Rice Krispie Bird Nests

The kids made bird nests today. They were able to do it themselves with just some supervision. Colin melted butter, then added marshmallows, and melted them. Then they added the cereal. After buttering their hands, they took a handful and made it into a ball. Then we pushed the middle down a little to make it more like a nest. After that, they added Cadbury Eggs to each one. 

 

The recipe I saw said to use a muffin tin to shape them, but the kids said messy hands were the best part of making them.

Here we go again

After only four months here, we're moving again. We've known for a while that we probably wouldn't stay here long. It hasn't really been long enough for any of us to settle in so no one is upset about moving. There is a little disappointment that we won't be as close to the beach now that it's finally warming up enough to go some. We've had to promise a big sandbox and that we'll be visiting the beach soon after moving.

We're all used to moving. This will be my 20th move since I got married 14 years ago. That's only counting the times all our things moved, not when we were in temporary apartments. This will be the 10th house we've lived in in the last 4 1/2 years alone.  We've found a new house and scheduled the movers. So for now it's mostly just waiting until the time comes. I've been making a list of all the things we'd like to do and see before we go. Every time we move, I seem to be rushing to do all the things in the area that we haven't made time for before.

I hope we end up loving this new town and staying there for a long time. There are a lot of things we're looking forward to after the move. The kids are happy that they will have a Lego Store and Disney Store nearby again. I'm happy that there will be a Super Target and a convenient Harris Teeter. Maybe I will be able to avoid going to Walmart more often. I've found a lot of activities and places to visit that sound fun. It also seems like it might be easier to find other homeschoolers there than it has been here. We also like the new house much better than this one. There will be room in the driveway for a basketball goal, everyone will have bedrooms on the first floor again, we'll get to have our theater back, Chad gets a 3 car garage again, a large playroom/schoolroom, and I'm hoping for a scrapbook room.

In some places we've lived, I've been lucky enough to have a separate room to store our school stuff in. We've always done our actual work in the kitchen or dining room though. In the new house, we'll have this space:

You cant see it in the picture, but there is also cabinets and a sink in the room. I'm hopeful that this room will work for not only storage, but as the place where we do school. I'll post an updated picture of it after we get moved in and unpacked.

Rabbits

We spent some time studying rabbits last week. Some of the books we read were: ABC Bunny, The Little Rabbit, The Runaway Bunny, The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Bunny Who Found Easter. We also read some non-fiction books about rabbits to learn more about them. For our notebook, we found where rabbits live, what they eat, the largest rabbit, the smallest rabbit, and the difference in rabbits and hares. We'll add them to our notebook after we finish this week. We're expanding on rabbits by doing The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

St. Patrick's Day

We're studying rabbits this week, but took a break to read St. Patrick's Day books instead. I found this bunny to print along with clothes for St. Patrick's Day so we did that to tie the two things together. Molly didn't want to be in the picture if she couldn't be in the middle so she just stuck her bunny in.

All day long the kids found chocolate coins dropped by leprechauns all over the house.

We made rainbow cupcakes by coloring our batter 6 different colors (2 per child). Then we layered the colors into the cupcake liners with each kid doing their 2 colors. This took much longer than I thought it would so we only ended up doing 6 or 7 of them and then we just made the others one or two colors.

Again

Wednesday, March 3, 2010, started like any other normal day. The kids all had colds. We did school that morning. I helped them get their lunch and then I went to the bathroom. Everything had seemed fine until then. It wasn't a lot of blood and I tried to convince myself that it didn't mean anything was wrong, but I couldn't stop the panic I felt. In my head, I kept saying, "Please, not again." But I knew without a doubt what it meant. It was happening again.

I guess I should have called the doctor once Chad got home, but I just couldn't deal with that part yet. I knew there was nothing they could do and I wasn't ready to see a baby with no heartbeat or hear someone say out loud what I already knew . So I waited until the next morning.

It was strange to be in the same place with the same two women as 10 days before and know the results would be so different. Once the picture came up, she said she needed to take some measurements. I lay there thinking how strange it was that neither of them mentioned the absent heartbeat. After measuring for a couple minutes, the doctor finally said that there wasn't a heartbeat anymore and that the baby was only measuring a couple days bigger than at the last ultrasound.

When I got home, Colin immediately knew something was wrong with me and started asking questions. It only took a minute for him to ask if it was about the baby. The worst part was having to look into my 10 year old's sweet face and cause him so much sadness again. We had wanted to spare them this time in case it happened again. We waited until I was 8 weeks and had seen the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Unfortunately that wasn't long enough this time. I was 9 weeks 2 days when the bleeding started; 10 days past when it started the other time. Just long enough to start thinking it was going to work out this time.

The day after we found out, Caleigh asked me, "Mom, why do the babies inside you end up dying?" I told her I didn't know and that I was very lucky that my first three babies didn't and are so healthy. I find myself often wondering the same thing as Caleigh. What happened?  What went wrong? How could I have 3 heathy pregnancies with healthy babies and then have 2 pregnancies where there is something so wrong? We'll probably never know the reason and it's hard to not know why.

