Illinois

May's state was Illinois. I've decided what when we hit a state that our library can't help us with much, we should focus on some side interest that relates to the state - in this case we picked Abraham Lincoln. Besides Lincoln we were able to find a couple of farm stories - which were very interesting to me because my mom is from Illinois and her father was a farmer. Probably his father was a farmer and so on. So I've been to an old Illinois farm and associate that part of it with the state more than the tall buildings in Chicago.

Other than Lincoln and the farms, we watched a youtube about the Chicago fire (very interesting, done by the Weather channel - I didn't realize that although 4 square miles were burned, only about 300 people died - and the same night there were also huge fires in both Wisconsin and Michigan. The Weather Channel video attributed the source to the traditional "Miss O'Leary's cow" story, but a commenter cryptically suggested that the three fires were caused by a comet. Perhaps the world will never know...). I also taught the kids the little song:

Chicken in the ca(r) and the ca(r) won't go! That's how you spell - CHI-CA-GO!

They liked that a lot :)



We (that is I) made Abe Lincoln hats.  Caleb complained, "Mommy, you are doing all the craft", but I didn't realize in the planning that it would require as much from the glue gun.  We watched a video about Lincoln's presidency (it was a cartoon) and Caleb was really affected by learning about the civil war and slavery.




And we made little books about Illinois - instead of the Crayola state page, I didn't think it was that great for Illinois.



Our state outline collage - see the t-rex in the center?  That's Sue, we read a fun book called The Field Mouse and a Dinosaur Named Sue. 

For our meal we had Chicago-style Deep Dish Pizza.  It was fantastic, but I've never had Chicago style pizza before, so I don't know how it compares.

For dessert we had Mary Todd Lincoln's Vanilla Almond Cake. 

Yes siree, Abe Lincoln himself ate this cake!   It was good, but kind of a grown up dessert.  The kids weren't that impressed.

The next two states are Indiana and Iowa  - and both of them border Illinois!  After that is Kansas.  So geographically we are going to be in the heart of America for the summer. 

New Pets and Old Sunflowers

We hit the park this morning right after breakfast. Last week it rained a lot and our nearest park seems to flood easily. Even thought it hasn't rained significantly in 3 days, it still had a lot of standing water. And to the kids utter delight, it was full of tadpoles.

Annalise caught way more than half of these.  She got her method down pat and was catching them left and right.  Natalie didn't catch any, but she was excited anyway!

So we put them in an acrylic tank our neighbor was throwing out and hope to watch them grow.  I asked the kids to smile.  They rubbed their fingers over their lips and made funny noises instead.  Well anyway, hopefully, they'll live longer than Greta....

Who's Greta you ask?

Greta...

We thought she was awfully pretty for a feeder goldfish - 15 cents at Petco (plus tax).  She lived at our house for 3 days.

And speaking of things that used to be pretty...

Here is our sunflower patch.  I am pretty sure this is how they are supposed to look!  Big boy is he one in the middle.  The tallest one is the Tall Sister.

Detail of Big Boy - the seeds are getting their stripes.  We took a seed sample and they are not ready yet. 

This is the Tall Sister.

Kid Book Review: Shipwrecked!

I think we may have accidentally found an author to add to our list of favorites...  A few weeks ago, Caleb pulled Shipwrecked by Rhoda Blumberg off the shelf at the library.  I'm sure he was interested in the large wave on the cover.  I shrugged and toss it in with the rest of our books.  I didn't know what to expect of it.

It turned out to be a fascinating biography of Manjiro Nakahama - the first Japanese person to visit the United States.   We both learned a lot while reading it.  I had no idea that Japan had been so isolated from the rest of the world as little as 200 years ago.

I very much recommend this book as a good biography to read with kids.  I don't want to spoil the story though.  Blumberg wrote several other biographies for kids.  Several of them are carried in our library and we are planning to read more.

Lately

Today, well this week...and last week...we did not "do" school.  But just for fun Caleb sat down and wrote to 100.  Annalise was very proud of him :) 

My parents were here for a week.  They went home yesterday.  Natalie had to warm up to them, but today she sat in her car seat and called "Grandma!  Grandma!"  I think she thought she was sitting behind her :)  I like this picture, it really shows how dramatically red her hair is!  We were walking on a sidewalk by a store front and a woman opened a door just to stop me and ask about it.  People sure ask a lot of funny questions about her hair!  A couple of people have even asked it we dyed it!

