Archive | October 2013

Welcome Home Nana and Baba!

October 10-13

Our final day before welcoming home Nana and Baba was a bit uneventful. We had a house to clean… kids to sort out… laundry to do… and hot chocolate to drink! What a treat for our family and we have a HUGE tub of the powder mix (Swiss Miss). Mini marshmallows on  top… of course!101_4768

We ended our evening with a random chocolate chip cookie recipe that Ken did most of with some kid help. We made sure to leave enough for the returning grandparents to munch on that evening of course! They got home later that evening after the junior league was well asleep… tanned, well rested and with a boatload of pictures!101_4769

On the Friday after there were presents to see… amazing puzzle boxes for all.101_4770

And time with Nana and Baba.101_4771

With fall firmly in our sights we set the kids to work raking leaves… there are A LOT in this area. People really love their trees. It is one of the things Ken missed the most in Alberta… the green. While not as much as South Carolina where my dad now lives, Minnesota has a lovely verdant quality to it and then fall is a riot of colour and leaves!101_4772

101_4775The house is full again… and I think we are well pleased.

Time to check the garden

Time to check the garden

101_4777And then on Saturday it got a little more full with the addition of cousins!101_4778

101_4779And homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner… one of Nana’s specialties.101_4782

We ended our weekend with Sunday school… can’t miss a week can we? The kids are all loving it, though as of yet we are just sending Ken and the 4 school age and leaving Echo and myself here at home. I figure closer to Christmas we will go onto church but right now we are STILL fighting potty training… and all that fun stuff.

Before we said good bye to the cousins (who had school on Monday of course) there was time to pull out the crafting bucket (Gabbi’s new favourite activity).101_4786

Tea party

Tea party

And played outside in the playset, which looks AMAZING in the leaves!101_4787

Yup our welcome back went VERY well!101_4784

The End is Here… In Some Ways

October 7-9

Even with intermittent rain and cooler weather we had to get our buns outside…101_4747

And follow through with some lovely Halloween themed crafts to finish off our day of school.101_4749

Even Miss Echo created some lovely art.101_4751

101_4753And I finally got a good picture of our flower changing colour with our dyed water.101_4754

We rounded off the day with a Wild Kratts.

Badger

Badger

Mid week and 2 days from the return of Nana and Baba… We had some lovely Halloween fairies for the girls.101_4756

The kids had a gaming afternoon in the sunshine. So much cooperation and problem solving skills!101_4758

We got a start on our Egypt poster… with the return of family and so much going on I am not optimistic about a quick assembly but it is going to be awesome when we are all done!101_4759

Thursday has Miss Trinity the focus again with ANOTHER completed book! She zoomed through these. I have some research to do on what books I need to line up for her. Amazingly enough I am short on the Kindergarten level books!101_4761

I love this… Echo was wearing the Halloween shirt that her twin brothers wore when they were 2!!!101_4763

The twins helped me clean out milk jugs for our Halloween decorations… then the boys all worked on making faces. Now all we need to do is weight them down and add the lights. I got this idea off Facebook!101_4764

101_4766We had our final grandparent free evening at home, quietly, like we had spent most of our time while they were gone… I think the kids are ready… they cleaned and everything instead of some of their schooling all to be ready for Nana and Baba!!!101_4767

Lions, Our Resource Entry!

Zander’s animal choice was LIONS! So of course we had to find all that we could about where they live, what they do and how they survive. I hope these are helpful!

BOOKS:

  • Magic Tree House #11: Lions at Lunchtime HERE
  • Lions by Tammy Gagne HERE
  • I am a Lion by Karen Durrie. This AV2 book has a website you can visit for supplementary activities and some print outs. HERE
  • Mouse & Lion by Rand Burkert and Nancy Ekholm Burket HERE
  • Welcome to Kenya by Patrick Ryan HERE
  • Tanzania by Patricia J. Murphy HERE
  • (We also made use of various magazines… National Geographic, National Geographic Kids, Ranger Rick… all thanks to Nana and Gammie!)

TV:

  • National Geographic’s Big Cat Odyssey
  • Wild Kratts Bad Hair Day (Season 2)
  • Lion King

WORKSHEETS:

  • Daniel in the Lion’s Den with Bible Story Printables HERE and game HERE
  • DLTK’s lion printables including a story HERE
  • Colouring page with PreschoolMom.com HERE
  • Letter L printable with Activity Village HERE
  • Grassland Food Web printable (no activity) with Exploring Nature Educational Resource HERE
  • EnchantedLearning printable HERE
  • First Palette animal printables HERE
  • Lion King official printables HERE with Family Go
  • Africa Resources with Homeschool Creations HERE
  • Africa Theme unit with edhelper.com HERE

LAPBOOKS:

  • HS Highlights Lions lapbook for purchase HERE

CRAFTS:

  • We watched the Lion King in the end and of course had to do some of the official crafty stuff found HERE on DisneyFamily.com

KENYA:

  • We had a series of maps we looked at to answer some questions: Ducksters (HERE), The Forestry Department for a mountain location (HERE), BBC for the equator line (HERE)
  • Kids 4 Kenya HERE
  • Activity Village section HERE
  • National Geographic Kids with printable HERE

Tanzania

  • National Geographic Kids with printable HERE
  • A map with Ducksters HERE
  • Activity Village section HERE

VIDEOS:

Esther found this one for us on the Lions and the Masai…

And I came across this lovely ones of Kenyan children dancing.

We had two more from Esther that she deemed interesting… the kids agreed! First, A Lion Pride – Introducing Daddy to the Cubs by BBC Wildlife

And the other… Lion Pride in Kenya, Africa by Brian’s Art for Animals.

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This entry was posted on 16/10/2013, in Uncategorized. 1 Comment