Beautiful Night at the ball park

Last night we traveled to Owatonna for Dalton's baseball game. The weather and the ballpark were picture perfect! Then we won so it was a double bonus. We are home again on Thursday and Tabor & Tanner ump his game.

Snap shots from the zoo

Boy did we learn our lesson........."Never take a bus load of kids to the zoo the week of a holiday"

Wow was it packed. The kids didn't get to see very many animals it seemed they were all in hiding. The polar bear exhibit was just packed and the polar bear didn't look very happy. He was just up in one corner pacing back and forth with foam coming out of his mouth.

But the highlight of the whole day was the primates exhibit! (and the Popsicles on the bus ride home)

Busy Sunday

They cleaned away the all the branches laying in the streets and the parade went off with out a hitch! Dalton is in the far corner playing base drum. They after the parade it was off to the last night of passing camp. It's hard to tell by the photos but the boys stood in water to play. It was a lot of fun to see the new blood try out for their spots. Oh are we going to miss our QB who graduated. We are off to a busy Monday at the Elliott's! With all the storms and lightning strikes Darin has been at the mill 24-7 this weekend. Dalton is off to march in the band at Valley Fair. Tabor and Tanner need to be at school by 9 for lifting and they we are off with 30 community ed kids to Como Zoo. We will be home in time for the boyz to ump another 10 year old baseball game tonight. Busy-Busy

Nicollet Friendship Days

This weekend our little town celebrated "Friendship Days" We had a midway come with rides,games and all types of fair food. But all our time was spent at the ball diamond. Tabor and Tanner umped 9 games in the heat and humidity. Dalton's team had an excellent time and plus we got to beat Lake Crystal. (big rival to the south) But this crazy weather has kept us on our toes. Last night we had winds of over 70 mph and hail (AGAIN) with 7 inches of rain in two days. So we had to cancel our fireworks show and today the band is suppose to march in our parade. Seriously we are getting a little tired of picking up tree limbs & sticks. Our garden doesn't compare to the crops in the area. Some are just black totally wiped out by hail and others like the neighbors corn laying at a 45* angle.

FLYBOY

Deacon had the AMAZING opportunity to fly to Williams this weekend in Bishop's plane. He was attending 1/2 day of a neighboring stake's scout camp to get his aviation merit badge. He was the only boy that got to ride in the plane! Here is is before take off.

He got to be the co-pilot. He even got to fly the plane a little!! Do you think this smile is genuine?? What a cool experience.

IS he BACK?

Oh Mankato is all a buzz with Brett Farve saying "He'd Love to beat the Saints". So does that mean that he's coming back to the Vikings? With only a month until training camp starts here in town we will start to see a huge shift in purple/gold color every where. The question still remains......Do we think he is going to come to training camp? I do know that this family will be at training camp!

Off to Auggie Wrestling Camp!

The boyz left this morning for 5 days at wrestling camp. The boyz will share dorm rooms with River Valley Wrestling (a.k.a Springfield). The only thing I didn't send with was the kitchen sink. Camp starts every morning at 7:30am and the last work out will end at 8:30pm.

They will be home Thursday afternoon in time for Tabor & Tanner to ump a baseball game. And Dalton has a home game that night as well.

Cousins

Friday we headed back to Canby to clean some chickens. The boyz have never grown too old to ride the 4020 JD and a ride around the yard with their cousins on the bikes. But it was just a quick trip to the farm we needed to get back and pack for wrestling camp!

Protect the Cherries!

The birds have been just thick in the cherry trees so we needed to break out the mesh netting to protect our cherries. As you can see we are going to have a lot of cherries but I don't know if we will have enough for Jam unless the kids leave them alone too!

Finally back at the ball park

Finally, the sun came out and we are back playing baseball. Dalton had a good night at the ball park against Wacceca. Had a ground rule double and he caught for 4 innings and he pitched for 2. ( yes, he beaned a kid too) But he was crowding the plate. Tabor was the ump so no brotherly love.

History Class - China Study

The last two weeks of history class have been dedicated to Asia during the Ancient and Middle Ages. Learning about China, and Japan, and even some about Korea. What an incredible area!

The kids with their carp kites:

Twins game here we come

Today we travel with are Cargill family to the MN Twins game! Unfortunately the boyz have a wrestling fundraiser in Springfield today for Coach Amsden. But not to worry they boyz will get to go to a game in July!

Idaho Day One

After testing today (which went much better than yesterday), we did our unit on Idaho. I talked about where potatoes grew, and why they were so prevalent there, and then we did our sheets from the USA book on Idaho.

For each state I used a mix of the book series in this post, and the worksheets in this post. These are the extra resources I used for Idaho in particular:

Video:
School House Rock - Earth

Books:
Hello USA series - Idaho
Eat Your Way Through the USA (Section on Idaho of course)

Websites:

Incredible Edible Idaho - Potatoes - A PDF file of the life cycle of a potato plant and potato nutrition facts. Even has a coloring sheet.

Idaho Dept of Agriculture Food of the Month - Includes all the different foods that grow well in Idaho and has a PDF file on most of them.

Recipes:

For the Idaho unit we made baked Idaho Russet potatoes for dinner with nitrate free bacon and herbs from the garden on top. We made fresh asparagus, because it is in season in Idaho right this second, which we smothered with the last of the cheese we got from the Tillamook factory (white cheddar pepper corn cheese).

Then Alex made Potato Chip Cookies:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups crushed potato chips

1 cup crushed nuts

1 pound butter

2 cups sugar

1 tsp vanilla

powdered sugar

1) Mix together all ingredients except powdered sugar.

2) Bake at 325* for 15 minutes. Cool.

3) Roll in powdered sugar.

