Just a quick note – Activity Village has gone to membership, we found it rather reasonable and so paid in. This means I will still be posting their links. Some things are free, I will try to remember to indicate what is in the future! 

I let the twins chose a unit study for history to start out their new year. This has been a mixed success as the time it took to work on this unit was longer than expected and had us running into seasonal projects. So I do need to work on amping up our time on US history and ignoring some of the softer “fun” topics.

I looked all over for a good free lapbook resource to no avail. So we splurged and got a lapbook from Currclick – Slavery in North America by Hands of a Child. It was worth every penny!

Of course I requested books from the library:

• Freedom From Slavery by Brianna Hall
• Slavery: The Struggle for Freedom by James Meadows
• Many Thousands Gone by Virginia Hamilton
• Frederick Douglass by Suzanne Slade
• Slavery in the United States by Rebecca Rissman
• Passenger on the Pearl by Winifred Conkling

Instead of covering Thanksgiving once again and going into massive detail on a first meal that may or may not (most likely NOT) happened as it has been repeated along with all sorts of cultural issues we focused on one thing this year – The Mayflower. We decided to make a fact poster and still do a few fun Thanksgiving themed worksheets.

We used the following library books:

• You Wouldn’t Want to Sail on the Mayflower (A Trip That Took Entirely Too Long) by Peter Cook
• The Mayflower Compact by Judith Lloyd Yero
• Mayflower 1620 by Plimoth Plantations
• We also requested, but did not get to – The Mayflower and the Pilgrims’ New World by Nathaniel Philbrick which looked rather interesting.

For worksheets do check out Activity Village’s Thanksgiving sheets HERE, Education.com has my Thanksgiving folder HERE and EnchantedLearning is a great help HERE (this is a link to my search results). I would suggest lots of google searches but those are my three go to sites (some membership fees to access everything are required for Education.com and EnchantedLearning).

Our Mayflower fact poster

February 11-12

Time to finish off Chinese New Year… Zander and Gavin each finished up their studies with writing out some of the things they learned about the celebration on pages with year of the snake themed borders. They also each drew their own special cobra… the instructions were found on Art for Kids as a special Chinese New Year offering. Added to each picture is the Chinese characters for Snake. Not a bad finishing touch.

Gavin and his snake

I lucked out and came across TWO shows for the boys to watch the night before. The movie Mulan (which they then drew something in their journals about) and a FoodNetwork special on making a full out Chinese New Year meal. We learned a few interesting things from that second show:

1. fish in Mandarin is the same words as abundance
2. dumplings symbolize wealth
3. roast chicken symbolizes togetherness and prosperity
4. long noodles symbolize longevity

Emanuel got creative with the Legos… He made his very own McDonald’s counter… giant M and all.

“M”

The counter

I attempted the heart shaped cupcakes with a less than amazing result… still yummy but NOT heart shaped. With lovely whipped icing everyone was content with them anyway.

Gavin and his snack

The weather has worked in our favour BOTH days what with the storm warning over and all the lovely snow that resulted from it. So the kids have been out enjoying, shoveling, getting wet… I had to throw all the gear into the dryer after Tuesday’s fun in the sun… so much melt off from the roof!

First

Putting them to work

It was a nice day out and they all got a little damp

I have to share a sort of dinosaur related video that Trinity and Emanuel assure me is AWESOME!

Tuesday was right into Valentines Day with all the worksheets and hearts and colouring.

Dot to Dot

We also made our monthly poster – I am having the kids make one a month for the whole year. I write out the name of  the month and then each kid draws something they see or do that month!

February

Since it was Shrove Tuesday I gave pancakes a try again on the gas stove with much better results! At least the kids were pleased.

Chowing down

Not a bad work up to Valentine’s Day… and a completing of something special from Chinese New Year.

We also pulled out the micro remote control cars from Alan and Xinny.

February 8-9

And… Ted ALMOST gets on his plane and home on schedule. There is weather a coming apparently and it hit Toronto (his stopover) closing down the airport before he could get in the air here in Minnesota. So Ken and Sean dropped him off, got mostly home and had to turn around and come back. This is AFTER they had lunch, shopped a little more AND went to Top Gun in 3D at Imax! That left me and the kids home alone for the bulk of the day. So of course  there was school work to do…

Breakfast with Uncle Ted

Sneaking in an extra night

BOTH boys got 100% on their main words and Gavin even got Reinsch right. I am tossing it on the list but not counting it toward their totals as it IS tricky. So even if they get it right we do it the next week too, memorization!! In celebration of words well done they headed outside to play in the snow.

The tests

It was actually a rather decent day so the kids went out multiple times throughout the day.

The great white outdoors… American version

The poster was an all out success… we all had a hand in it. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing the Chinese Characters.

So proud of our work

We also assembled our fireworks. Note the characters on those too… Gavin helped Ken and I with those! You can find the instructions on Activity Village under Chinese New Year crafts (the link for the site is on right).

Gavin and our work

We also spent some time with a paper pack I got on sale at Michaels to make some special Valentines. Sadly the post office has been hard to get to so I have a bit of a stack of mail to add some of these too!

Special Valentines

A Saturday is always a bit slower, except when you add in even MORE company!

Best buddies

Teaching Quinn to play Skylanders

Bree and I worked together to create, from scratch, fortune cookies!

Finger burning perfection

I love it when Echo gets a chance to hang out with her American God Mommy! It was too bad Scott was busy. 

Snuggles

We actually had Steven here as well, he brought Quinn over and then Bree picked him up. So we had a full house! Of course the men were more… boring and thus no pictures… but the kids kept us entertained!

About the same size!

We finally got Bree and Quinn to open their gifts from Christmas! I promise pictures of Quinn in his scarf later!

Opening presents

So we had company coming and going… Now we are slowly slipping into real life – soon Sean will head home too and then… Ken goes OUT to work and it is just the 5 of us! Can we do it??? 

Why so serious???