For all resource links please check out the entry “Saint Patrick’s Day Resources“.

March 15-17

Friday marked the end of our St. Patrick’s Day unit with a video (one of 3 in a series though interest did not hold for all 3 this year) on Hurling, a popular sport in Ireland.

I am so proud of the boys where BOTH managed 100% on their spelling tests! Clean slate on Monday with all new words is always a good thing.

Emanuel used two wonderful sets of dinosaur heads as his Friday colouring pages. Both by Zakafreakarama. HERE and HERE. We are so glad we came upon this artist on deviantArt. His works is so clean!

We finished our chapter book – Lindsay the Luck Fairy… AND did copy work from the Julie Andrews poetry book.

We did a layered book with this one

With our copy work.

We had all that snow coming down so the twins decided they must work on building something grander than the neighbour kids… it is amazing how sticky the snow was!

Busy Boys

We finally found time for our finger painting craft. Thanks to Art for Kids!

We are so not dirty hands people other than in dirt so this was a stretch, but fun

We had to make orange too, so had a great conversation about colour mixing.

Completed

Saturday was an at home day, after a bunch of snow coming down and the weather warming and cooling so much it was just too icy to go places or have people over. With only 2 weekends left before Nana and Baba return we were hoping we could get in some more visiting. While people do come over here when Ken’s parents are here, it is nice to have that feeling of just us and friends once in a while. The kids are excited that they will be home soon though!

We finished up our special poster for St. Patrick’s Day. I think we did  rather good job! Assembly is half the fun and we had stickers to add and markers to write words. Now we move onto Easter and a lapbook…

We added a few more words after this photo but a poster to be proud of!

Of course we set our leprechaun trap!

Trap is set

That brings us to St. Patrick’s Day with our sneaky Leprechaun being a CANADIAN one! It left our dear ones quarters AND a Coffee Crisp bar!

So close

I lucked out and we found 3 green shirts of varying shades… add to that two that we picked up for the girls and we had some rather spiffy looking children. Trinity even wore her green headband. And yours truly a green shirt. We were VERY festive.

All in Green (Zander left)

Cheese

Ken actually spoiled them with daddy time and they all played together on Minecraft. We have been trying more and more to make it so Ken is not just around morning and bedtime and seeing just the disciplinarian part of stuff. This working out of home has definitely been an adjustment.

Supper with a touch of green

And with that we have covered St. Patrick’s Day, except for a follow up on Monday and definitely had some quality family time! I, of course, will follow this post with the resource post AND link all the pages back to it like I have other. I hope these pages come in handy to someone!

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day

For all resource links please check out the entry “Saint Patrick’s Day Resources“.

March 6-7

Ireland is a beautiful place and we had the perfect book to see some of that beauty AND to face the reality that was the potatoe famine in 1841. The St. Patrick’s Day Shillelagh by Janet Nolan. Of course we had to check for what exactly a Shillelagh is. Oh and HOW to pronounce it. We did a pamphlet style fold for our book, on the cover a Shillelagh, on the inside flap some facts and then all the way open – a picture of the green-ness that is Ireland.

So happy

We also had a fun and relatively quick craft to make – St. Patrick’s Day Man Craft. Very rudimentary but fun with accordion folding and cutting out of our printed shamrocks. As you can tell by the faces maybe a bit TOO easy of a craft for the bigger ones… though a spider shamrock man is… creative!

Accordian fold

Crazy faces!

We also made our paperchain for the table… I love love love that we had various shades of green.

GREEN

Zander and Emanuel even took some initiative and did some beautiful waterpainting pictures

So pretty

Gavin also drew us a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow with instructions thanks to Art for Kids! This poster is going to be amazing!

how lucky

One more Wild Kratts for the win of course!

Monarch Buttterfly… quit the amazing critter

I know we are done and over the platypus unit, but a pair of Echidna babies have been born in captivity successfully so I had to share the picture! Enjoy the puggle! Here is the Facebook tag….

Babbin, one of a pair of short-beaked echidna puggles that were born at Perth Zoo, is cared for by a keeper. The puggles were born to four-year-old first-time mothers Mila and Chindi, both bred and born at Perth Zoo as part of its breeding programme. Environment Minister Bill Marmion said, Until now, it was believed female echidnas did not breed until the age of five so these latest births have shed new light on echidna reproduction. Only 24 echidnas have been bred in captivity in Australia.
Picture: Justin Benson-Cooper/Newspix / Rex Features

Baby Puggle!

