Just some pretty egg pictures

We have at least 8 hens laying, we're getting between 5-7 eggs every day. It's fun having different breeds of chickens because they each lay a different colored egg. We have one chicken who should start laying in the next couple of weeks that will lay greenish/blue eggs, which will add a definite splash of color to the mix!

Jeb's birthday party

Jeb had REALLY wanted a sleepover party for his birthday, but we thought his 5-7 year old friends might be a little bit young for that. I had to come up with an idea that would top the coolness of a sleepover party, and what almost-6-year-old can resist a science experiment party??

He invited 5 boys (he requested that the party be for big boys, and that it start at 2:00, just like his friend's party did a few weeks before his). It took a couple of moments, but the couple of little sisters that showed up were also welcomed to the party :) All 5 of his friends came to the party, and when the last boy arrived, Jeb looked around and exclaimed "This is all of my friends!!!" He was thrilled that everyone could make it!

It was a pretty easy and budget friendly party to put together and we had great results! I got a lot of the ideas from http://www.cometogetherkids.com/2012/02/super-science-birthday-party.html. She had a lot of great science experiments, and we used her idea of giving the kids a science book that had the recipes for all of the experiments, as well as a section that explains the science behind each experiment. Instead of gift bags of the little junky toys, we had empty gift bags and a bunch of zip top bags. For each experiment, we let the kids mix their own, then after they had played with it for a few minutes, we put it in a zip top bag and put it in their take-home bag.

I took all of the ingredients (baking soda, borax, cornstarch, etc) and put them in cylindrical vases to look like they were in a lab, and filled some oil bottles with colored water for some added sciency-ness.


We made flubber, which combines borax, glue, and water, to create a rubbery substance


We microwaved ivory soap to watch it expand

Then we passed it out for the kids to play with

Putting dry ice into juice makes a sparkling juice, as well as getting a lot of oohs and ahhs from the kids as they watched it fog all over the table

Then we did dry ice in a jar of water and dish soap, which made the soap bubble up over the jar, and work like a hand sanitizer. It went around the table a couple of times and was still bubbling over the top of the jar.



For his dessert, he wanted me to recreate the picture I had hand drawn on the invitations of a beaker with a puff of smoke coming out the top with a 6 inside it. I used reusable push-pop containers and put a piece of cake swirled with natural food dyes, some orange and green swirled frosting with slime green sprinkles (also all natural) and then cotton candy-the dye-full kind because it's a lot harder to find dye free cotton candy that doesn't cost a fortune! Sticking a number 6 candle inside and surrounding it with cotton candy 'smoke' was a hit!



I have a lot of great pictures of the experiments, but in the interest of not putting other people's kids all over the internet, I skipped over a few. We also mixed cornstarch and water to make a liquid that flows when you move your finger through it slowly, but resists when you move your finger quickly, and put balloons filled with baking soda over water bottles with vinegar and watched as they mixed and inflated the balloon. We made lava lamps by putting oil, water, and food dye into water bottles and tossing some broken alka seltzer pieces into it. We had also put the ingredients for home made ice cream into zip top bags and let the kids shake it up to serve with dessert.

After dessert, we went outside and mixed baking soda and vinegar in a zip top bag and watched the bags expand and then explode. That was a big hit!

And even though the kitchen and dining room looked like a flour factory had exploded, it was all quickly mopped up and all the party supplies went back into the pantry. Overall, everyone had a great time!

First days of dance

Journey FINALLY started her dance classes this month, and is LOVING them! She's taking a ballet class, and a tap/jazz class. She keeps talking about how she goes to dance with all of her friends, but is most excited that her dance bff from last year is in her tap/jazz class.

Ready for ballet

We had to get a picture of the dance bag too :)

Ready for tap/jazz

She has only had 3 of each class and has already learned so much, and she loves practicing at home. In ballet they are learning the names of the positions of their feet and their arms as they move, as well as some other very official sounding French words. The jazz portion of tap seems like mostly a warm up/exercise, and halfway through the class they come out to trade their jazz shoes for tap shoes and practice tapping with their toes and heels and doing some different dance moves. She loves the way her tap shoes sound!

 

I mustache you a question

1st Day of School Pictures

Since we homeschool yearround and it seems silly to take a first day of school picture when we begin a new grade at the 'wrong' time of year (Jeb started 1st grade at the end of March) so we've started doing our 'first day of school' pictures on the first day of our homeschool enrichment hub classes. They meet on Fridays for 3 trimesters with all different kinds of classes for the kids to take.

