Jonesboro log cabin

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!

Flat People

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.

We plan to keep them until the first part of June after we have been to a Wizards game, the Fort Wayne zoo and camping.  Hopefully we can make it to Indianapolis before they go home and show them the state capital and Colts Stadium.

Flat Nicolas

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 has returned!

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.

ANTS!

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!

 

Nature week

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.

Flat Stanley

What a fun and relaxed week!  For co-op, we read the book Flat Stanley - the story of a boy whose bulletin board falls on him during the night and leaves him 1/2 inch thick.  He is able to do amazing things being that thin, like going down a grate to get his mom's ring, he was mailed to California to visit a friend, and helped the police nab some art thieves by pretending to be a painting on the wall at the art museum.

One of the activities we did in co-op was making flat people.  Here are pictures of the co-op flat people.

Each child is sending his/her flat person somewhere, along with a journal.  Flat Alex is travelling to Maryland, and Flat Nicolas is on his way to Georgia.  We are getting return flat people from those families to journal also.

We did a lapbook, but I have only taken pictures of a couple of the interesting components, because we will not be finished with the book until later.

The boys designed their own stamps - Alex's are at the top, and Nicolas's is below it.

After seeing the close relationship of Stanley and his brother in the book, we looked at my boys' brotherly relationship.  They wrote down some things in their own books about their brothers (Alex-top, Nicolas- bottom).

This morning, for breakfast, I surprised the boys with Flat Stanley pancakes - because in the book when Stanley's mom and dad saw him the morning the bulletin board fell, his mother said Stanley was flat, and his dad added "as a pancake."

This afternoon, to finish things off, we did a marshmallow experiment.  Both boys chose 3 heavy objects and guessed which one would flatten a marshmallow the most.  Alex chose a shoe, a rock and a 2 1/2 lb. weight - he predicted the rock.  Nicolas chose a dictionary, a rock and a 5 lb weight - he predicted the dictionary.  After flattening our marshmallows, we weighed each item.  Of course the heaviest object should flatten the marshmallow the most, however in Nicolas's case, the book flattened it the most (even though it only weighed 2 lbs.)  Hubby says it probably depended some on how the marshmallow was placed.  They had fun.