I have made SIX little Leprechaun hats with a CrochetSpot freebie. I had to use yarn on hand so I am sure it is not the suggested materials but they are so cute!!

Tiny hat with clover

Bree has announced a move up of her c section so I am planning to finish the last of my new baby gifts before Saturday… she is due to surgery on the Friday but I may have the ability to visit Saturday… it is going to be a busy and fun weekend! How very exciting.

With our continued snow fall the boys are finding it a constant need to shovel… but I do say it burns the energy!

So much snow

We drew more sea creatures with manta rays this time thanks to Art of Kids. If you have NOT already bookmarked them you REALLY should! We have a few other activities by them I want to try that include paint and pastels. I just need the time to make a designated area.

Manta Ray

We had a book for the day of course… well multiple books really since it was World Book Day. We actually are making our own books that will be finished on the weekend! A Fine St. Patrick’s Day by Susan Wojciechowski was our St. Patrick’s Day themed one… along with the chapter book Lindsay the Luck Fairy. I am really enjoying our story time.

All 3 of them worked on this one

For World book Day we had books the kids and I picked out to enjoy together…

Some fun stories to share

And then each of the twins read a book to the other kids…

Zander and his book

Gavin and his

We had some St. Patrick’s Day themed worksheets as well. There will be, in hindsight… the link to our resource blog at the end of our studies. As always, anything you wish links to etc contact me and I will send them along before then!

Emanuel at work

Trinity with herself as an Irish dancer

The St. Patrick’s Day stuff has certainly spiced up our week. I love the stories and the together time… and the crafts of course. We had to take a Charlie and Lola break though!

One of our favourite book and tv series

So we have another week and a few days until the end of this unit and then it is time to focus on Easter… oh and penguins! Emanuel is REALLY excited about that. With a new baby to spil I look forward to posting my crocheted pieces I made for her very soon! I am not sure how often we will get to visit with Ken now having a “normal” job and all but I am sure there will be pictures eventually!

OUR baby in a bucket

I have been a bad blogger this week and for that I must apologize. A combination of sick family (yes all 7 of us to some degree or another), Echo surgery anxiety and an end of the month “adventure” building up (to be disclosed by the end of the month, sorry) and blogging has completely slipped my mind. While I cannot guarantee that next week will be like. I hope to post at least SOMETHING before and after Echo’s surgery… 

Anyway… 3 days. Lets start with today just for fun! Well, we lucked out with our contact at a nearby town library. There was a Dr. Seuss party this weekend for the little ones. Perfect for our Trinity and Emanuel so Karyn, the two kids, myself and Victoria met up at the library to enjoy the party. Victoria works there some evenings and Saturdays as a second job. It is a beautiful building and their library program is amazing! I hope we can go back for more special events!

First it was storytime with TWO Dr. Seuss stories to enjoy. I love their little reading area with its fish in a tank and comfy reading chair!!!

The awesome reading corner

And then it was craft time… 3 crafts! There was a Cat in the Hat hat to create with paper, a t-shirt to colour (our 2 didn’t do a Seuss theme but amazing pieces of art all the same) and finally making a fish bowl using toothpaste and ziploc bags. I have some ideas to try this with other colours of paste for other projects! They smell REALLY minty!!

Assembling hat with Aunty Victoria

Decorating shirts

Toothpaste fishbowls

We stuck around for a little play time at the train set and picked out a few books to bring home and enjoy but Aunty Karyn is getting over a cold as is our Trinity so it was time to head back to town with Aunty Victoria along for the rid! We have missed her, it has been some time since we have had a nice visit. 

The plan for the day – a Green Food Snack/Potluck party for St. Patrick’s Day. We had a lovely variety of goodies including our now basically complete pot of gold. We still need to paint the inside and attached the base legs with hot glue. I figured people would rather NOT have black paper all over their chocolate loonies. 

Pot of Gold

I made some special greenish bread the night before in the breadmaker with 5-6 drops of food colouring put in when the beeping occurs to add in nuts etc. I think I needed to double that but I was worried about changing the flavour. Definitely a conversation starter!