My dad's birthday was in March, but we (that is I) were so late at remembering and totally uninspired that we just promised to have a little party when they got here.  We made him a cake with 66 Mickey Mouses on it instead of 66 candles.  I made them out of melted chocolate chips.

And I like this picture - they are so colorful :)  I think I was wearing black that day.

How Things Get Out of Hand

First Natalie rides the Triceratops - and we all giggle at her.

Then Annalise climbs on...

Then Caleb decides he needs to ride too.

And before it's all over, there's a millipede riding the Triceratops.

Annalise fell off the bunk bed last night.  Another one of those, I saw this coming events.  She said she was "trying to see Caleb."  Well she saw him, briefly before she flipped out and landed on her back.  She was not hurt, but very scared.  And as far as that goes, so was I!

Sandpaper Art

This is a fun trick - you start with a piece of sand paper.

Use white chalk to draw the outline of your picture.

Color the picture with oil pastels - you need to color very darkly and try to cover as much of the sand paper as you can.

Place the finished picture face down on a piece of black construction paper (blue works too).  Cover with a piece of white paper.

Iron over the paper - I think the hottest setting worked best, go over the picture several times and press hard.

 

We had to do Caleb's twice.  The first time he had colored too lightly and by then we didn't have another sheet of black paper. 

Annalise's - probably she used too much detail to make the transfer come out right, but detail is her hallmark and all her princesses need to have eyelashes.

This finishes off our Shinglee Art books. There is one more craft, but the supplies are going to be hard to come across, so for now it will wait. We really liked these books, it is a shame they have been discontinued.

Super Cold

A True Floridian

The Dark Horse

All this time we'd been watching Big Boy intently, but he has ended up not being the tallest sunflower in our garden.  The western sister is 9 feet 8 inches and still growing.  Big Boy topped out at 8 1/2 feet and his heavy face is pointing down now. 

Big Boy is the one that is looking down.  Annalise says he is her "shower".  It does look a lot like a shower head.

If she gets much taller, I will not be able to measure her.  I can only hold the yardstick so high!

A Happening

We had a little excitement yesterday.  Both C & A wanted to go with Rob to walk the dog at lunchtime.  Natalie was asleep and somehow this doesn't seem to happen very often.  I silently rejoiced at the unexpected 10 minutes to zone out. 

They weren't gone any longer than usual, but the plan had been for them to leave the key and just knock, so when I opened the door, I was very surprised to see that Annalise was completely soaked.  Caleb announced, "Daddy and Annalise got in the water!"  And lo and behold I noticed Rob was soaked as well.  It didn't even click with me at first.  I don't think I have a picture to show what it looks like, but on the other side of our association there is a partial canal that borders the parking lot.  When they go for a walk, they walk up to the edge and peek at the fish (and shopping carts) that are in the water.  Sometimes there are even alligators there, but not very often and I've never seen them close to the edge.  Anyway, where the lot meet the water it's a drop off about 8-10 feet with almost 5 feet of that water. 

What had happened was that Annalise was walking up to the edge and she looked away for a second and just walked right in and went under.  Rob said he didn't even think, he jumped right down to her and pulled her up and out.  He got her out, but then he was stuck because the wall was too high to climb out.  There was someone else walking by and they went and got a ladder and he climbed out. 

Caleb was pretty shaken by the whole event, Annalise was very quiet about it, but as you can see, later that day, she was back to her typical self!

We are wordlessly thankful that this turned out to be something we can laugh about.  I'm sure every parent in our association has imagined this happening to their own child and this is one mom who is going to be a little more persistent in getting her kids to swim better this year.

Well, I'm sure you are wondering about Rob's cell phone.  Soaked, of course.  But there is some part of the transmitter that requires these strange blue crystals to absorb liquid.  When they are dry they are blue, when they are wet they are pink.  So he put his phone in a sock and put the sock in a jar full of these blue crystals.  It is starting to work again. 

Can-demonium

In an effort to get more exercise for myself, I hyped the idea of collecting aluminum cans to the kids a few months ago. We made a goal of collecting at least 10 paper grocery bags full before cashing them in. Today we saw the fruit of our labor.

