May 18-23

We spent a large chunk of our Sunday out on the hunt for treasure… and for a good park! The girls decided to go matching on their excursion. We actually found a special geocaching coin that travels and is tracked. It has been all over the US an now it is our turn to pass it along!!

Chipmunk!

Pioneer Park

So swampy everywhere!

We have continued our watching of Veggie Tales when we can get our hands on them. So on a cloudy Monday it was a great filler between the rest of our ongoing learning of Texas, reading, writing and math. Sadly we are running out of shows that include a set of Sunday School worksheets to use. So instead we drew our own fun pictures.

That evening Ken worked on teaching the boys Agricola (HERE) another strategy game that I honestly am not a huge fan of. The additional reading, challenging game play all seems to be helping them stretch their skills more and more.

Tuesday was a nature walk in our very own neighbourhood. Keeping our eyes wide open for some more signs of spring… discussing road safety and the difference between planned plants and weeds. I think in June or July we will do a walk through the neighbourhood and see if we can get a bunch of different leaves and try and identify what trees are actually local to us. Which gives the little guys the chance to do a favourite activity – leaf rubbings!

Of course around lunch time we had to head back outside to enjoy the backyard. Really we were stuck indoors way too long this winter!

Art for Kids has put tons of wonderful how to’s out for us to enjoy. (link on right) Even Trinity is gaining confidence with the use of these.

Miss Echo was quite adamant that it was an ipad anime day for her. I really do love my Crunchyroll membership. Affordable and fun for me too. Granted she doesn’t understand anything being said and can’t read the translation but she bops to the music and enjoys the animation.

We tried something different for mid week. Of course we continued reading Treasure Island together.

But I had Ken make me up a nice set of charts for us to go onto the ipad and use my weather app to chart the week coming up weather local to us and for Austen Texas. Using this comparison we opened the table for a discussion about how activities and such would differ for the days there than here. Then for each day recorded the twins settled in with a sibling and wrote basically a daily diary for what they would do in Texas according to the weather. Zander was super creative and one day played out in the rain only to have to stay in the next sick with a cold!

We dug out our box of fraction magnets just to enjoy the manipulation of the pieces and to see how they look as actual objects. The boys were discussing and quizzing each other and explaining to the littles so I just sat back and let them go at it (as long as the information was CORRECT!).

We rounded off our outside experience on scooters, bikes and fancy skateboards. Sunshine sunshine SUNSHINE!

Trust me we really ARE doing sitting down book work interspersed with LOTS of outside running and burning of energy. Gavin has been taking charge of the camera occasionally and taking pictures too! Mommy in front of the camera instead of behind!!

Emanuel and I stole some afternoon creativity time on Wednesday and made a car ramp out of stuff in the livingroom while the other kids went on a walk with Nana and Baba. It is nice to have some quiet one on one time with the kids.

We ended our school week with ANOTHER Geocache adventure to a small park with a terrific tree shaded walking path. The boys are definitely the ones to jump up and go into the woods. We girls tend to wander the paths closer too and enjoy the more tick and branch free portion of the experience. That is not to say that Trinity does not jump on in from time to time though!

We are certainly seeing portions of Minnesota that Ken hasn’t even seen. There are some absolutely amazing out of the way tiny lakes and pretty shaded places. And we are seeing all of this together which is absolutely another plus. One thing we have learned from all the sessions Ken is now doing with his counselor is that going out as a family and enjoying an activity is absolutely crucial for all of us! That time together getting out, exercise coupled with the ability to spend POSITIVE time as a family. Amazing!

And a touch of Texas facts

I swear I intend to catch up but we really followed through on our pledge to make every day count in May as much as possible. Living in the moment and finding the amazing in every second!!!

May 12-17

We are very blessed with our main penpal… Gammie has become instrumental in our writing and letter practice. We get more letters some months than we can almost keep up with but every one is answered! This newest installment came not only with letters but with a rainy day (and we have had a few) fun craft using pom poms.

She has added a new incentive for our school work… sending the girls their own work pages to mail back to her. Echo calls it doing her mail and I am happy to say she was VERY interested in doing it. We actually budgeted in curriculum overview books for the kids this month which includes one for her that she will start later in June or July.

There was also a new card game … whack a mole in card form?? The kids LOVED it!

Geocaching is going to be life changing for this family! Now even and every day trip to the store could be expanded to include a treasure hunt as well! We quickly are doing up all the local (walking distance) ones.

And on these outings we are finding more and more examples of winter being truly done and gone. After such a horrible winter each and every little indication is so AMAZING!!

Tuesday Trinity was teaching Echo how to concentrate on her pages…

Zander finished ANOTHER journal. Each book has higher expectations of the writer. This newest book means he has to have a title for every entry, the date and around 7 sentences! Anything to get the creative writing juices flowing! Well done Zander!

Another chapter of Treasure Island later…

And later in the day we made another trek out into the parks of Minnesota to find more Geocaching locations. This time we took Echo and while she and Mommy did not venture into the wooded area we did enjoy our walk. And met a nice puppy.

