June 3-5

We had some very exciting moments when the mail called for Echo to get a pair of scissors… one look at her smile and those child safety scissors in her hand and I sent Trinity and her long and seemingly TEMPTING hair in the opposite direction. Together we were somewhat successful.

With 4 scooters in the house and the hunt for a 5th ongoing the kids are really working together to share and teach EVERYONE how to ride them. I think we lucked out with the 3 wheel version I found Echo at a garage sale. Definitely a confidence builder for her so far!

We continued our week with a walk first thing in the morning to the nearest park. It was quite the walk, we had to avoid the usual walking path and bridge with all the rainfall… too many bugs and the water levels everywhere are so high it seemed smarter to walk the roads there. We spooked a bunny… they are all over the place this spring…

And then we played our hearts out at the park. It is so nice to go and have Echo able to handle herself pretty much solo now!

Super exciting… we managed to assemble our Texas binder! You can find our resource page HERE. I did not link all the books we used but have listed titles and authors. I am always amazed when we go to assemble at the actual AMOUNT of stuff we have completed to put into our books. This will definitely not be our only time visiting Texas as a topic but we certainly enjoyed our first experience.

We also had a run to the mall on Wednesday… errands coupled with education about water tables…

AND geocaching in the sunshine!! Ok maybe more playing in the sunshine but we did find at least one!

So much nature!

Echo decided to round off our day with officially starting our Canada overview. After all what is July 1st but CANADA DAY!

The weather so far has been so accommodating that on Thursday we were finally able to go to the rather well known Minnehaha Falls. The water level was SUPER high so we did not do the whole circuit. But we saw some amazing vantage points.

Got to enjoy the beautiful green everywhere while we Geocached…

And even dipped our feet CAREFULLY in the water. The current was amazingly strong all over the place and a portion of the river where you could normally wade rather far in really wasn’t overly safe.

But it was gorgeous!

After all that sunshine it was back home for another journal completed! Well done Trinity!

I love looking back at these days and portions of weeks and seeing just how much enjoyment we are taking from all aspects of our days! This is going to be a summer to remember.

May 24-29

I have to say we have learned from our winter… get those kids OUTSIDE!!!

And on Sunday we joined Matt, Fran and their twins at a local park to have a full on BBQ…

Park…

Lake…

S’mores…

(and dinner)…

We had it all!

And on the Monday we were back to Geocaching… we have had some amazing journal entries regarding our experience with some VERY creative hiding ideas.

We had a lovely print out for a scavenger hunt (HERE) to have the kids looking everywhere for their nature objects.

And a break with snacks and park fun while the twins and Ken hunted that last cache.

Tuesday was much more our work work work on the schoolwork day! We had a rather interesting experience learning about Legends and Pecos Bill. We are working on understanding the difference between true factual stories and what a legend really is. The kids just keep quoting back at me – EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN TEXAS and then giggling.

We got back into our classic Treasure Island. I am not sure which book we will read next. BUT we are working on a plan to get us storytime every day.

We are working through our dinosaurs that were in our Texas book… of course links to all of this will be in the Texas resource page (eventually).

And then right back out to burn off the energy… so much discussion of spring, teaching of siblings on the outside toys… so much fun!

On Wednesday I changed it up. Before the mosquitoes can take hold we drug the whole classroom outside to enjoy our grassy backyard. Once we found an ant free spot that is!

Great fun and we didn’t get too badly eaten up.

We fulfilled another additional Scout thing by driving down to a local small airport and checking out the planes. The kids all took turns spotting planes and talking about the different kinds. Family favourite is the seaplane. Though everyone was quite put out they land in LAKES not SEAS.

From there it was on to a park for a Geocache and play about in the sun.

Goofs!

Add in some Texas themed story writing and I think we succeeded with an interesting mid week.

Thursday was another special outside day. Echo had a preschool assessment to go to at our church so she and Ken dropped us off half way with some schoolwork.

A snack…

and a park! It was just really too bad that her session was delayed, we were there over 2 hours in the end and rather warm and cranky. BUT we met some wonderful little kids with their dads and enjoyed a perfect spring day.

Miss Echo did wonderfully with her assessment though they did reinforce that we should get her hearing tested to rule out anything extra in regards to her lisp (not total word forming… lazy girl!) which of course we already had scheduled for later in June.

Spring has sprung and so have we… out into the sunshine!

With super high water levels EVERYWHERE

Can you spot the neighbourhood white squirrel?

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