Swamp final project

The final project for Cyan’s swamp unit was a diorama of the swamp.  She spent hours on it and it looks amazing! 

I asked her about each part of the background and the she explained each bit with perfect clarity… at one point she even grabbed a reference book to show me the Mangrove tree “knees” during a flood.  It has been a great study! 

I am hoping that sometime soon we will get back to Nisqually Wildlife Refuge to see the changes that have happened over the last 6 wks since we started this unit, but for now, I am really happy she got so much out of it. 

Hh is for Harvest Leaves and Horses… and Moose??

Box #1: Pages for the Alphabet Notebook for Hh!

Box #2: The same books that were in the box yesterday.  We only got to read one… so the second one was today!

We collected leaves from our yard and photocopied them to make a page similar to the one in the book:

They even got labeled:

And we had a little fun along the way:

Box #4 was Get Ready for the Code book.  This lesson in on the letter Mm, so it is kind of like we are still doing two lessons at once.

Box #5 was wipe off ABC handwriting worksheets.  Idea from here.  He did Bb, Hh, and Mm today.

Box #6 was a sheet of color wonder paper with pens!  He made “A Man” which looks more like a potato with legs, but it’s stinkin’ cute!

Box #7 was the current issue of ‘Big Backyard’.  And I kinda ran with the Mm thing today as well so we read two articles on Moose! 

Box #8 was Beginning Sounds Bingo.  This is borrowed from a friend and it is a really neat game!  Logan loved it!

Box # 8 Hh is for Horse lacing card.

Box # 9 was strips with our names on them to match to clothes pins with the same letters.  It is really great letter recognition work!

Box #10 was to assemble all our Hh work into our notebook.  We won’t be officially done until tomorrow, but I want to do Hh is for Halloween and have a bunch of things centered around that instead!

Happy Birthday Dalton!

Wow it is hard to believe our baby is 15 today! Where did the time go? Tonight while Darin was out scouting the team that we play Saturday night, Dalton picked 5Guys to eat at then we rented Captain America. And naturally his favorite kind of birthday cake......DQ Ice Cream Cake. Besides being busy with football Dalton's knowledge bowl team took home first place last week. Knowledge bowl is a sparty pants team of kids who excel at academics. Dalton's big gift was a stereo and a trip to Complete Nutrition his favorite store next to Scheels. And yes Dalton is going to be the tallest in our family and he still doesn't like the site of peanut butter anything. Happy Birthday Dalton!

Hh is for Harvest!

Box #1 was some math worksheets to do with mom.  Our current focus in Math is the numbers 6-10.  He has the others down really well now. 

 

Box #2 was Get Ready for the Code and he is now starting to get the format of the book.  The pages go faster and easier and his handwriting is getting better all the time!

Box #3: I used this as a timed number recognition tool today.  I held up a card and he said what it was as fast as he could (he could count if he needed to).  I made the third round the “Lightening Round” and he got a Skittle for each number he got correct on the first guess (he got 7 skittles out of 10).

Box #4 was a handwriting activity.

Box #5 was a Montessori Practical Life activity with lacing, velcro, and buttoning.

Box #6 was my beloved Ecojournals.  We took a little walk outside and collected leaves for an activity tomorrow.

Box #7 was an Eye Spy jar I made for him years ago.  But this time I made drawn little cards of objects to find in it.

Box #8: Favorite activity of today!  We made our own Dot-to-Dots!  I wrote the numbers 1 - 10 on stickers and he placed them on a piece of paper.  Then he and I followed the numbers to make a picture.  These were the masterpieces we came up with!

Box #9 was a letter matching activity with our names.

Box #10 was a Fall Harvest book and going out and gathering the very last of our summer tomatoes!

Long Time!

I know.....its been a long time between posts! I thought when one child moved out of the house you would have more time. BOY were we wrong! Okay quick review........Tabor has been out of FB for 3 weeks due to a wonderful enlarged spline and MONO. But back at to as of today! And good news the Warriors have made the playoffs so he is excited to be back at practice full time. Tanner & Dalton have had a whale of a time finishing the regular season @ 7-1 and we will have home seed for all of the playoffs. First game is the 29Th @ 7pm. When we are not on the road or at a game we have been getting ready for winter. Plus we have a couple of remodel projects going on at our home. Busy Busy.....only a month away from Turkey Day.

A Little 2011 Heaven!!

We had the privilege of spending October break with Mom & Dad and all of their posterity (minus 2 Dad's that had to work). It was a wonderful week full of scheduled and impromptu fun. The weather and scenery was beautiful! Here are a few things I don't want to forget.

We determined to do some work projects while we were there. The kids were great worker bees as we chopped a HUGE fallen tree into firewood. Papa's tractor came in quite handy...as you can see:)
Yep...this pile was the work of lots of little worker bees.
Here's a shot at the top of Green's Peak. It's a beautiful view don't you think....look at those kids
Here's a group pointing to the spring. This was the destination of the hike one day. Doesn't look like much, but it's the source of the pond down the mountain.
Truckload of kids on their way to Green's...most of this group chose to run down the mountain instead of drive down.
Here's a shot of one of our Minute to Win it games.
Another game, get the cookie in your mouth with only facial movements! She did it!
Watching this game made me cry from laughing so hard!
We spent one afternoon riding horses. It was another highlight for the kids.


Some other favorites were Family Feud, team building games, singing around the fire with Papa playing the guitar. Making smores, watching old family videos, and exercising with the adults, it was a week full of fun and family. It truly was a little heaven in 2011!