Afternoon at the Park

It was a beautiful day so we enjoyed part of it at the park.  I did my own version of "spinning" as I pushed the girls on the merry-go-round, and I even jumped on and took a ride with them!

We walked along the path and found 6 catapillars that the girls brought home to add to their bug cage, making a total of 7 now.  I hope they get along ok! =)

Celery Experiment Photo

The xylem tubes were removed from the stalk on the right yesterday, and it's already wilting!  And as you can see, the undisturbed stalk on the left is flourishing.

Autumn at the Zoo

-- Sent from my Palm Prē

ECC Celery Experiment TIP

Peeling the strings off celery takes a while, so we peeled some by hand and then used a vegetable peeler to finish the job.  This was much faster and had the same end result. 

I recommend doing this experiment, although it's optional in the curriculum.  My daughter grasped the concept pretty quickly and using the vegetable peeler makes it fast and easy.

Fiesta!

Our Fiesta was a big hit today! We made taquitos, Mexican rice, and refried beans, and we had a taco bar with chips & salsa. And since no party is complete without ice cream, we had some of that, too! We had a total of 16 people here! We set up a display area where we put some books about Mexico, our tissue paper flowers, geography notebook, and passport. We had to show our family and friends what we've learned so far and this was a great way to do it. Some of the kids (and adults) enjoyed looking through the books and I think they were impressed with the passport and notebook. All in all, it was a great fiesta! Even so, I think our next few celebrations will be low-key - this was a lot of work!!! I'm exhausted!

This is the tin punch project.  We had to use aluminum flashing found in a roll at Lowe's and we couldn't get pencil to show up so the kids used permanent marker.  We didn't even attempt to get the marker off.  Emily likes hers the way it is.

Science Experiment

Our experiment today involved ice cubes. We were to put ice cubes in two separate baggies, bury one in the dirt and leave the other in the sun. It would have worked great if we had dug the one up sooner! So, we did the same thing inside, only this time we put ice cubes in two bowls and place one inside the cabinet (shade) and one on the sunny windowsill. Success! The cube in the sun melted quicker.

Katie's Zoo

Today, our 6-yr-old decided that she would be a zoo-keeper. She brought all her stuffed animals down to the living room and set them up in "exhibits" and then proceded to give me a tour of the zoo. This, of course, was after she swiped my zoo card at the "entrance" (a stool in the hallway)! All the monkeys were in one exhibit, the zebras in another, and so on. Somehow, when she showed me the dog exhibit, our pet dog made her way in! It was too cute. What great fun she had telling me all about the animals in her zoo! The girl loves her animals!

Giraffe Exhibit:

Opossum Exhibit:
Monkey Exhibit:

Dog Exhibit:

(Yes, the dog on the left is our pet, Maggie!)

Zebra Exhibit:

Bird Exhibit:

Zookeeper Katie:

Upon entry, I even got a magnifying glass to examine the animals more closely!

Some of What We've Done So Far...

I haven't been great about posting pictures...or taking pictures for that matter! I'm trying to improve. I like to keep a picture record of what we do. Especially since many of our art projects end up destroyed. It saves so much space to have a photo of some of them rather than keeping them all!

Hard at work...

Park Day:

Matthew bookmark from Week 3:

Indian Sand Painting from Week 3:

Off to MEXICO!!!

We started off with some turbulence and the landing was rough, but since the kiddos heard about a fiesta with a homemade pinata, the trip took a turn for the better!

Handing out the passport was a fun activity. I'm so glad MFW includes that in the materials. We'll begin our art project (the pinata) tomorrow. The kids are very excited about this, and I am too. I hope I have all the supplies! =)

Our week began with some challenges, but we worked through them and seem to be back on track. ECC takes a while, so it's a big change from last year's Adventures. There is a lot of reading and writing. The good news is that there has been very little complaining about that this year! Last year, we struggled through the language lessons at first because it was such a chore to write. Now, most of the time, Emily just accepts it, does it, and moves on. In fact, some of the dictation actually makes her laugh!

This week, our prayer focus is for the people of Cuba. I got to break out my photo album from my mission trip to Cuba back in 1998 and share some personal stories with the kids. It took extra time, but we had fun flipping through the album. And since we are learning about deserts in science, we discussed our family trip to the Mojave Desert a few years ago where we saw many Joshua Trees. The picture above is one of the many I took on that trip!

The K program is moving along nicely. Katie is learning very quickly - we are actually doing about double what's on the schedule. She'll start 1st grade some time this year; looks like it will be sooner than I first thought. She is like a little sponge, absorbing everything right now. We are working on K Lesson 10... W-w-waterfall. We have an abundance of stickers, all in a pouch (the "sticker pouch" as it's been called for years), so for the tactile activity, I had Katie write a capitol W and lower case w on a sheet of paper and then place stickers on top of the letters. She loved it! How simple! During that activity, she said "I love school!" Who wouldn't when you get to use stickers?!!