Yup, a quick overview of a month already well blogged… December…

Advent fun…

Chinchilla….

YMCA time…

R.I.P.P.E.D

Night out with Chris and Renee to see a play!!

Pre show Mystro time

A Christmas Carol

More Chinchilla…

So serious

Taught Gavin how to clean the cage.

Crafting with Gavin…

He made all of our cards!

Crafting period…

These are my final finish of the year and are an adorable set from the designer Knot Bad.

Neko-Chan is such a sweet model

Knot Bad rocks!

The arrival of a lovely fruit box from Grandma and Grandpa Reinsch…

Baking…

The twins made cookies as a present we mailed off!

Monster cookies

A somewhat surprise visit from Nana and Baba…

And just plain old fun!

Cousin Robbie visited and mentioned never having had a scarf… well that problem was quickly solved!

Opening presents with Aunty Holly and Cousin Jimmie

Don’t forget school time, we kept up a pretty good pace considering the amount of excitement. Lots of opportunity to learn as we researched some origins of our favorite carols.

We made crystals!

A handmade Christmas card

By Emanuel

Chinese for New Years…

If you want to see the already blogged activities.. here you are…

1. Anoka Lights
2. Santa Visits
3. Christmas Pageant

So now that I have posted this WAY out of order (what with the blog back log), here’s hoping I can catch myself up before mid 2018!!!! Wish me luck!!!

We braved the insanity of Mall of America right after Christmas… someone asked for a gift card from Santa this year.

She stood in line so long that some Christmas money made its way to the purchase.

Dungeon and Dragons with Dad!

Gavin asked for an item with sequins…

Doing Home Depot at home

We actually spanned this unit over a couple months. I would suggest searching on Google for Free Volcano Lapbooks… there are all sorts of versions !! For example on Homeschool Share HERE. I honestly think we found random facts everywhere but here are the main resources! Good luck! 

WORKSHEETS:

• On Education.com under my School folder HERE are some of my worksheets
• Colouring page on Twsty Noodle HERE.
• Crayola mini book HERE.
• FisherPrice colouring page for little guys HERE.
• ABCteach.com HERE.

FACT PAGES:

• Facts about the Richter Scale on Buzzle HERE.
• Covering Earthquakes on Weather Wiz Kids HERE.
• All about a more current eruption in Japan that was unannounced HERE thanks to Live Science

BOOKS:

• Magic Tree House #13: Vacation Under the Volcano by Mary Pope Osborne
• Magic Tree House Fact Finder #14 Ancient Rome and Pompeii by Mary Pope Osborne
• Volcanoes by Seymour Simon
• Danger! Volcanoes by Seymour Simon
• Volcanoes: Nature’s Incredible Fireworks by David L. Harrison
• Volcano and Earthquake DK Eyewitness Books
• Volcanoes by Leslie Dinaberg
• Volcano by Christopher Lampton (A Disaster! Book)
• Volcanoes by Jeremy Caplan
• Volcanoes! Anne Schreiber
• Questions & Answers  About Planet Earth by Capella
• Volcano by Patricia Lauber
• Into the Volcano by Donna O’Meara

VIDEOS:

• Volcano (DK Eyewitness) HERE
• Magic School Bus: Blows It’s Top HERE
• Bill Nye The Science Guy: Volcanoes HERE

The basic baking soda and vinegar combination was great to show volcano eruption add in a balloon and give the idea of how the gasses move… or just throw the whole thing in the tub and make fizz over and over again! We had a lovely science kit as well that Grandma and Grandpa Reinsch sent us that we used in the end to build our own volcano. Those can be found EVERYWHERE! Ours was a plaster of Paris version.

I know I know… BELATED but I AM catching up and it WAS a special Mother’s Day for me…

May 11

It seems we have set a precedent with our busy May weekends. BUT this was Mother’s Day so it was a special kind of busy… First off we had to head to Sunday School. There was a parent meeting about VBS and the following year’s Sunday School during class. Even Echo came along to enjoy the various people at church. In fact, next year she is going to be in Sunday School for the very first time! And it looks like she will be in VBS this summer (end of June) as well.

After Sunday School we headed home to take our yearly Mother’s Day photos. I think we all looked rather spiffy!

And then it was time to change out of the finery and leave Echo with Nana and Baba for the first part of the really MOMMY centered portion of the day. We got out to Lochness Park (seriously! But no unknown monster in the depths sorry!) to begin what we hope will become a lifestyle change for us all – GEOCACHING!

I have wanted to try out this GPS based treasure hunt for a year now… but until we had to upgrade our phone we really could not do it. Amazingly enough Minnesota has thousands of cache locations for us to find and explore. Some are micro where you just sign a log, some larger where trinkets can be left and taken.

I sat down and made sure to make up a few marshmallows (crochet) to leave at the nicer caches. The kids have also grabbed some of their small and not favourite toys to leave behind as well.

Amazingly enough I was the first one to find a cache!!! Talk about appropriate. And the excitement, the working on keeping our eyes open… the out and out exercise coupled with a treasure at the end has everyone in our family absolute hooked!

We ended our circuit around the lake with lunch in the vehicle out of last year’s picnic bag (awesome purchase from Target). And it was time to head home for an amazing nap and dinner from the family’s favourite Chinese restaurant.

And boardgames with Daddy

Happy Mother’s Day to all you Mommies in our lives… a special call out to those titled ladies in our kids’ lives – Grandma Reinsch, Grandma, Nana, Great Grandma Rapp, the God Mommies: Darcy, Christine, Xinny Karyn, Esther, Ada and Bree… Thank you so much for taking on the responsibility of being a support to the kids. We love you all!!!