Holy Week

It's Holy week this week and while we've been reading through the bible of  Jesus' last week of life we've also been enjoying this Easter Garden at the dinner table each day. I found the idea here and thought I would make one too!

Have a great Holy Week!

Influencing Books

"I want to be an artist," says Abishai.  
"You're already an artist," I tell him.  
"I want to be an artist like that," he says, pointing to the illustrated picture book shown below. 
"One day you will be," I tell him, as I pull out the paper, pencils and paints that he asked for.

Other influencing books:

Abishai asked to have Going Lobstering read to him several times. Inspired by it, he drew and painted pictures of boats and lobsters.  The paintings from the book look so real on first glance, that I had to take a second look.  You learn about the life of a lobsterman and absorb lobster facts as the story goes on.

Abishai also showed much interest in Emma's Rug.  The story's about a young elementary student who finds artistic inspiration from a rug.  As a result she paints pictures and wins numerous awards for her art work.  Again, Abishai wanted this book read numerous times.

Someday Rider appealed to Abishai's imagination, and did NOT lessen his unbearable longing to be a cowboy.  A huge heart aching sigh came from him after reading this book. "When can I be a cowboy mommy? Am I big enough to ride a horse yet?" Abishai completely identified with the boy's character from the book.  If only we were ranchers.

 

Anna the bookbinder was a great book to teach about excellence in our daily work and being helpful without being asked.  There are so many great books out there.

 

In-between Moments

In-between moments in our homeschooling days:

Abishai dressed as a soldier from ancient Sparta.  The battle cry, "Spartan's: prepare for glory!" was ringing throughout the house. His dad may have had something to do with that.

Micaiah doing printing practice on his own initiative. 

Peacefully together: Playing with a game rather than playing the game. 

Again, on his own initiative, Micaiah putting the letters of the alphabet in order.

"Micaiah, you should add pink to your painting."  

"But, we don't have any pink." 

"You can make pink; What colours make pink?"   

"Red paint and white paint" 
 Now he has pink!

Inspired by a Norman Rockwell painting, Abishai wanted to play cafe.  He dressed like a server behind the counter and pulled out his kitchen and menu chalkboard.

Welcome to the phonetic menu. Can you guess what he's spelling?

Asher got a chance to play too.

With a homemade catapult, Abishai launched marshmallows at paper cups.  Such a fun addition for playing with a castle and knights.  Thanks to our friend Jill, who gave the cups and catapult as a party favour for her son's birthday party.
 

The True Story of St. Patrick's Day

The real story of St. Patrick's Day; more than shamrocks and leprechauns.

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!

Night of the Moonjellies

Our book of the week: Night of the Moonjellies.  Seaside food-stands, work ethic and responsibility, jelly fish and ocean life.  We took a look at it all.

"Mark spends a busy, noisy day helping out at Gram's seaside hot-dog stand.  After the last customer is served and the grill is scrubbed to a silvery shine, Mark sails off with Gram for a promised surprise-- and finds a nighttime sea full of shimmering moonjellies." - from the front cover.

We looked at life in the deep blue.  The boys each drew a picture of life in the Ocean.  

Abishai's shark about to eat a moonjelly.

Micaiah's sea of jellyfish.

I picked this book up from the library; Awesome Ocean science. I got the name of the book from Delightful Learning.  It has a lot of fun and easy ocean science experiments.

We did an experiment called Floating Made Easy.  We set out to see how much salt it would take to bring our chunk of carrot up from the bottom of our fresh water glass to float at the top.

We added 1/2 tsp of salt at a time.

Abishai kept track of how many teaspoons we added using tally marks.

3 teaspoons later and our carrot was floating.

One of the many books that we read about the Ocean.

This particular book mentioned water evaporation.  We did an experiment a while back on it here and here.  So we pulled out our Awesome Ocean Science book and did an experiment called It's Raining in a Jar.

We filled a jar with 2" of hot tap water (our mini tropical sea), inserted a sandwich bag into the top part of the jar (our atmosphere), filled the bag with ice cubes (our cooler air) and waited 15-20 minutes (more like 30-40 minutes) for the warmer water to evaporate into the atmosphere, "form clouds" and then rain back down to earth again.

Getting ready for the rain!  

We explored our five senses.

Abishai asked me if he could colour a hammerhead shark.  By the end of the week he was drawing it free-hand in church.

Out of all the books on jellyfish that we took out of the library, I liked this one the best.  It told jellyfish facts in a more of a story telling way which helps to engage young children (and adults, for that matter).  

We don't live near the ocean, so when I saw this idea on Delightful Learning and Our Homeschool Fun, I wanted to try it with my boys.  I made the boys some moonjellies out of glow sticks placed in sandwich bags full of water.  After darkening the bathroom and placing the moonjellies in the water, I invited the boys to come and play with the jellyfish.  Abishai asked me if they were real.  I answered his question with a question, "would you want them to be real?"  "no", he said,"because they would sting us."  Wow, did the three of them have fun!

7 year old Mark, from Night of the Moonjellies helped out at his Gram's seaside hot dog stand two days a week.  I asked Abishai and Micaiah to create their own restaurant.  Abishai came up with the name 'Cowboy Burger Restaurant' and made a sign for it.

Micaiah and Asher sat down as customers (It is very hard to play patiently with a 16 month old baby.  The older boys create while Asher destroys).  I took a turn at being a customer too!

Abishai made his own menu.  We found this changeable template at Homeschool Share.  I find some of Abishai's food names and descriptions funny and cute.

We used our printable Canadian money from A Pair of Red Clogs unit to practice coin recognition.

A continuation of 'Cowboy Burger Restaurant' moved to the upstairs living room.

We watched a couple Ocean videos.

Abishai played around with oil pastels and experimented with smudging them for the very first time.  This is the part in the book where Mark and his Gram release the moonjelly he found washed up on the beach earlier that day. Back into the ocean with the other moonjellies!

Finally, Asher-baby playing with his favourite bumblebee toy.  He discovered pop-a-wheelies with it the other day.  There's no shortage of "He's all boy" in our house.