There were green grapes, celery, green jello, Irish Potato Soup (directions to follow in another blog sorry! Have too much to type already for this one!), scalloped potatoes and sugar cookies cut like 4 leaf clovers. All in all a good spread.

After the snacking

Kristen, Fydo and Lauralee rounded out our gathering and we had a great time snacking, chatting, reading books with the kids (Lauralee is Trinity’s FAVOURITE storyteller right now). It was a lovely and restful way to spend an overcast afternoon. We wore green, ate green snacks and chatted. Lovely.

Of course we had to take our yearly picture of the kids in green. We did a 4 and 1 thing as Echo was not overly interested in photography. She actually had a DIFFERENT outfit to wear but… OUTGREW IT!!! MILESTONE!!! Our Echo is starting to out grow 6-9 month clothing! SCORE!

Little goofs!

A slightly cranky baby

Now for YESTERDAY… well, another rough day for yours truly feeling rather overdone with the knowledge that Echo is to have surgery so soon… BUT we managed to continue on. The twins and I wrote up information and interesting things we learned about Ireland and St. Patrick’s Day on a special page. I did the writing they did the dictating. They actually retained an awful lot! And then there were the adorable Leprechauns the little ones finished with me! I thought they were so cute, out of a file a friend sent me (thank you again!!). If you want to check out my Education.com collection for St. Patrick’s Day for next year be sure to click HERE.

Leprechaun

And Emanuel's

BUT late morning She Chris came by between clients at work to take me out to get lunchtime groceries (I think Trinity would have lynched me if I had made noodles for one more meal this week!). We managed to get quite a bit at Walmart for under 15.00. We also stopped by her work for a bit so I got to meet some of her co-workers and superiors. All very nice people and quite entertaining. 

Then in the late afternoon Kathy came for a visit. She forced me out the door sans kids and treated me to some most delicious Umi Sushi Express, a little wander around Walmart and an evening of positive thinking and chitty chat. Just what this worn out and worried momma needed. I truly am blessed in the friends I have met through out my life. 

Another special friend moment! Kristen over after work for a visit!

We have accomplished a lot with our little family and I just KNOW there is more to come. I am going to spend the rest of my year and my life creating more adventures for us to have, not more ordinary trips to places I think it is time to make EVERYTHING an adventure! I am going to do something special just for Echo’s surgery. We have our facilitator meeting in April and I am hoping to find the time to go through what we HAVE done (the big stuff) and find pictures of some of the things we could not save to show him to put with the stuff they completed. Definitely something I want to do as we do it for next school term! A sort of added scrapbook page for everything, especially with adding Emanuel into the mix officially!

I would love it if any of my readers, friends and family would weigh in on anything we have done since about October that is noteworthy that I should look for pictures of! Give me another perspective! You can leave a comment here, email me at rosereinsch@gmail.com… catch me on Facebook as Lisa Reinsch-Johnson (be sure to tell me who you are and why you are friending me if you are not friended yet), msn or Twitter! Whew that is quite the list! OH or call me, txt me or.. GASP.. tell me in person! 

That brings me back further to Thursday and a rather miserable day… sadly none of us were in the mood BUT we managed workbooks, some more St. Patrick’s day related stuff AND some together time. Lots of hugs, cloths for runny noses and moments of cute Echo time. I have been sneaking in even MORE cuddles lately, though one morning Ken found me crying and Echo crying in the middle of the kitchen floor. She had bonked and I had fallen to pieces. Thank goodness Ken was there to gather us up and remind us that this is all going to be OK! 

Workbooks

We have managed to have a memorable half of the weekend… and I have plans for next week, well sort of… (She) Chris is going to watch the other 4 while we are in the city, we are taking (He) Chris’ car to ensure we get there in one piece and on time (do we ever love these two!) and we are staying the night on the Tuesday at the den Otter’s… not to mention all the local friends who will be on call! What a wonderful network we are blessed with! On top of that we are moving out tv upstairs (that is another thing, the owners finally came and checked out the leak – caused by their improper installing of the dishwasher so there is a hole in my basement ceiling right now) and the Wii for the kids and hope that things go smoothly. 

Echo

Echo

And more Echo