Friend Friday - week of June 24

Sorry there's been a break in posting, but we've been quite busy.  The particular Friday in question we were lucky enough to meet up with our friends the Arkansas Gayharts for lunch at Chick-fil-a.  Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures!
The kids were also very helpful in testing all of the activities for the Rainbow Room at CASE Camp.  We made rainbow rice, crystals and tie dyed t-shirts with various techniques.

 When Chris got home we headed to the park to play in the rain.

The All-Stars!

Tasty Thursday - Week of July 24

This is possibly my favorite day because I get the kids to try new foods!!  What's funny is that yesterday one of our ministers at church posted a video of himself and our previous preaching minister taste testing dried crickets.  I had the kids watch the video and asked if they'd like to also try them.  Maggie kept repeating all day that she did not want to eat a cricket.  

Anyhow we tried two new recipes, two new fruits, and a new food today.  I found a recipe online for Caramel-Banana-Pecan Muffins (http://www.dwellonjoy.com/2012/02/caramel-banana-pecan-muffins_13.html) and they smelled amazing and tasted even better.  The recipe made a dozen and between Maggie and I we've eaten half by ourselves.  Cameron tried one bite, but stated that he was not a fan of pecans and did not want to eat a whole one.  Maggie just picked the pecans out.  Chris & I aren't sure that they are our kids cause we both love pecans.  

Later I chopped up a bunch of fruit that we picked up on Wednesday.  Cameron tried kiwi for the first time.  While he liked the flavor he was not a fan of the seeds.  He also had picked out a Golden Delicious apple to try, which he is a fan of.  The one fruit that it surprises me that Cameron likes is nectarine.  That's just not a fruit that I imagine a kid asking for, but he does.  Maggie was a bit less adventurous, she just went back to eating cantaloupe which she already knew she liked.  She ate a whole divider of cantaloupe!  

Finally at dinner time I was out of taco seasoning, so I went online and found recipe mix to make our own.  It was fantastic and I think I like it better than the packet stuff!  (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/taco-seasoning-i/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=taco%20seasoning&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page)  If the link doesn't work just search for Taco Seasoning I on AllRecipes.com.  

Chris was able to convince Cameron to try a taco with meat in it, versus just bean and cheese.  And guess what, he liked it!! 

We are having a great time trying to new foods and recipes.  Like I said, I think this is my favorite day. I do enjoy baking and cooking, and of course you can find a million new things to try on Pinterest!  

Reading & Writing Wednesday - Week of July 24

So this day of the week we've been really bad about accomplishing our objective of getting the kids to practice writing.  The reading is the easy part, they both love to read or be read to.  But to write, it's like pulling teeth or walking through fire, or you get the idea.
One week I was successful in getting them to both write to a pen pal.  But only one of the weeks!  I need some better ideas to get them practicing.  Maggie will only write her M, but knows all her letters.  Cameron's penmanship leaves something to be desired.
I need to get motivated and find some better ideas to make this day more exciting.

Travel Tuesday - Week of July 24

We didn't travel very far today since I had 2 extra kiddos, I'm only so brave.  We went to a a jump place and did a few fun things at the house too.

 

My friend, Sarah, has done these construction paper handprints with her family as gifts before and I felt it calling our names.  My nephews are on the left and my kids are on the right.  It sort of makes me giggle that Kaiden & Zachary's hands are so close in size.  And I'm not sure if we'll be able to get Lincoln to uncurl a hand and cooperate, but we'll give it a try.  

We also tried to melt crayons outside since it was very, very hot on Tuesday.  Our initial idea of just setting the canvas outside did not produce results, so we added a baking pan the next morning and the crayon began to run.

 

I'm please with the results of both.  The masterpiece on the left is going to require some additional melting at the bottom to get it to go into a frame.  The masterpiece on the right just popped right up.  I think the kids did a great job with their color choices and design.  

