Life Science: Plants, has now been moved outside. It's been fun to have a living classroom! The boys finally got to transplant the seedlings we grew inside to the outdoors.
Then they got to work on planting the rest of the garden. We planted corn, pumpkins, yellow beans, tomatoes, carrots, peas, lettuce, and cucumbers. It was a lot of work, even for a little garden like ours.
We got this purple pepper, compliments of Sage Garden from a local craft show called Third+Bird. We planted it out in the garden as well.
Our neighbour gave us some Hostas. We split and transplanted them from her yard into ours. These babies cost almost $10 to buy just one in the store. We transplanted 4 of them.
In Social Studies we learned about the Canadian mail system and how mail gets from one person to another.
Reading practice... Detective stories are always a hit.
A little history... The story of the Titanic from the perspective of former passengers.
Our block clock. Micaiah was learning to tell time.
Abishai finished his spelling, level 1. I even learned some new spelling rules that I didn't learn in school or at least I don't remember learning.
Micaiah having quiet time in the foyer of our house.
Our Tonka Trucks and gravel pit area. I've cleaned up this area quite a bit since taking this picture and layed down some new pea gravel for the boys. It has a fresher, cleaner look now.
Sprinkler time!
Drying off!
Nature walk.
You can't deprive a boy of his desire to climb!
Baseball! I can't believe we can actually play baseball in our yard! I am so thankful to God for this. The main reason we chose to move in the first place was to find a yard big enough for our high energy boys to run around in.
Date night with this little handsome son of mine.
Taking a moment to relax with little Gilead. Gotta love my orange garden boots!
This smiley face keeps me company in the garden.
I've been slowing down with my blogging lately. Since spring has arrived, my work load has doubled. Not only do I have homeschooling, house work, meals to prep and 4 children to care for, but now I have yard work and gardening to add to the list as well. Do you know how hard it is to get yard work done with 4 children at your heels? Almost impossible. Now don't get me wrong, I love doing yard work! Yes, I really do. I love mowing the grass, digging my fingers in the dirt (no gloves here), planting and pulling weeds. I have vision and goals, but never the time to do it! It took me weeks to get a small garden ready for planting (which is still not planted) and from my perspective and probably most everyone else's as well, it still looks like I haven't worked on it! Five minutes after I get out there to work, I find myself stopping to attend to a crying baby, or siblings that are fighting, or helping someone put their shoes on after trampolining or to turn around to who ever is asking me to "Look at me Mommy! Look what I can do!" It's non-stop. How I accomplish anything at all often puzzles me. Anyways, that's my rant on why my blogging has slowed down.
Here's some of what we've been up to over the last couple of weeks in addition to all those things.
Garage sales! A quick bite to eat in between houses.
Mother's Day celebrations!
Spring walks.
A new spelling program! Which we love and are almost done! Abishai has grown leaps and bounds because of this program. It's called All About Spelling.
Our spelling box.
Swimming lessons!
My dad helping to put in a rain barrel to water my garden.
Trampolining with their cousin.
Social Studies: learning about their neighbourhood.
The boys mapping their neighbourhood.
Reading practice about Christopher Columbus and tracking his journey on the globe.
Picnics with fellow homeschooling friends.
Bike rides through local forests.
Riding at the skate park.
For Easter this year, we've been doing OhAmanda's Sense of the Resurrection. We did her Truth In the Tinsel for Advent last year (and the year before) and loved it, so when Sense of the Resurrection came out, I had to have it. If you keep checking back you'll see the different activities we'll be doing from her ebook throughout the Lenten season. There are 12 bible stories with 12 go along activities. I have it worked out so that we'll do 2 stories and their activities twice a week for each of the 6 weeks leading up to Easter.
The first story is from John 12:1-8, where Jesus is anointed with perfume by Mary in preparation for His death and burial. The boys crafted while I read the story to them. They tend to listen better when they're moving around or making something. The perfume bottle you see Abishai covering with tissue paper is an add-on of my own, and isn't a part of Sense of the Resurrection, but the perfume bottle that Micaiah is working on is. The idea is that every time you smell the perfume soaked up by the reeds, it reminds you of the story and helps you remember to thank Jesus for dying for you. The boys both had one in their room and it smelled wonderful!
After crafting, the boys and I watched a SuperBook video with a scene showing Mary anointing Jesus with perfume. Again, this was an add-on of my own. You can buy the SuperBook videos here.
The second story was from Matthew 21:1-11, about the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. We made wind chimes out of tin cans painted green. They didn't turn out and I ended up throwing them out in the end. The idea was that every time we heard our wind chimes blowing in the wind we would be reminded of the truth of Jesus' mission to save us from our sin. Practically though, our wintery Canadian March isn't the season to be outside hearing wind chimes. Next year I'll come up with a craft more suited to the frigid north!
A close-up of one of the Holy Week pictures on our dining room wall.
St. Patrick's Day falls in the Lenten season, so we did a little with that as well. We have a book about the true story of St. Patrick, which is at least as exciting as Leprechauns! It's full of pirates, risk, and an adventure that really inspired my little boys. Abishai told me later that he wanted to be just like St. Patrick. You can purchase it here.
St. Patrick's Day crafting.
We found Ireland on our world map. We also tracked St. Patrick's journey from his homeland of Britain over to Ireland.
What's St. Paddy's Day without some Irish music and dancing!
For our studies this week we explored fire and its dangers. The boys were really engaged during this one. We started off with No Dragons for Tea. It's about a little girl who meets a dragon and brings him home for tea. While he's over, the dragon accidentally sneezes and starts a fire. The rest of the story talks all about fire safety.
We ended up having our own dragon for tea!
We read several books on fire. A couple of forest fires...
...and grass fires.
Abishai really liked the book, Hot Shots, and scoured his costume bin to find anything that would resemble a Hot Shots uniform. I thought he did pretty good and he played this for two days straight.
We talked a little about fighting fire with fire and what a backburn was.
We discussed what to do if we encounter a fire in our house. We talked about all the possible ways we could get out if there was a fire and where we would meet once we were out of the house. We discussed the importance of crawling beneath the smoke on our way out and how to stop, drop and roll if our clothes caught on fire. Our No Dragons for Tea book even came with a Fire-Safety Rhyme.
We talked about the two things that fire needs to burn: a fuel source and oxygen. If one or both aren't present, then fire can't happen. For a little science experiment we removed the oxygen from this candle.
We also read some scripture describing Jesus as a consuming fire. We talked about Moses and the burning bush. We asked questions about how the bush could be on fire without being consumed. The fire had fuel and oxygen, but still, the tree didn't burn up. The wonder of God shone in the boys' eyes. Later, they watched a SuperBook on Moses and the burning bush. You can watch the movie trailer on it here.
We also did some finger painting with the colours yellow and red, mixing them together to make orange––the warm colours of fire. We discussed what warm and cool colours were. I think it was their first time fingerpainting!
While we were busy homeschooling, this is what Asher was up to. Snowblower watching!
Well, we weren't homeschooling during his bed time, but here he is reading The Action Bible with his book light.
And of course Gilead! He sleeps a lot so there aren't a lot of pictures of him in action... yet!