We split the recipe in half (making it a math lesson as well) and then he made them. They are crunchy and VERY sweet... not considering they are made with potato chips, not bad at all.

Logan and Cyan making the asparagus:

Testing day...

We don't put much stock in tests. Especially standardized tests. In my mind, standardized tests are meant to test standardized children... and those children do not exist.

But I like to know where my children are in the scope of things and how they are progressing. And if (God forbid) something should ever happen to me and they would need to go into public school, then I think the test scores are good information to have on hand. So for the last two Springs, I have set up a day to do the MAP test with an online proctor.

Today was the day. They had their water bottles filled with water, I bought fruit bars as snacks, and they were allowed to chew gum. (Whoohooo!) This took out most of the test anxiety they may have and I got Cyan ready to go.

This year she switched from the test being electronically read to her, to reading it herself. I had let her know ahead of time and had prepared her by going over the Dolch words, and reviewing the rules of sounding things out. She was set. We started the test today in high spirits.

That didn't last long.

She got through the first questions with flying colors. They were mostly deductive reasoning and I was shocked at the level of vocabulary they were requiring of my 8 year old... but she was doing ok. I stayed in the room and as I watched her she got all of the first 5 problems correct, even though some seemed quite a bit above her level. Then as I watched I started to get irritated. The questions didn't come back to a 3rd grade level... they kept going higher and higher until she was having to read entire pages worth of work and then they would ask her questions like "now find the false statement on this page". WHAT? Um... She's 8.

I sat with her and watched the next two questions closely. The first one was a page of instructions on how to install a fire alarm in a hallway. It had about 2 paragraphs worth of info, which is heavy for her age level. Ie: hard but do-able. But then, when we got to the multiple choice answers it asked her 'which of these four sentences did not appear in the instructions' and it had four choices... and NONE of them had appeared (word for word) in the (painful for her to read cuz she is 8 years old) instructions.

The next one was worse. It said:

"You are writing a children's book about the dentist. The book is about a child's very first visit to a dentist office. Please choose the words that would keep the focus of your young audience."

A) Oral Hygienist, Calcification, Plaque, Surgical Tray

B) Cavities, Cleaning Tools, Tooth Brush, Dentist's Mask

C) Gums, Bite, Enamel, Aspirator

D) Oral, Tarter, Orthodontist, Cuspid

At this point she started crying cuz she didn't know what ANY of those words meant and I told her she could be done now. I signed off the computer and called the proctor.

I told the proctor what had happened and I told her that in no way was I going to watch my daughter cry through a test. (We were only through the first part of three.) Plus, I was pretty sure that when I left the room she was just pressing buttons anyhow to get through it, so that wasn't going to show us anything. She told me that the first five questions (all of which my daughter got correct, remember?) set the level of the test and that level could be anywhere from 3rd to 12th grade level. I was blown away to say the least. So basically, my daughter was getting 7th to 12th grade questions because she has good deductive reasoning skills?? Apparently, the answer is yes. Gosh that sucks!

Yeah... I told the proctor that we were all done with that, and that we could try another test tomorrow, but my kids will not be taking the MAP test again. But what makes me even more angry is that Cyan spent an hour after her test saying that she was sorry she couldn't do it. Poor thing! In NO WAY should a test EVER make a child feel like that.

Back to RAIDER FOOTBALL

Sunday nights are devoted to Raider Football! Every Sunday night in the month of June the Raiders travel to Mankato State University to play in a passing league. They meet at school at 4:00 to go over plays and then they play 3-20min games until 8 pm. It is two hand touch but a lot of fun to watch. Tanner did have a touchdown catch. Tabor worked at school today for community ed and Tanner had his first day of driver's training. And Dalton was at home in charge of the chickens and lawn mowing. He got 12 eggs the first day and only 9 eggs today.

Resources for California State unit study

For each state I used a mix of the book series in this post, and the worksheets in this post. These are the extra resources I used for California in particular:

Books:
This Land Called America - California

Videos:
Over California
Homeward Bound - The Incredible Journey

Websites:
Organic California Walnuts - History of the black walnut and the walnuts of California.

Castroville Artichoke Festival - We were ALMOST there for it. We left the day before the festival. But we ate at least 4 artichokes each in honor of the season. (Another quick food fact of CA, I have never paid less than $1.50 for an avocado... there that is SPENDY! lol! I was in avocado heaven!)

Oakland California's Gold Rush

Dairy Council of CA kids games - We saw a LOT of happy California dairy cows. It is amazing how much land they have!

Recipes:

(frankly, you could make just about anything and use ingredients from California. But these are the few we chose because we saw them when we were down there. In fact, we made lemonade down there several times from the Meyer Lemon tree in my mom's back yard.)

ARTICHOKE CRAB DIP

1 c. crab meat
1 c. fresh Parmesan cheese
1 c. Hellman's real mayonnaise
8 oz. can artichoke hearts, diced
1 sm. can water chestnuts
4 oz. sour cream or yogurt

Bake in shallow dish at 400 degrees until cheese bubbles. Serve hot. Toast - to go with dip: Sliced French bread (sliced finely), toasted; or English muffin, toasted in oven on both sides, cut into squares. Serve dip on toasts.

Strawberry Shortcake from All Recipes

Perfect Lemonade: Boil 2 cups of water in a med saucepan. Add 1 cup of sugar while mixing with a whisk. Mix until dissolved. Once you can not see any sugar in the syrup, place ice cubes into the pot to cool it down. Add this to the juice of 4 Meyer lemons (approximately 1 cup of juice) in a pitcher, and fill the pitcher the rest of the way with cold water or ice.

More things we saw growing in the California sun included:

Walnuts

Almonds:

Oranges:

Avocados

Lettuce and Lettuce mixes

Broccoli... you name it. It's there somewhere.