Moon Posters - or this Moon thing has to come to an end eventually...

As a sort of finale for our moon study, I gave each of the big kids a half sheet of poster board and asked them to make a poster about the moon.  Both of them focused on the phases of the moon.  I think you can tell which kid excels more in language arts!

Caleb's - given a white poster board he painted the whole thing BLACK!  I think his moon looks very realistic.

I did not ask them to include a fact card.  I commented to Caleb that his poster was a little limited on details and he added the note card with some facts from a book.  Annalise liked it so much, she added one too.

Annalise's

And so set our moon study.  I really enjoyed it and I think the best thing was how much it caused us all to marvel at the moon.  Even tonight I stepped outside for something and couldn't resist looking up for it.  It's a day past the first quarter and brilliant.  Go take a peek :)

No Dragons for Tea - Picture Book Recommendation

It's been a while since I found a picture book to recommend, but this is one I think would be a perfect addition to any young child's personal library.

No Dragons for Tea is a cute story about a little girl who meets a dragon in the park.  She and her mother invite the dragon over for tea.  While having tea...the dragon sets the house on fire.  The little girl and her mom remain calm, but the dragon panics and does all the things you worry your kids might do if your house really was on fire.   Because it is a dragon making the mistakes, the tone of the book is not scary.  It is funny, but sensible.  The book ends with a rhyming poem about fire safety and a discussion page to share with your child.

I was very surprised to discover that even our big kids had a strong desire to "save" their favorite toys if the house was on fire.  As we discussed what we would do in that event, they both made clauses to the rules in their imaginary fires that allowed time to grab Softy the dog or a train set.  And although they knew "stop, drop, and roll", they didn't realize that smoke was dangerous.  They also terrified me with an escape plan that involved a 2nd floor window and the baby.

Never a dull moment around here...

6 months

It is so hard to believe how fast 6 months have past.  Little Irene is not that little!  17lb 11oz at her check up.  She is quite a weight to carry around!

She is very strong and sits very well.  For whatever reason she does not roll over.  She did roll over a few months ago - not on a daily basis, but every now and again - and now she does not.  I do not doubt that she can, she just doesn't.  Her doctor said that her sitting is a little advance and she probably likes sitting better than laying down (she does) and that she just has her own agenda for hitting these milestones.  When she is on her tummy she usually spins around in a very purposeful way - as if she was trying to move forward.

Taking an age picture was difficult...there is an orange light that comes one before the picture it taken (it hasn't always come on and I think it means something it not right on the inside).  Anyway, that orange light bugs her.

Blurry proof that she does smile...

Well I guess we will try again tomorrow!

Big Sister

School Break

Our summer break seemed to come upon us suddenly this year.  I wasn't sure I wanted to break our routine, since a lot of our routine school work wasn't much trouble for me to plan and kept the big kids occupied in the mornings, but as it did appear on the horizon, I realized that both Caleb and I needed change and we needed it now!

In preparing for our break I made 5 goals:
1.  Purge
2.  Read
3.  Dance (& Sing)
4.  Paint
5.  Play Outside


More specifically:
1.  To get rid of stuff we don't need or want (I read a quote on a Charlotte Mason website - It is hard to have a peaceful home when you have a lot of possessions.)
2.  To read good books aloud and silently.
3.  To listen to a variety of types of music and dance and sing along.
4.  To learn some painting techniques and practice them.
5.  To go outside and enjoy the weather, to notice the bugs, flowers, and people in our neighborhood.

Moving up to a real bike!

These were the goals I shared with the kids, my other goal - secretly - was to get back into the habit of checking on their chores.  Certain children were faithfully doing their chores while Mom was distracted with the baby, while others clearly did not!

She's not a thumb sucker - she likes all her fingers AND the pacifier.

I made a checklist for the chores and included a section for our goals.  My goal for the goals is to do something goal oriented at least 3 times a day.  We never get all 5 in one day!  I can only handle paint about once a week at the most!  The checklist has very successfully reduced the chore slacking.

An additional motivation for the purge is that my neighbor is collecting items for a Relay for Life yard sale, so it helps to think it's all going to help others.

For reading - I've been asking the kids to spend 30 minutes reading - probably something I should have been doing for a while!  oh well.. you can't undo the past!  We are moving forward.  I'm reading Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder to Natalie and Tanglewood Tales by Nathanial Hawthorne to the big kids.  In the process I discovered that not only did Natalie not know bears hibernate, she also wasn't 100% sure they weren't mythical creatures and that the big kids thought the word abominable meant something positive!  Thank you Monsters Inc.!

For music - my neighbor's friend's son(!) goes to a Waldorf School and it made me curious about how they do things - they are NOT very mainstream let's say! - and one thing they practice is eurythmics - which is an expressive form of dancing.  I guess they have some method, but we are going for free style.  I thought the girls would like it and I thought it would add an extra bit of understanding to listen to music that goes along with something else we are experiencing.  For example - listening to fiddle music while reading Little House books.  What we've been listing to this week is called Caribbean Playground and it has children's songs from different islands in the Caribbean.  Since Miami is a very Caribbean place, it's pretty relevant!   At first the kids didn't like it, but after a couple of listens, they thought the songs were catchy.  I've always liked steel pan, so it is right up my alley!

For paint - we have been looking at an art book by Bob Ross.  There are Bob Ross videos on Youtube.  Bob Ross was so amazingly inspiring.  You watch him paint and think, oh I could totally do that!  But what we did most recently was watch a Mr Otter's Art Studio tutorial and painted it.  They turned out much nicer than I expected and if I remember to photograph them, I will post them here.

Play outside is easy.  It is so beautiful right now that you feel like you are wasting daylight being indoors.  It has not been as cool or dry this year, but we know that drippy, humid days are not far away and we want to be outside as much as we can.

So that is kind of a lot for a break!  But most of it is the sort of stuff we do anyway and the sort of stuff we've not been able to do either because of school or because of Irene or because I've gotten lazy.  The main thing really is being outside.  You can't seem to keep from learning out there.

Big Sister

Animals and The Moon

Wolves just seem to go hand in hand with a full moon.  However, when Caleb did a wolf report for his Little House class last fall, we learned that wolves do not howl at the moon.  They howl to find each other and it just looks cool seeing them silhouetted in the moonlight.

Many other animals do change their behavior based on the phase of the moon.  We did some online research and discovered that some animals become more active during full moons while others become more reclusive (predator vs. prey). 

Still we decided to use wolves as the focus of this craft.

Cut out a full moon.

Trace a wolf onto black paper to make a silhouette and cut it out.  (Cut out a piece to be the ground too.)

Layer it all together on dark blue paper and voila!

Moon Art

Although it looks like all we did was eat, we did have a few moon projects that were not food oriented!

One of my favorites:

I get a lot of art ideas from elementary school art teacher blogs.  I think that is where this one came from.

On a white sheet of paper, trace a plate for your moon.  Fill the circle with pieces of masking tape.  Don't go for uniformity, different sizes make this look more realistic.  Cut the circle out but allow a paper border around the moon - an inch or so is enough.  Using the same plate, trace a circle on a piece of black construction paper.  Cut that circle out and layer the two pieces together so that the masking tape moon fits in the hole.  Glue them together, add some paper stars and the tape the project to a sunny window and get a little moon glow in the daytime!

Happy New Year!

Irene and a Black Eyed Pea

Late Night Twister to ring in the New Year

Boys Night Out