April 28-30

After a wonderful birthday for our very own Trinity it was time to return to the regular school week… around the carnage that is new presents without a home in our livingroom/homeschool area of course! Sadly Echo’s prolonged nap the day before heralded her curling up to sleep in Baba’s chair for portions of the day… thankfully the cold seems to be relatively mild!

It was an exciting day for our officially 6 yr old… she started her GRADE ONE MATH BOOK! (seriously she said that in full capital letters I swear!).

She also wanted to share one of her two birthday shirts… this is her favourite she says!

The Goldie Bloxs are a great hit with the kids. This was a kickstarter I wanted to try ages ago. A whole series of engineering toys geared at girls!!!

We had more Treasure Island to read…

More stories to enjoy and interesting facts to find and share.

On Tuesday the twins worked on simple animal reports. I am hoping we will find time to do more of these over the summer. I am working on getting the boys to read through things on their own and try and pick out the points of interest themselves… we are still getting rather mixed results.

Miss  Trinity agreed to model the illustration we did for our Texas  themed book. Learning about where Gammie is and where Aunty Holly and Cousin Jimmie came from has been something the kids have been dying to do!

Another chapter filled with pirates…

Wednesday was swimming lessons… but first Emanuel and I had to work on his dinosaur dome growing kit. We took it VERY seriously and drew up our blueprint for planting first before getting our hands dirty in the soil. I am really hoping it grows nicely but just the experience of planning it all out was so much fun! Maybe we will design some imaginary parks together!!

Now back to swimming lessons… this time we took the whole family. The girls, Ken and myself were the boys’ cheering squad and wow did we have a lot to cheer about. The boys are all really progressing.

After swimming lessons we had a special visit over at Aunty Judy and Uncle Jim’s to visit with them and Robbie for a while. Any chance to see the critters and spend time with family right? Added bonus, they had left over scout car supplies since due to other kids not being able to make it Emanuel’s 4th place winner made it into the top 3 to go onto the next level of races!! Score!

And thus ends April! Wow! Onto May and hopefully (soon) catching the blog up in time for summer!! Maybe?

I am jumping line for this one… our book Dinosaur Hunt by Karen Carr mentioned this dinosaur as ALSO being found in Texas and as we are currently learning about Texas… well we reintroduced this herbivore so enjoy our jump forward!

Emanuel has requested NO MORE Cretaceous period dinosaurs… but today was not the day for that… The Hypsilophodon has a horny beak with cheek teeth and ran on two legs. It was a fast dinosaur that sustained itself with plants and was found in the woodlands of Europe. At first it was believed that it was found up in the trees but this has since been disproved. We had TWO videos… first a “Spore” video by Cainori.

Our second video is a gorgeous speed painting piece by Michele the Sea

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And now the links

• Dinosaurs.about.com HERE
• KidsDinos.com HERE
• Dinosaur Isle HERE
• Melbourne Museum HERE
• Jurassic Park Wikia HERE
• Dino Directory HERE
• Dinosaur Jungle HERE
• EnchantedLearning HERE
• Wiki HERE
• And our colouring page was found at deviantArt HERE by our favourite artist Zakafreakarama HERE.
  

  So pleased to have our two littles involved together

If teacups could talk…

The death of a beloved aunt leads a stumped authoress to inspiration 3 weeks later with the delivery (by a dishy UPS delivery man) of a box from home full of tea cups and saucers. Each one bringing to mind a story shared by her aunt ready and willing to be recorded onto paper. It is here that our stories begin in the novella Tea With Emma (the Teacup Novellas book 1) by Diane Moody.

The first of these stories is centered on a young woman returning from a trip to England with the inspiration to create a Jane Austen tea room in Texas. Her flight home with friend in tow is interrupted by a cranky British man who chastises them for their boisterous speech on the flight home. Maddie and her friend Lanie return to Texas with somewhat disastrous results… including a runaway suitcase and a negligent roommate causing the death of a beloved kitten (Mr. Darcy… so many Jane Austen references).

Tea With Emma brings to light how one’s faith and belief in what’s right and what you are called  to do can change your life. Maddie feels she, like Austen’s Emma is a matchmaker (with the support of God). And like Emma, we see how even the best intentions can cause less than happy results. We see how forgiveness and letting go of a difficult past can alter a person from their very core.

I would suggest Tea with Emma by Diane Moody to anyone who is looking for a light read with a religious context. The characters are engaging and the addition of tea and Jane Austen give this story a lovely flavour. I will definitely be looking for more from this series.