Making Snow

We pulled out a Christmas present (experiments!) and decided to make snow.  "This'll be fun and pretty easy to clean up," said the crazy mom in denial.

But first, while I was setting up the station-o-play here's Mr. Innocent pulling junk out of the cabinet.

The boys loved adding water to the crystals and watching them grow into soft, mushy snow.

And it continued to grow and slowly take over.  Kind of hard to wipe this stuff up.  And you're not supposed to let it go down the drain (something about it retaining a ridiculous amount of water and taking over your plumbing...).  I let  the boys play and tamed my inner you're-getting-stuff-all-over-the-floor beast.  They had a lot of fun.  And it was worth the mess.  :)

And this little cutie hung out with me in the kitchen while they played.

Rainy Tuesday

While Sean worked in his books, Luke wanted to paint.  He matched up the colors, brushes and cups.  Sean joined him when he finished his work.

I was happy they actually painted instead of just mixing all the colors together.

Luke's are the top 2 and Sean's is at the bottom.

Sean likes to have little breaks between work so we set the timer for 10 minutes and he gets back to whatever he was playing with.  Sometimes it goes a little more than 10 minutes, but the breaks seem to help motivate him

Rainy day view from our front porch.  Luke says we are in a boat and can't go outside because there are water snakes.  

Sean found a beetle inside and decided to give him a home and some spinach leaves.  

We started the Titanic Science and did some experiments.  The first was sinkers and floaters.  We all picked 6 things from around the house to test.  Then we did one on buoyancy.  It did not work as indicated, but was still fun to play with.

There is talk of snow!  The boys are excited to see if we'll get any.  I need to make sure I have hot chocolate supplies on hand (to celebrate or as a consolation!).

Love of the Titanic

A  new interest has sprouted up around here.  It started with reading the Magic Treehouse, Tuesday on the Titanic.  I just picked up some books at the library on it to see if Sean would be interested in learning more.  Who knew?

He has made the Titanic out of everything he owns.  When he eats, the food becomes the Titanic sinking.  We even made a video complete with iceberg and music.

Luke is even getting in on the action.

We have watched videos and documentaries.  There are other ships he is interested in.  The sister to Titanic is Brittanic.  He knows all about her, too.  :)

We are planning to take him to the Titanic Museum for his birthday in February if he still wants to go.  I am blown away at how he gets attached to a certain topic and immerses himself.  

A Fun "Dig-Out"

We kicked off Story of the World with some great friends and an archaeological dig.   Or, "dig-out" as Sean likes to call it.  The night before, we read the introduction to SOTW and the book, Archaeologists Dig for Clues.  Sean was so excited about doing our own dig.   He got all of his tools together and packed his bag.  

In the morning we went to Amanda's house where she also had the book so
Sean got to hear it again with Ivy.  

Amanda had batter ready for them.
They looked through an artifact book and picked out some relics to shape into cookies.

These are bones.

Then they watched the Magic School Bus while Amanda I got got a quick visit.  :)

After the cookies came out, we were ready to head down to our site. 

Little archaeologists

 What we need to remember: there were ants everywhere and the poor children had to keep swatting them off their legs.  We said they are always going to remember when we forced them to dig in the dirt with all the ants (not red ants- no danger here!).  The kids were such troopers and they did a good job digging through to find artifacts left behind (by Amanda who buried them earlier!).

They put their "finds" into egg cartons to keep them organized.  

Mission accomplished.  Heading back up to clean their objects.

Ivy is cleaning her bottle with baby wipes.

Miss Hayley joined in.

We ran out of time to log our findings, so we finished the next day at home.

These are the tools he picked out to use for the dig.

 He made a grid with his ruler.  I had him pick out 4 things to record.  He drew a picture and wrote the name.  Then I asked him what the item told him about the people who left it behind and I wrote that part.

Finished work.  He had to have it on the clipboard. :)

Sean said his favorite part was "finding the items."  Apparently we have to set up more digs for him so he can show Luke how to do it.  It was great sharing this learning time with good friends!

Easing into school-ish things

I had sorta big plans for the first day of school.  Little prizes for the boys throughout the day (school supplies), cool chop stick thingys to use with lunch and a grand intro to our new books and lesson plans.  Because little boys get excited about lesson plans, right?!

But here we are in late July and school-ish things are sneaking their way into our days.  I gave Sean a little break from his workbooks.  But with the purchase of new pencils, sharpener and erasers... workbooks are not content to rest in the drawer. 

Luke got some new beeswax crayons.  Apparently also good for stacking.

Sean is crazy about crocodiles right now.  No way we're going to keep that on hold until school "starts," so I found some online goodies and we had a fun time working on some projects. 

 More on our crocodile learning to come.

Our days are starting a new rhythm and, for now, it does not feel forced.  I like the idea of adding little activities here and there until we have made a relaxed way of incorporating it all.

I am looking forward to organizing my thoughts for this fun blog hop coming up.  Lots of homeschoolers will post on curriculum, school rooms, student photos and "day in the life."  

And, better late than never.... we planted a pallet garden.  I have no clue what I am doing with this, but it was an experience getting it done with the boys.

Worms!

Hard at work.

Now we wait for something to (hopefully!) grow.

The days of summer are racing by.  

Time to slow down and cherish them a little more than I feel like I have been.  

Natural Egg Dye

A new thing for this year- dyeing eggs naturally.  So maybe I should have looked into it a little more and actually planned for it.  But we had fun experimenting.  

First we boiled the eggs.  Miraculously no eggs were broken during transport to the pot.

Then, off to the yard to find some stuff to color the eggs.  

Dandelions for yellow.

Holly berries... because they're red.

Random stuff from the ground.

Couldn't resist a photo op.

Just precious.

Some more stuff from the ground.

Inside we separated it all into glasses.  We had grass, dandelions, holly berries, some purple weeds and pulled blue berries from the freezer.  We poured hot water into each glass and added a dash of vinegar.

Checking out the progress.  They sure do take longer than commercial dye.

And waiting....

Finally, first batch is done.  They look... natural!

I actually love the different shades.  

Next year I will plan ahead and get the other natural dyeing materials in addition to foraging in the yard.

Thank you, God, for your beautiful world around us!

Pine Trees

For our nature study this past week we worked with pine trees and cones.  We went on a nature walk the first day.  It was cold and drizzly- fortunately there are pine trees close by.

Cheesy brothers...

We collected pine cones (opened and closed), pine needle bunches and bark.

Our next activity was to check it all out with a magnifying glass.

He also did crayon rubbings of the pine cone, needles and bark in his nature journal.  Forgot to take a picture of that!

Another day we painted using the pine needles as the brush.

Our last activity was to watercolor a picture of a pine cone with needles.  I printed off a coloring book page and traced it in pencil on thick paper. 

And what, one may wonder, was Luke doing during all this creativity? 

Dreams of organized tot trays filled with learning experiences still float in my head... for now this totally counts as reading practice.