Our scout group had a family summer activity over the weekend. Since it was Boy scout day at the Wizards on Saturday, our pack went to the game. But before the game, we stopped at the Fort Wayne Zoo. We had a good group and a great day - no rain and nice sunshine.
The scouts all paraded onto the Wizards field before the game and there were fireworks after the game. The Wizards won. This was Nicolas's first scouting event.
Aug. 18, 2008
I have had to delete many pictures from this point on to have room to add new ones for this school year. For those of you just beginning a look at this blog, I apologize you are unable to see the pictures, but please enjoy the more recent posts.
Jodi
Our family is growing!
We have finished our schooling for this year. So far the kids seem bored. I won't let them sit in front of the TV or computer all day, so they are having trouble finding things to do. I have set a reading time each day for all of us to read in our respective rooms. It also helps when it's nice outside so they can ride bikes, play ball, or swing.
We cleaned rooms yesterday in preparation for our rummage sale. I still have several things to do for that. Once that is over, I will have more time to do things with them. We have camping trips, other day trips, tennis lessons, church camp, and baseball games scheduled to keep us busy during the summer months.
I will try to keep the blog updated with activities with our flat people, and other trips we take. Some of them will be counted as school days :) (Isn't every day a school day?)
Have a good summer!!
For co-op today, we read Daniel's Duck - the story of a little boy who lived many years ago in a log cabin who carved a wooden duck for his county fair. Some ladies from the Jonesboro Historical Society met us there and gave a tour of the log cabin in the park. Obadiah Jones lived there over 100 years ago and founded Jonesboro.
Our co-op will be putting on our own county fair in June for grandparents, other relatives and friends to come see what the kids in our group made. We still need to decide what the boys will be making - it could be sewing, woodworking, baking or whatever else they come up with. You'll see more about that later!
We are hosting 3 flat people in our home. 1 boy is from Maryland. We have taken him to the Sweetser Switch trail, a ball game, church and co-op today along with our field trip. He was even rescued from a small house fire at the boys' grandparent's house on Sunday!!
When we got home, more flat people were waiting in our mailbox. The 2 girls are from Georgia.
Flat Nicolas has had (and may still be having) quite an adventure. Let me explain. Flat Nicolas went to Georgia and was able to do several different things that I will tell you about below. Unfortunately, Flat Nicolas is still in Georgia - LOST! The family sent back his journal but have misplaced Flat Nicolas and may or may not find him. (We have made a new Flat Nicolas to send on for further adventures.
Flat Nicolas stayed with 2 girls (ages 8 and 9.) He attended soccer games with them, got to meet their cat's baby kittens (born while he was there), went to church with them, and attended a home depot building day for kids. I was told that he went (at least in the car) to Six Flags, where they think he may have been lost - but nothing was journaled about it. (Kind of disappointing.)
The girls' flat people came to be with us for awhile, so we can show them around Indiana.
Flat Alex returned from Maryland in our mailbox today. It was fun to read the log and look at the pictures of what he did while he was gone.
Some of the things he did was helping build a tree house, play outside on the trampoline, swings and slide. He learned his hosts 2 favorite sports - soccer and hockey. Alex played goalie for both sports. They took at trip to Annapolis and showed Alex Maryland's state capital. The hosts sent back a postcard of Maryland showing the state bird, tree, etc.
When Flat Alex returned, he brought back with him, Flat Ted. We are planning some adventures of our own!
Flat Nicolas should be on his way back today or tomorrow. He is also bringing a friend (or 2) along with him.
After reading Truman's Aunt Farm this week, we have been studying ants. The book used the homonyms 'ant' and 'aunt' for a funny story about a boy who wanted an 'ant farm' from his aunt. But she sent him an 'aunt' farm.
We have sent away for ants for our ant farm I purchased at convention, but have not received them yet. Yesterday we took some food outside to try to trap some ants. By evening, we had the small ants covering the slices of orange we took out. We had seen a video on Tuesday showing how to make your own ant observation jar. Nicolas remembered what to do and put some dirt in a small jar along with the ants on one of the orange slices. We put them in the house last night.
When we got up this morning, this is what we saw.
Because the ants are so small, we can't see them working, but we sure could see the tunnels. It's funny, when we don't want ants, the big black ones are even in the house! But now that we want some, we can't find the bigger ones! Alex tried to trap the bigger ones Wednesday by our big tree in the back yard. Usually we see them walking up and down that tree, but not this week!
We are excited to get our mail order ants to try in the purchased ant farm, but if I had known we would see the above -for free-I may have rethought the purchase!
Using this week as a catch up week from missing some unforeseen days in April, we concentrated on Math and Reading only. Then in the afternoons, we started our nature journals. It was a good week for it. Since we had just tilled the garden, the beginning of the week, we saw several ground feeding birds eating the bugs and worms we uncovered in the garden. With the spring flowers blooming on the trees and in the yard, we didn't have a shortage of colorful things to draw. Yesterday, as the clouds were moving in, we laid in the yard drawing pictures we saw in the clouds.
The boys love drawing, but not so much the journaling part. We are working on that. I had my expectations of what they would write about, but those expectations were not met this week. We will continue to work on finding words to express our imaginations. (Myself included. The writing IS the harder part.)
Last summer, Alex built a birdhouse at scout camp which they attached to our backyard tree last fall. This spring, a house sparrow family has claimed it. As of now, there is a next inside, but no eggs. We continue to watch their activity.
Here are some pictures from Alex's nature journal.
These are from Nicolas's journal:
If you look closely at the last line, he has "movement" marks (which he learned in co-op - Thanks Ami!). As we were laying down, there was an "airplane line" and the larger, puffy clouds were being blown underneath it. It looked like the line was moving rather than the clouds. If we looked at our tree, it looked as if the tree was moving towards us.
Even I joined in on the journaling:
A branch from our redbud tree. And below are my cloud pictures :)
Next week we will try to venture outside our backyard to see what we can find. I am looking forward to continuing this for quite awhile.
Just a note on Nicolas: The writing is doing him much good. His handwriting is improving (although some letters are still written backwards) and because his reading has improved much this past year, he is able to spell most words by himself in his journal.