We collected almost all of these within walking distance from our house.  We also collected some at the marina down the road.  The marina was the best place, 2nd best was the middle school.  Sometimes we'd take a walk and come home with over 40 cans.  Even Natalie got good at spotting them.

56lbs at $.65 per pound equals....

$35.10!

Aside from the big bucks can hunting brought in, there really were a few benefits.  For one, I did get a lot more exercise and so did the kids.  Annalise's stamina improved dramatically.  Last summer a trike ride to the park would have been beyond her limit, but she easily rode 2 miles at the peak of our "can walks".  I don't have a good estimate on how many cans we collected.  I know a grocery bag held more than 100, so definitely more than 1000.  






Colorful Leaves

Nearing the end of our Shinglee Kindergarten Art books...this was a very nice project and one that had a real art lesson in it. Before we began, we gathered different kinds of leaves from our street.


Trace around each leaf with oil pastels.  Use lots of different colors.




Voila!



Here is the actual concept - paint the inside of the leaf a contrasting color .  Obviously this our our Spanish color wheel...and we are getting slightly bilingual around here!  Very slightly.

...eh...

So anyway, you really have to stick with it and paint every leaf.  Then you paint the background a color that you didn't use for the leaves.

This is Annalise's, she did all the tracing and some of the painting.

Caleb's - no help required.

Mine - I just wanted to do one this time :)

Hawk Moth

Some type of Hawk Moth,  I think I've posted one like this before.

We get some big moths resting on our front porch walls every so often.

What big eyes you have!



 I like moths.  I've never really had to deal with them chewing holes in my clothes though.  I read somewhere that moths are in decline, and honestly I don't know where I read it and I don't know if they really are or if some particular species of moth is in decline or what, but they seem to be pretty plentiful around here.

When Daddy Fills out the Nursery Nametag

Big Boy in Bloom

And would you believe that I was looking at it and a ZEBRA LONGWING BUTTERFLY landed on the flower and spread its wings and I nearly tripped over the kids running for my camera and the second I got back to it, the butterfly flew away.

Idaho

After a big month studying Hawaii, I think our enthusiasm just wasn't rejuvenated enough to tackle Idaho properly. It did not help that our library did not have much to offer about Idaho. Still, the nice thing about our state studies is that even a state without a lot of glitz looks like a very nice place to visit - and it was agreed all around that we would like to visit Idaho.

A few months ago, we had an old potato in the pantry and on a whim we cut it up and tossed it in the garden box.  It grew and looked very impressive from the top, but I made the kids wait until we got to Idaho to pull them up.  Wow, we should have waited a few more months!

The entire harvest in the palm of my hand.  They weren't big, but they were very tasty.

We read about skiing during our Colorado study, so I decided not to revisit it just now.  Instead we read about Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea.  We tried to read-aloud a history book for young people by Olive Burt.  It was very interesting, but also over the kids' heads.  We struggled through a chapter of it, but we still learned some interesting things.  Like, did you know that Lewis was quiet and kind of a loner, but Clark was friendly and talkative and had red hair!  Sacajawea was also very interesting.  She was married to a French Canadian and had baby named Pomp while they were on the journey.  The labor was really difficult, but someone ground up some rattlesnake rattles and mixed it with water and she drank it and it turned out ok.  She also helped them identify edible wild plants along the way.

Other than the potatoes and Sacajawea, we read a book about the Nez Perce Indians, who developed the Appaloosa breed of horses and whose Chief Joseph is famous for his quote "I will fight no more forever."  Talking about Indians and settlers and justice and freedom to your six year old is a hard thing. 

Our Idaho meal - Idaho Finger Steaks and Scalloped potatoes (and peas).  The finger steaks I found in two places listed as a particular favorite from a cafe called Milo's Torch in Boise, but I am not sure the place is still open.  Deep frying is not my preferred method of cooking and I am not good at it, so they were not pretty, but they were yuuuuuuuummy.

Dessert - Idaho Potato Cake - it had a cup of mashed potatoes in it.  Very nice moist cake.

Our friendly, talkative redhead covered in crumbs of Idaho.

Up next, Illinois...and we have already made arrangements for a native of Illinois to visit us this month.  (That is, my parents are coming to visit.  My mom was born and raised in Illinois.)