New month, new school year! This year I gave the kids the option to “chose” their school year… We get asked this question A LOT through the years and the kids never really know how to answer it. We don’t align to a specific grade and in Trinity’s case, I didn’t register her OFFICIALLY until she was 7 but she has been schooling much longer. (this saves us on testing until it is required by state law) I gave Echo Kindergarten and Trinity chose Grade 3. The boys, they got creative.

Emanuel went with Grade Dinosaur. Gavin  decided on Grade Minecraft. Zander went all out with Grade Mom is the Best Teacher. (mild suck up action there).

I even wrote my own “grade” level.

Poor Echo continued to get eaten alive by the mosquitoes.

I went all out and tried blue hair… it faded a bit too quickly for my tastes but was fun for the short time it lasted.

Note Echo’s temporary blue streak thanks to hair chalk.

September was also the month of our Uncle Ted and Uncle Sean visit. Ted was here 1 week and Sean 2. It was amazing to have 3 of my boys together for the span of time. So much fun.

With Cookie the new Fat Sheep

We also did Renaissance Festival with the boys and Shandai and Ravyn (no kids of course). Costumes for those who wanted etc etc. I will post the many many images and share the fun in a future post.

We ate out at our favourite Indian place.

Sean took Ken and myself out for a super fancy dinner as well!

Fancy outfit… ignore the bathroom

Super pretty room

Played with the Uncles.

Worked out hard.

Learned as much as we could.

I snuck in my craft time whenever possible.

At the pool

I think we all had fun walking outside to the park.

There was a robot kit to make with the uncles.

And Sean even taught Echo how to play WoW (World of Warcraft) which I hadn’t seen in AGES.

Don’t forget swimming.

And the most unusual students.

As well as some amazing sunsets.

New school year, new start! We made the most of it with lots of fun, workbooks and working together. Keep an eye peeled for an overflow blog post. There are just too many pictures to share!

Gifts from Ethiopia!

May 6-7

It is now time to fully embrace the spring weather… And wow has it sort of melted into SUMMER heat. Two beautiful days, two beautiful walks culminating in park visits.

Monday’s walk was based on really just getting out and running free. The park was deserted and the kids went crazy going on all the equipment, climbing on things, sliding, playing in the gravel. The kids all took turns helping Echo to go down the bigger slides! Talk about a happy baby!!! It is great to get that fresh air first thing after breakfast and then get home in time to jump into the school work.

Slightly chilly but a good start to our week of walking

Helpful brothers

4 of 5

Working in the nature journals first

Helpful siblings!

With the lovely weather and a shelf full of comics we  took a nice chunk of the afternoon in the 3 seasons porch and had a reading session… the kids built a tent to hide in for a bit, but most of all we checked out the new comics in the sun together.

Comfortable jumble

Even Miss T

We snuck in some Mother’s Day themed fun with a dinosaur twist with Emanuel and Trinity together… the book… T. Rex and the Mother’s Day Hug by Lois G. Grambling. They each drew what they thought a dinosaur could give his or her mommy for Mother’s Day. I love that Trinity branched out and drew her OWN dinosaur.

DINOSAURS

One more outside run in the evening and our week of fresh air got off to a grand start.

Fun in the sun

Tuesday we lucked out and found the park full of kids… a daycare or two was there (in home) and more than willing to play with us and share the mud turtle they found before heading off for their lunch. Apparently they usually go on Thursdays so now we have an unofficial playdate.

Park time, of course no pics of the other kids but it was FUN!

Such a beautiful day

Examining ants

We started Trinity’s very first lapbook based on Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman. I added to the lapbook I found on line with a worksheet from Obseussed HERE. All of the kids listened in on the story and Trinity and I went on to work on the light lapbook. It is so fun talking to her about Mommies.

Trinity wrote about her Mommy…

We are working our way through penguins on the edge of things this week with our REAL focus on Mother’s Day.

Gotta learn those facts

So far… a couple interesting points about the beginnings of the official day, history, etc. It was actually a bit of a hunt to find information about Mother’s Day and its history. I lucked out and tracked down a copy of the much lauded lapbook from Live and Learn Press. I am going to make up a blog entry once again to combine all my resources.

Emanuel and his bit about his godmommy Xinny

I think I mentioned our robots previously… Here are the images. Thanks again Art for Kids!

ROBOTS

Oh and we updated our list of signs of spring!

Note the little turtle included thanks to Emanuel

We had a second outing in the sun, this time to the front yard!

Bubbles!

Nana and Baba also bought a fresh pineapple so the kids got to see one cut up in a rather unique way.

Pineapple!

And then the kids rounded off the evening with Castle Panic with Daddy and Baba.

Games again

The best of inside AND outside fun with learning to boot these past two days!

Shoes in a row

May 1-3

A new month begun and spring is… well I am told it is here but the weather is simply NOT working in our favour.

That did not stop garden progress though!

We had THREE Wild Kratts to enjoy!!!

Orangutan

Bird of Paradise

Jaguar

It was the first of the month so time to get our May poster put together!

MAY

And on our fact hunt about penguins realized that they can go up to 4 months without food, and are actually classified as seabirds, though unlike other birds their bones are dense and heavy instead of hollow… thus the amazing speeds in water! Penguins by Lynn M. Stone has been a great resource.

Penguins!

Our Thursday dinosaur was inspired by a library book: Neovenator and other Dinosaurs of Europe by Dougal Dixon. We have already had to move our dinosaurs from a small binder to a D ring!

Our Book

Monday’s had our intrepid learners drawing their favourite dinosaurs. Trinity had to have some help but we are working on getting her outside of the kitty and girl box.

Favourites

Gavin created us a little diorama style Lego scene… penguins, scientist, fish (gray) and even more interestingly – krill (pinky red bits).

Lego

I love it that from time to time we are even having some moments of silence and contentment WITH electronics in play!

Together quietly

We had a series of interesting drawing suggestions from Art for Kids as well – all about ROBOTS!! The boys worked together to complete them all and made a rather interesting robot selection.

Robots

Mr. Popper and his penguins started in Seattle so we had to take a look at a tourist video (that honestly they were not as enthused about as I would hope but loved parts of) and see what there is to see in Seattle NOW.

We ended the week with less than favourable weather… so I pulled all the stops for lunch – hot chocolate, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches!!

NOMS

Our dinosaurs ended the week as a marathon event of free (with Amazon Prime) season 1 episodes from Dinosaur Train alternating with schoolwork accomplished. Emanuel worked on a lovely full page scene.

Quite the well thought out scene

We created our own advertisements for portions of Mr. Popper’s Penguins!

BUY FISH!

And then for supper, the kids helped me make pizzas.

Kid assisted dinner

It was a rather good 3 days leading into what was going to be a busy busy weekend.

…and RINGLETS