The Thankful Tree

It is finally Autumn, the season of Pumpkin Lattes and other fall stuff.  Besides coffee Autumn always makes me think of thankfulness and handprint crafts.  Thankfulness is pretty self explanatory, with Thanks Giving coming up and all, but I'm not sure why "handprint" crafts.  Maybe because in school teachers had more energy for crafts early in the school year, maybe because handprints lend themselves so well to autumn craft projects or maybe I'm just a tad crazy.  What ever the reason, I have been planning a Thanksgiving handprint tree for a few months.

 First we traced our hands (for the leaves)

 Then I tried to figure out a way to make the tree trunk.  There were some brown lunch sacks in with the construction paper.  So I twisted then into branches.

 Next I hot glued them in a tree shape.  Hot glue worked great, especially since I was out of tape.

 While I glued, the girls finished tracing their leaves and cutting them out.

 Next we wrote what we were thankful for on each leaf.

 Charry kept thinking up more (probably since it was bed time.)

Then we put our leaves on the tree.

Here is our work in progress, we plan to keep adding leaves and thinking up more things we are thankful for all season long.

Yo Ho Ho, Mateys

There are a few things I tend to get carried away with,Talk like a Pirate day is one of them.  I declared a day of Mutiny!  We hoisted the main sail for revelry and sailed in search of adventure.

The day started with the outfitting, how pirate-y were we willing to dress while going out in public?  I think we were scruffy enough.

Next we set sail, getting a bit of cabin fever as we waited for cousins to arrive, but as we called "Land Ho" they were no where in site (It appeared they too tried mutiny but were sent to the brig for naps.)

So we set about are pirate-y business smaller in number than expected but a mighty fine bunch none the less.  First on the agenda, bury our treasures (imaginary treasure they be).  To keep our plans a secret we drew out the maps with white crayon on our white paper.

Then assured of our secrets were safe we used watercolor paint to reveal the paths.

There was much (imaginary) bootie to bury and each pirate took a turn leading the others around the island.

We celebrated our success by singing a pirate-y tune.

Then it was back on the ship to watch "Curious George sails with the Pirates"

The pirate ship in the movie inspired some buccaneer creativity as they each designed their own pirate flag.

Cabin fever hit again so we went ashore to play "Polly Says" (like simon says but more pirate-y and a bit parrot-y)

We rowed back to the ship for a pirate match game.

Then we designed ships to go with our flags.

They be a good crew, not a one of them had to walk the plank so I let them dig for some real treasure.  Not dablooms but gummy ring buried in pudding.

Having had our dessert first, (a very pirate-y thing to do) we had our grub.  Cannon balls (meat balls) and deserted island fruit salad (gram-crackers over mixed fruit.)

The sun be set now and our pirate day over, tomorrow we'll be land-luvers again.  Our patches we be hanging up, until next year when pirate day comes again.

Homeschool Journal, good times

In Life there are good times and bad times, times you wish to forget and times you hope will never end.  This week has been one of the good times.

In my life this week…

My week started out with a cold.  An awful, can't breath, tissue constantly in hand, sound funny when you talk cold.  Luckily it only lasted a few days.  I don't like being sick.   But I got better.  We had a full week, dance on two days, AWANA started again, had a scrap-booking party, field trip to a bird watching site, spent an hour at the local children's museum, family game night, and a movie night.  

In our homeschool this week…

I am very proud of myself for teaching even though I was sick. (I would have rather stayed in bed.)  We got a full week in and had a field trip.   The field trip was a bit of a bust.  When we  pulled up we found out a wasp nest had taken over the visitors center.  So we didn't look through the telescope or read about the different birds.  In fact the only birds we saw were the same kind as those that hang out in Target's parking lot.  On the plus side, my girls are great at identifying "target" birds.   

this isn't actually the "target" bird it is another parking lot bird we saw and identified

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

Cousin Lidi had her first soccer game today and we went to cheer her on.  She did great.  

Lidi is the tired looking one in neon green

My favorite thing this week was…

Family game night.  We got out Lego Creationary and had a blast.  It was a lot of fun watching the girls building and guessing.  And they managed to keep talking about their busy week (dance, school and AWANA) so there was not a lot of impatience.

Charry was the best guesser, she had a pile of cards by the time we were done

What’s working/not working for us…

Science is a bit of a stretch this year, I knew it would be.  Already I can tell that journalling is not an effective method for my kids.  They write as little as possible and would rather just draw pictures.  Over all the curriculum is great.  We are focusing just on flying creatures this year.  Charry especially likes learning the details rather than just over views.  So we are going to tweak things a bit, I'm just not sure how yet.    

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

I tried out the cricut for the first time this week and I LOVE IT. 

those gears would have taken forever to cut out by hand and they would not have looked as nice

Busy, busy weekend

Last weekend I learned the benefits of not over doing things.  We had a fun filled Labor Day weekend, crammed full of family and fun.  We also were carful about bed time and made sure we had some quiet fun time too.

Our weekend started with a dinner/movie night.  Thats when we let the girls eat dinner while watching a video.  We limited the DVD to an hour and made sure there was time to get into bed without rushing.

It was easy to see the benefits of their good night sleep.  Saturday we were up and out to the fair with my in-laws.  Charry and Merry were very willing to pose for various photos (almost as willing as their Aunt Katie.)   We did all our typical fair activities, including a picture with the dairy princess.   Merry measured the frog's fish and we learned about the different counties in our state.   We met the "walking Christmas tree" (our name for it, not theirs) KOG (the actual name.)

 And after the busy day of looking at stuff there was no whining, no complaining, no begging, and (thanks to Grandpa Don) a pony ride.

Also, randomly enough, both girls picked shaved ice over ice-cream for their treats.  It was less messy than ice cream so I'm not complaining.

Then we headed home for a light dinner and bed time.  Sunday was half over by the time we got out of church but we (the parents) managed not to stress.  Jon had some field work to do for work that took him out near the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum.  Since he had been wanting to go (and our Children's Museum membership got us in free) we loaded up in the car and "picnicked" on the way.  By the time we got to the air museum there was only an hour left until it closed.  The short time didn't mean less fun.

It was amazing how well the girls did looking at planes as we hurried from one display to the next.  We even managed to have 15 minutes to play in the hands on section.  My favorite part was watching Charry snapping pictures all over the place.  It was a good reminder that a short visit can be long enough and it's ok not to spend all day places.

Of course with the holiday our weekend didn't end there.  So it was good the museum closed early and we were home in time for bed.  Monday was another family filled day.   This time it was my side of the family.

 Family can be a bit overwhelming for me.  To be honest at the end of a busy weekend I usually find an excuse to make my visit short or not go.  I'm glad this week was different.  I loved watching my mom interact with all the grandkids.  I don't think they let her have more than a minute to herself all day.  It was also nice to see all the grandkids getting along, with only minor corrections needed.

And then our busy, busy weekend was finally at an end.  Looking back it was relaxing, fun and great to see everyone.  I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did.