The Story of Ferdinand

Last week our book was The Story of Ferdinand. It's about a bull who doesn't want to fight like the other bulls. He just wants to sit under the cork tree and smell flowers. The kids also enjoyed watching the Disney cartoon version of Ferdinand found on You Tube.



We studied Spain by reading a little about it, finding it on a map, talking about what a peninsula is, and coloring its flag. We also studied vultures since they are shown in the book several times. For language arts, we looked at repetition and interjections used in the story. We also found some videos and websites to learn about cork trees. All of the lapbook stuff came from homeschool share.  Another thing you may notice in our notebook is a ticket for a play we saw. It was called Ferdinand the Bull and put on by the Charleston Stage Company.

Just milking the cow

The other night Molly came to my room and said she had to tell me a secret. She said she had taken money from Colin's bank. She then put it into Caleigh's and her banks. Each of them have animal banks (cow, chicken, sheep).  I tell her she shouldn't do that and ask her why she did it. She gives me the most serious look and says, "I was just milking Colin's cow for him." What do I do with this child? She has an answer for everything.

The Buccaneer

As soon as I started planning our pirate study, I knew I wanted to go to a pirate themed restaurant in Charleston called The Buccaneer. I didn't feel well enough to go last week, but we finally made it there today.

Discovery Ice Cream

We had a very rough day last week and Chad decided we should go out for ice cream. I had seen stuff about this place called Discovery Ice Cream so we went there. A robot makes and serves the ice cream. First you choose what kind of ice cream and toppings you want by pushing the buttons on a screen.

Then the robot makes the ice cream for you in the order you've chosen by holding a cup in the correct spot.

The kids thought this was so much fun.

Pirates- Part 2

To go along with our pirate study, the kids decorated cupcakes.

The kids made their own treasure maps. They wadded up a sheet of paper to get it wrinkled. Then they laid it on a pan and poured rootbeer on it. The directions I had said to use tea or coffee, but we don't have those so I picked up a bottle of rootbeer at the store. After a few minutes, they drained it off and dried the paper with a hairdryer. Then they drew their map.

Chad made a map so the kids could go on a treasure hunt in the backyard. Here they are with their map ready to start.

They've found the treasure.

I decorated a box for our treasure chest by cutting up a pirate gift bag and gluing the pictures on the box. Some of the things in our treasure chest: pirate stationary sets, candy bracelets, rings, necklaces, gold mine bubble gum, spyglasses, gold wrapped rolos, Hershey kisses, and inflatable parrots. 

 

 

Haircuts

I took the girls to get haircuts. It didn't turn out the way I anticipated at all. Caleigh got cut with the scissors and Molly ended up with much less hair than I expected.

Here are the girls before:





Here is Caleigh after:



This is about what Molly told the woman she wanted, but I told her no and to keep it right below her shoulders. Well somehow during the time I was dealing with Caleigh getting cut, Molly ended up with this instead.





I don't really mind her hair being this short. I think it looks cute and it's much easier for me since I was always fighting with her to try to get all the tangles out. She really does like it too. She keeps saying she has fashion hair now. I hadn't let her go this short because Caleigh chose to get her hair short just so she could look different than Molly. Caleigh has said that Molly has to grow her hair back so it won't be the same.

Pirate Unit Study- part 1

 We started studying pirates yesterday. We're using the unit study from Homeschool Share. Here's our table set up with our books, some decorations, pirate hats, swords, and eye patches. 



 

 Books we're reading this week:

• 
  
  Pirate Mom
  
  
• 
  
  A Day in the Life of a Pirate
  
  
• 
  
  A Pirate's Life
  
  
• 
  
  Blackbeard
  
  
• 
  
  Pirates Past Noon
  
  
• 
  
  Roger, the Jolly Pirate
  
  
• 
  
  If You Were a Parrot
  
  
• 
  
  This Little Pirate
  
  
• 
  
  Pirate Pup
  
  
• 
  
  Sunken Treasure
  
  
• 
  
  Pirates: Robbers of the High Seas
  
  
• 
  
  Little Badger, Terror of the Seven Seas
  
  
• 
  
  Do Pirates Take Baths?
  
  
• 
  
  Pirate  Pete
  
  
• 
  
  Pirates Don't Change Diapers
  
  
• 
  
  Tough Boris
  
  
• 
  
  How I Became a Pirate
  
  
• 
  
  The World of a Pirate
  
  
• 
  
  Pirate Pete's Talk Like a Pirate
  
  
• 
  
  Muppet Treasure Island (DVD)
  
  

Harold and the Purple Crayon

Last week, we worked with the book, Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Here is our purple art. I gave them lots of purple stuff (paper shapes, rhinestones, paint, crayons and buttons) to make their pictures. Caleigh's is on top, Molly's is on the left, and Colin's on the right.



  Here are the notebook pages:



Left:

They wrote the name of the book. They illustrated a poem. It's about a boy who draws a monster. He is chased by the monster so he erases him.

Right:

Ways to travel: we first discussed  how Harold traveled in the story and then we added other ways.

Puns: we talked about what puns are, found examples in the story, and read a few Amelia Bedelia boooks, and discussed the puns we found in them.

Moon: they drew and labeled the phases of the moon.

We watched a video online of how crayons are made.

Fraction Pies: they labeled the pies with the correct fractions.