Then I asked them to add some things to the picture that they saw the elephants doing. They each drew some hay that the elephants were walking on and eating. I think I will bring printables of the animals for the little boys and try and encourage coloring it lifelike colors and possibly adding other items they see from the animals environment.

 

 

I was unable to get action shots of all this kids sketching because Falcon left the camera in the car. All the children cam prepared with an interesting fact to share about the subject we were sketching. Robins fact was that elephants have over 100,000 muscles in their trunks. Someone else shared the fact that elephants can abort their own fetuses up to 1 month before delivery.

 

Game Time

Coffee and Uno anyone?

One morning while enjoying my Starbucks iced Capp that my wonderful husband brought home for me. My children asked to play Uno, so at 7:30 in the morning I sat on the floor with my kids and played Spongbob Uno.

 

Another game we played this week was Isolation, it is  a real fun 2 player strategy game, you can read about it here on board Game Geek,.speaking of Board Games as a  fellow homeschool mom/dad reading this you should know of this awesome website. You can look up any game and find out  all about it by hard core gamers that like a challenge not these silly little chance type games that teach children no critical thinking and strategy skills.I LOVE LOVE LOVE this website. It has saved me a ton of money by reading reviews

 

 

I Am reading

I have FINALLY finished reading through the 50 Shades series. It was okay not as good as I expected, but I did expect more story and less.....ah em... other stuff.

I am now reading

It's a fantasy based teen novel that I picked up at the grocery store one night. So far it's pretty good.

 

I’m cooking

Lots of Oatmeal and oatmeal based foods to go along with the Five In a Row book Wee Gillis that we were rowing this week.

 

Fun crime scene photo to share.

Look at all the dead bodies in my driveway. The kids have been having fun doing chalk outlines in our driveway lately. I told Falcon that they used to do chalk outlines of people when they died to try and solve homicides. He wanted to know why and how it helped so he went inside to google it. All he came back with was that they do not do chalk outlines anymore because it would contaminate the scene. So they take pictures now.

 

FIAR - Wee Gillis

We worked on the story Wee Gillis from Five in A Row Vol.2 I didn't think I would like this book but I actually had so much fun with it we rowed it for 2 weeks instead of just 1. We had so many extension activities to go with it and just not enough time in each day so we just kept going. By the end of our 2 weeks of rowing robin was reading the story to me! Even after 2 weeks there were a lot of activities that i did not get to that I had planned. I wanted to do a whole lesson on kilt's and do more with the little boys on sheep.  It's funny that sometimes the FIAR books I think I will dislike the most I end up really enjoying and the books I think I will love I end up not caring for!

 

 

 

 

 Our Scottish castle towers, these were so fun to make and the kids just LOVE them. I think we will be making more soon. We did have problems with the ramparts breaking off easily during the drying process. The castle tower idea came from this book, it is a great book full of really neat art projects.

 Robin's tower.

Action shot of Owl using a toilet paper tube to make brick impressions instead of Lego's.

 Finding Scotland.

 We watched Cities of the Underworld the first episode was all about Scotland and how the city was built with all these neat hidden streets and passageways that  are still currently under most of Scotland. Falcon watched the rest of the episodes throughout the week with me, they were very interesting.We also read about Edinburgh Castle.

 Robin is watching a short play where 2 men are playing bagpipes to win the girls attention, she really enjoyed that and watched it several times.

We studied traditional clothing in Scotland and Robin drew a few of her own designs in her daily journal.

Doing some worksheets on lungs and filling up a balloon to demonstrate how lungs expand and fill with air when we breathe. When Papabird came home from work Robin was so excited to get her pink balloon and give him a demonstration on how lungs work with a very detailed explanation.

In the van all week we have been watching Mist : Sheep Dog Tales there are about 6 or so DVD's out, we watched the 4 our library had. The kids really enjoyed watching them and learning all about sheep herding and life on a farm through a sheep dog's perspective. In one of the videos they talk about Scotland and being in the Highlands and Lowlands. Robin was excited to hear that because that's what Wee Gillis was about.

We also watched  this movie. It had lots of beautiful scenery of Scotland's  highlands and lowlands.