This session, Jeb is taking Spanish, Solar system, and Folktales from around the world. He enjoyed all of his classes. I asked how Spanish went, and he said "It was good...the teacher sounds a little weird when she talks, but that's ok." His teacher is from Guatemala, so we had a nice conversation about accents. It made me chuckle because, while diminishing, Jeb still has some of his accent :) 2 friends from church are in his solar system class, and one of his buddies who has shared classes with him for the last couple of years was in his folktales class. It was fun for me too, meeting up with other moms I've gotten to know, my cousin, and a few friends from church who started homeschooling this year and joined the hub.

Vivi and Journey are taking a class called Math Arts, which was pretty fun. They sorted strings by length, then by color, then made them into a design and glued them on paper, and then used multigrain cheerios (some are light and some are dark) to make a pattern onto a necklace. Because we don't buy a lot of packaged foods, whenever there's a snack I always read the ingredients, even when it seems like there couldn't possibly be food dye in it. Sure enough, multigrain cheerios has 'color added' on its label. Such silliness...

Journey was signed up for a class called Broadway Babies, which is singing, dancing, and acting for little ones, and Vivi was sure she didn't want to take any other classes. But when we got up to Journey's class, Vivi suddenly wished she had signed up too. A quick trip downstairs to talk to the director got her into the class, and she was thrilled! Usually she's very clingy and shy and doesn't want to participate, but she was amazing in this class! We've been noticing in a lot of ways that she has been turning a corner as far as her anxiety and social issues, and this feels like one more big step in the right direction.

Here are the pictures, all of them looking so grown up! After not seeing our homeschool hub friends all summer, everyone was commenting on how much taller and older they look!

Journey, age 3 1/2


Vivi, age 4

Jeb, the day before turning 6

A great end of summer day!

Today started with the last day of swim lessons for the summer. Journey quit pretty early on; with only one working eye and lack of depth perception, she is uncomfortable in any depth of water because she can't navigate the ground through the water.

Vivi made a lot of progress, and Jeb is a fish!







Jeb was trying to sit on the bottom of the pool like Eric

And the day ended with a trip to a local school parking lot to work with Jeb on riding with no training wheels. They've been off for a few days and we've practiced in the back yard, but today was his first wide open paved space to practice. Eric spent about 10 minutes running behind him, holding the seat to help him balance


Journey is working on the tricycle, but her legs are too short to really pedal. We're working on adding something to that tonight to help her, more on that next time.

And Vivi is a pro on her trike, but isn't a big fan of learning to ride a bike with training wheels.


Eric suddenly let go....

And Jeb kept going! Within minutes he was also going around curves without falling and could get himself going without help.

And is oh so pleased with himself :)

Homeschooling This Summer

I was posting so many updates about homeschooling for awhile, often because I was sitting at the table with Jeb while he worked in case he needed me and I had the time. But now he's working so much more independently and I should really be switching the laundry and unloading the dishwasher instead of playing on the computer all day :)

Jeb started the 1st grade curriculum in April. It began with very simple reading (Pat is a rat. Pat is fat. Pat is a fat rat.) and very simple math (trace the numbers 0-9, circle the third fish, write the four numbers in order).

We are year round homeschoolers-if we are at home, we do school work. If we have a play date or something else going on during the day, we'll skip school work. There's no start or end date, no deadlines to meet, no playing catch up if we take a few days off. It works perfectly for us as a family because it allows us to follow our own schedule (or non-schedule) without worrying about keeping up. It also works best for Jeb because he thrives on routine and does best when he's regularly reviewing the material.

Now he's reading easy reader books like Green Eggs and Ham all by himself and the girls will ask him to read to them. In math he's doing double digit addition, beginning fractions, telling time, and counting coins. We read chapter books to just him every night before bed (Eric reads books to all 3 kids, then we pray together and put the girls to bed, and then read a chapter book to just Jeb in his room) He has heard a lot of classics already, both from the curriculum and from my collection of favorites-Stuart Little, The Boxcar Children, Winnie The Pooh, The Mouse and the Motorcycle...and later on in this curriculum he'll get to hear so many more great books-Little House in the Big Woods, Dr. Dolittle-one of the most exciting parts about getting a new curriculum is reading over the list of books he'll get to read and hear.

Besides practicing reading, he's also been working on spelling and writing. Every week he has a 10 word spelling test, and we've started doing some creative writing exercises to help him practice spelling, writing, and creativity. We also study science, bible, and cultures, and starting this fall I'm hoping to add Spanish and piano to the mix as well.

During quiet rest time, he decided to write his own chapter book about our camping trip this weekend and has been working on it for almost 2 hours already :)