Wednesday was full of paper work.

Osprey

With the boys in the pool in the evening. I am not sure when we will sign them up for the next series of sessions but man are they improving. We honestly  cannot afford the large number of sports a lot of kids are in right now but what we do do seems to be so appreciated lately that I feel like as long as we keep taking advantage of what we can afford and maybe create our own opportunities we will do just fine!

On Thursday we were indoors and watching BBC nature shows. The kids made a lovely poster after.

The boys assembled some amazing Texas mini lapbooks. The links to these will be in my Texas Resource entry at the end of May.

More Wild Kratts…

Roadrunner

And reading…

And a Dirty Jobs about mosquitoes (I had to share Gavin’s picture… that is one HAPPY insect).

Emanuel learned about South Africa as well.

On Friday since everyone BUT the kids and I were out and about I snuck out with Ken and brought them home CHOCOLATE DONUTS! Yup we miss our Tim Hortons!!!

And I mean we REALLY love the geocaching. I would totally suggest it to any family (or person for that matter) that wants something to do that is really on your own terms. We have downloaded an app for our smart phone but you can get a GPS unit (we want one one day). We have been picking an area that has multiple caches to find and do our best to get them all. We have our own special bag of things we need (that is still evolving and I will share the total list in the future I promise) and try to keep the kids as involved as possible.

Nature was out full force as well. Amazingly enough all this was close to Sam’s (ok so we combined a  good trip Geocaching with shopping…). A Saturday well done.

Spring has sprung full force here… and this is our best year yet for taking advantage of it!

May 5-10

May has marked a definite increase in our book work and math exploration. Multi tasking has become Mommy’s most helpful skill (what you can’t see in the picture below is my fingers at work on a crochet project to steady the nerves!).

Our first real focus on Texas was the Alamo. A historical look at a location that shaped so many lives and the future of the now state of Texas. I absolutely adored the book we found at the library about it (which is listed in our Texas Resource page that will be posted in the not too distant future). Trinity and Emanuel took the responsibility of illustrating what we felt were some main points from the book.

Miss Echo felt a need to bring back out the at home assembled Kaleidoscope. She is so gentle with this toy it is just lovely to listen to her explain what she is seeing.

That night we had a special visitor – COUSIN ROBBIE! He came to play games in the evening (and have dinner) but obligingly came early to play with the kids FIRST! I don’t know that there could have been a better treat for them. He is a family favourite.

We even pulled out Sorry for the kids to play with Robbie so he had a double game night!

Tuesday we started our Texas themed stories… After learning about exaggeration and touching on the saying Everything Is Bigger in Texas the story was all sorts of outrageous fun!

The boys are showing great strides in their reading… Pokemon cards have been a great incentive… after all there is A LOT of information on those cards to discover and the rule is they have to read them THEMSELVES!

The kids were just not feeling it. So we did have quite a bit of down  time. I hate how spring always seems to bring in those seasonal change colds!

Of course on Wednesday we had to take a time out to watch Daddy and Baba move the trailer in the yard. An interesting visual example on how some things turn widely!

I love how as  the bigger kids learn Echo is there soaking it in!

We snuck in another Wild Kratts. I finally had to take them all and put them in a binder… so many animals, so many amazing facts and hand drawn illustrations!

Wolves

I found a great craft on Activity Village for mother’s day = a template to make a flower where on each of the petals the kids write why they love their Mum. You can find this by searching Mother’s Day on the site (on right) and look under their designated craft section for that theme.

We finished up the day with dragging out the spring toys. So many bikes in a row!!!

It was back to worksheets and Texas learning the next day.

We also had a sheet for Mother’s Day to complete.

With a break for a magic trick – putting a pin through a balloon without popping it! (hint the trick utilizes TAPE) This was another of Emanuel’s Scout achievements.

We rounded out our week with a family trip to the mall on Saturday… Grandma and Grandpa Mike had sent Easter sandal money and we had 5 little sets of feet to cover. All of the kids except Zander got sandals. His sneakers were tight so we got him those. Amazingly we walked into Payless and walked out 15 min later (yup THAT SOON) having had our own personal shopper and a 20% off total purchase coupon.

Seriously we bought only one pair of shoes (Echo’s) that was not on sale in the first place and Zander’s Airwalks were on super clearance! There was enough left over for Mommy to treat herself to a little spending spree at H&M. Two new dresses and two new shirts and the total cost was under 40.00. (granted had to dip into my special stash of cash but a TINY dip!)

We also stopped in at Lakeshore and did the gambit of craft activities they had with Mother’s Day themes! A bit of a mad house but we managed to enjoy it and have EVERYONE involved. Even Echo got her glitter on.

Once we got home we noticed a neighbour down the road had a bunch of stuff at the curb for free… suddenly we had two VERY happy girls with a new trike and two new playsets (kitchen and vet) for our backyard structure.

We ended the day with all guys boardgames and it was time for bed.

Mother’s Day is Sunday and our life cannot get much more busy, fun or enriching. I am so pleased with May so far!!