June 3-5

We had some very exciting moments when the mail called for Echo to get a pair of scissors… one look at her smile and those child safety scissors in her hand and I sent Trinity and her long and seemingly TEMPTING hair in the opposite direction. Together we were somewhat successful.

With 4 scooters in the house and the hunt for a 5th ongoing the kids are really working together to share and teach EVERYONE how to ride them. I think we lucked out with the 3 wheel version I found Echo at a garage sale. Definitely a confidence builder for her so far!

We continued our week with a walk first thing in the morning to the nearest park. It was quite the walk, we had to avoid the usual walking path and bridge with all the rainfall… too many bugs and the water levels everywhere are so high it seemed smarter to walk the roads there. We spooked a bunny… they are all over the place this spring…

And then we played our hearts out at the park. It is so nice to go and have Echo able to handle herself pretty much solo now!

Super exciting… we managed to assemble our Texas binder! You can find our resource page HERE. I did not link all the books we used but have listed titles and authors. I am always amazed when we go to assemble at the actual AMOUNT of stuff we have completed to put into our books. This will definitely not be our only time visiting Texas as a topic but we certainly enjoyed our first experience.

We also had a run to the mall on Wednesday… errands coupled with education about water tables…

AND geocaching in the sunshine!! Ok maybe more playing in the sunshine but we did find at least one!

So much nature!

Echo decided to round off our day with officially starting our Canada overview. After all what is July 1st but CANADA DAY!

The weather so far has been so accommodating that on Thursday we were finally able to go to the rather well known Minnehaha Falls. The water level was SUPER high so we did not do the whole circuit. But we saw some amazing vantage points.

Got to enjoy the beautiful green everywhere while we Geocached…

And even dipped our feet CAREFULLY in the water. The current was amazingly strong all over the place and a portion of the river where you could normally wade rather far in really wasn’t overly safe.

But it was gorgeous!

After all that sunshine it was back home for another journal completed! Well done Trinity!

I love looking back at these days and portions of weeks and seeing just how much enjoyment we are taking from all aspects of our days! This is going to be a summer to remember.

May 24-29

I have to say we have learned from our winter… get those kids OUTSIDE!!!

And on Sunday we joined Matt, Fran and their twins at a local park to have a full on BBQ…

Park…

Lake…

S’mores…

(and dinner)…

We had it all!

And on the Monday we were back to Geocaching… we have had some amazing journal entries regarding our experience with some VERY creative hiding ideas.

We had a lovely print out for a scavenger hunt (HERE) to have the kids looking everywhere for their nature objects.

And a break with snacks and park fun while the twins and Ken hunted that last cache.

Tuesday was much more our work work work on the schoolwork day! We had a rather interesting experience learning about Legends and Pecos Bill. We are working on understanding the difference between true factual stories and what a legend really is. The kids just keep quoting back at me – EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN TEXAS and then giggling.

We got back into our classic Treasure Island. I am not sure which book we will read next. BUT we are working on a plan to get us storytime every day.

We are working through our dinosaurs that were in our Texas book… of course links to all of this will be in the Texas resource page (eventually).

And then right back out to burn off the energy… so much discussion of spring, teaching of siblings on the outside toys… so much fun!

On Wednesday I changed it up. Before the mosquitoes can take hold we drug the whole classroom outside to enjoy our grassy backyard. Once we found an ant free spot that is!

Great fun and we didn’t get too badly eaten up.

We fulfilled another additional Scout thing by driving down to a local small airport and checking out the planes. The kids all took turns spotting planes and talking about the different kinds. Family favourite is the seaplane. Though everyone was quite put out they land in LAKES not SEAS.

From there it was on to a park for a Geocache and play about in the sun.

Goofs!

Add in some Texas themed story writing and I think we succeeded with an interesting mid week.

Thursday was another special outside day. Echo had a preschool assessment to go to at our church so she and Ken dropped us off half way with some schoolwork.

A snack…

and a park! It was just really too bad that her session was delayed, we were there over 2 hours in the end and rather warm and cranky. BUT we met some wonderful little kids with their dads and enjoyed a perfect spring day.

Miss Echo did wonderfully with her assessment though they did reinforce that we should get her hearing tested to rule out anything extra in regards to her lisp (not total word forming… lazy girl!) which of course we already had scheduled for later in June.

Spring has sprung and so have we… out into the sunshine!

With super high water levels EVERYWHERE

Can you spot the neighbourhood white squirrel?