Back to School

We've had an incredibly busy month.  Movie camp, Church Camp, library programs, zoo trips, painting, swimming, and just general mayhem! I think we all thoroughly enjoyed our break from school.

Tim convinced me we needed a swimming pool.  The kids were thrilled, of course!  They played all day in 4 inches of water (and every day since)!

We had a Back-to-School barbeque on Sunday night.  We sat around a 'campfire' and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.  The kids played red light/green light and had a sack race.  

                                              

The kids spent hours on Sunday afternoon building Lego Mazes!  Yay for mom getting a nice long nap!!

And, we have a new addition to our family. *sigh*  Her name is Kitsa.

CTC: Unit 7 and BHFHG: Unit 6

We ran errands on Tuesday and managed to stop by the Conservation Dept. to borrow a Black Bear Trunk.  My truck smelled like wild animals by the time we got home!  The trunk is full of all things 'black bear', and we are having loads of fun trying on the hide!  There are tracks, a skull, videos, and all kinds of great picture books about black bears. This will tie in wonderfully with Max's science.  He is studying Land Animals of the Sixth Day.  He's been busy drawing all kinds of animal tracks for his notebook.

Mary Frances needed a little prodding from her Aunt.  She thought the bear 'was really scary and way too stinky!'

Max has been studying Robert Frost's poetry this year.  We are 'painting the moods' of a different poem each week.  Who knew that Poetry would be his favorite subject?!  This is a project that should have been done last week, but we just ran out of time...  He worked extra hard this week to catch up.  This painting is Fireflies in the Garden.

We made our own air-dry clay with 'gel' toothpaste, so it was a tad on the green side, but that's all we could find.  We'll be painting it anyway, so no biggie.  His history project this week was to make a breastplate like the High Priest Aaron wore.  He enjoyed painting the 'gems' and adding the Hebrew writing.

Mary is reading a book about about science in Colonial America. We learned about simple and compound leaves, and we learned about the beginning of inoculation.  She thought science was fun this week, but she doesn't understand why all the men 'had such stupid haircuts!'  Well, I don't either, but we had a good laugh!!

 I think her favorite part of the week was reading about Benjamin West. We read Benjamin West and His Cat Grimilkin last year.  We all enjoyed it so much that we changed our black cat's name to Grimilkin!  Bennie West used berries to make his paints, so we painted with lemon juice, lime juice, orange juice, and koo-laid.  It looked like blank wet paper, so we added a few drops of food coloring to deepen the colors.  We were pretty happy with the results!  She drew a paint pallet on the back and added some facts and drawings about Bennie West.

Almost forgot, Max had a Lego Club build that he finished.  It was from April's meeting, but hey we got it done! Now our goal is to do May's build -- in May... haha
Things have been really busy these past few weeks, and I'm not sure if it will slow down any time soon.