We learned about all sorts of useful things with this project - how heat conducts, solids versus liquids, and car safety (we put it in the van for an hour to see if inside a car would heat it up faster).

Mindful Monday - Week of June 24

Monday we got up early and headed out to the zoo to meet our cousins.  It was Lincoln's first trip to the zoo (he is only 2 months old)!

 Since it was Mindful Monday we did a few things to work education and science into the day.  I grabbed a great Zoo Bingo off of the 2 Teaching Mommies website (http://www.2teachingmommies.com/search/label/Tots%20Around%20Town) and each one was unique for each kid.  The only thing I forgot was something to let the kids cross the animals they saw off, so I ran into the gift shop and bought pencils and the awesome staff sharpened them for me.  What was also fun was that the kids were using the map for the zoo to help lead us to the animals on their Bingo.  I think map reading skills are very necessary because I've been known to get lost once or twice in my life.  I still have some trouble with my West & East.  Kaiden explained to me later that night the directions and I was super impressed with his knowledge of N, S, W, E!

 Another fantastic stop at the Houston Zoo is the Swap Shop.  They have a great array of items for the kids to explore under magnifying glasses and some animals to interact with.  Our favorite part is bringing in objects we find in nature and trading them in for cool items for "sale" in the shop.  We brought in a turtle shell, an entire snake skin, petrified wood and a large piece of quartz.  All the great items came from Grandma & PawPaw's farm!  The staff analyzed each of the pieces, asked the kids questions about them and then told them more about each.  The turtle shell was from a turtle that lived in water, not on land.  The snake skin was a little tougher, she debated between whether it was a bull snake or a rat snake.  She landed on rat snake, because the "scales" did not have a ridge in the middle of them.  This is the 2nd time we've brought in petrified wood and every time they are very excited about those pieces.  In fact one of the pieces we brought in a previous time is being used in the above picture where Zachary is observing.  And Cameron was able to take the quartz around and observed that although it is quartz there are quite a few varieties of quartz that come in many different colors.  All very interesting info!
While Zachary & Maggie were observing in the magnifying glass in the above picture, Maggie told Angela that "This is science!"  We were cracking up at her for making sure Angela knew what was going on.

 We also visited the Reptile House, which we have not done in forever.  Last time we'd been in there it was humid, and dark and kind of stinky.  Apparently they've done some major renovations because it was AWESOME!!  The kids loved getting to observe all those creepy crawly animals.

Back at the house we had some water play time!  We broke out water balloons, the sprinkler, water guns and then I blew up balloons and let them play "Hot Potato" with homemade paper plate paddles.
It was a great day and I think everyone had lots of fun.  They don't even realize they were being "educated"!

Summer School (Sort of)

So earlier in the year, before school was letting out, I decided that we'd spend some time doing our own form of school this summer.  Fun stuff where the kids didn't really consider it school.  So I sat down and pulled ideas from a variety of sources and came up with a schedule of ideas that would work for us.  Each day of the week has a theme and then the ideas of things to do can be classified under those themes.  Here's a rundown of our week -

     Mindful Monday (Education/Science)
     Tasty Tuesday (Cooking/Try New Foods)
     Reading & Writing Wednesday
     Travel Thursday (Trips to museums, Moody Gardens)
     Friend Friday (Meet up with Friends and play)
     Silly Saturday (Goofy stuff that didn't fit into the rest of the week!)

We have since switched our themes on Tuesday and Thursday because Maggie is taking swim lessons, so "traveling" on that day is a little harder to do.  And of course, sometimes a idea overlaps various themes - Trip to the Zoo can fall under Mindful Monday, Travel Tuesday, Friend Friday, etc.  You get the idea.  And sometimes a day might not be educational at all - shocker!

While I'm not planning to jump into the home school arena, I do want my kids to get more out of summers with me than just playing all the video games they want to (which we did do one Friday!).  So since I have not blogged in FOREVER I decided our experiences this summer would be a good time to start back up.  So get ready to get an update on our week!

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