4th of July & Joel Lane Museum House

We visited the Joel Lane Museum House, where they were having special events for the Fourth of July. This house was built in the early 1770's. They had re-enactors, crafts, demonstrations, and much more. The kids got to try writing with quill pens.




Making rag dolls


Finished dolls


They had a spot where you could play with toys from that time period.


Tin punching ornaments


Here are their finished ornaments:


Churning butter







Colin is putting in the wick for a beeswax candle.


Here is the cake the kids think we have to have every 4th of July. It's pound cake, then a layer of jello, and then cool whip. Caleigh put on the strawberry stripes and Molly did the blueberry stars.

How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A.

One of our favorite picture books is How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, so I decided we would use the newer book, How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A. to go along with studying Independence Day. In this book, the girl has all her ingredients, but she needs the equipment (bowl, rolling pin, pot holders, etc.). As in the first book, the store is closed (this time because it's the 4th of July) so she has to travel to find the natural resources needed to make what she needs.

We used our map to follow along to all the states she visits. We colored in each of those states on the map in our notebook. We discussed what she made from each of the things she gathered and how some of the processes work. During her travels, we see many landmarks that we read more about. From there, we discussed the Fourth of July, what it means, the American Revolution, George Washington, the American flag, Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, and John Hancock. Using Draw Write Now, they drew the Statue of Liberty.






I printed out this street scene, cut them out, and had the kids glue them to the bags so they could have their own similar to the one in the book. As you can see, they've already added some people and vehicles to it.

NC Aquarium- Fort Fisher

We spent the weekend at the beach. While there, we decided to check out the aquarium that is nearby.
It was small, but the kids enjoyed it.

Father's Day

Colin made breakfast.


There were cards and presents.


Out for lunch


Colin made a cake.


Happy Father's Day to my wonderful hubby!

Swimming

The girls have made a lot of progress swimming. On our first day at the pool this summer, Molly was a little scared, but she was jumping in on that same visit. After a couple more visits, they were taking off their life jackets and really swimming. Their techniquie could definitely use some work, but they're doing great.

Here is Caleigh. She likes to swim underwater.




Here is Molly.


Colin

The Bee Tree

Over the last week, we have been studying the Five in a Row book, The Bee Tree. The setting of the book is Michigan so we started out reading some books about that state, doing a coloring page for the state bird and the state flower, and locating it on our map. Here is a picture of our story disk on our map.


We discussed and read books about gold rushes. We found the Yukon Peninsula on the map. Then we studied bees.

Here are our notebooks. 




Some of the lapbooks we did: where is Michigan, where is the Yukon, Yukon goldrush, life cycle of a bee, hexagons, types of bees, bee dances, and hive robbers.

Today we made bees for a snack.


They are made by mixing peanut butter, powdered sugar, butter, and graham crackers together and shaping into ovals. Then melt some chocolate chips to make the stripes and eyes. The wings are almonds.

Studying Plants

For the last two weeks, we've been studying plants. We learned that plants are living things, the parts of the plant, each part's job, what they need to grow, about photosynthesis, how seeds travel and their parts, and how insects help them.

To help the kids understand how a plant drinks, we put blue food coloring in a vase of water. We put a celery stalk and a white flower in the vase. Over the next few days, we observed the blue color moving up the celery and flower.

We also planted some seeds of our own and watched them grow.




Painting egg carton flowers


The finished flowers

NC Zoo

Chad had the day off from work on Friday so we decided to head to the zoo.

Washington, D.C.

Chad had to go to Pennslyvania for work so we went with him. We've been talking about taking the kids to Washington, D.C. for a while thinking they were probably old enough to get something out of it. We decided that on the way back down from PA was a good opportunity to try out a short trip.

On our first day, we walked a lot looking at all the monuments.













The next day, we visited some of the Smithsonian Museums.

Air and Space Museum




Museum of Natural History


Museum of American History


We'll definitely go back for another visit when we have more time. We'd like to go to the zoo and spend more time in the museums since everyone was pretty tired from the previous day's walking by the time we got to them.

Strawberry Picking

Here's my sweet girl trying one of the strawberries. She never liked them when she tried the ones from the store. Finally, we got her to try a fresh one that she picked last year and she loved it.


I have no idea why she makes these crazy faces.


The girls fills their buckets before Colin is even half way finished. He has to carefully inspect each one before picking it.


Finally a full bucket.


I think these 3 buckets were gone in 2 days.