Mama's birthday

Poetry, hiking, reading books, pizza, pumpkin candles.....it was fun!

You teach us how to read and write

Whenever we eat you take a bite

You make lots of smoothies for us to drink 

You drill us hard you make us think

You cook our food and it is so great

 Except for broccoli which we really hate

You drive us to tons of places 

So that we get to see a lot of faces

You are mom and we love you most

We also love your great pot roast

- Caleb

Roses are red and violets are blue 

You are my mom and I love you

I love your kisses and your hugs 

It's good they don't come with bugs

- Abby Jane

You are a mom who is so cool 

You also love to teach us school

You make an awesome chocolate cake 

 I also love to help you bake

You do not like our stinky shoes 

But are there for us when our game we lose

You do not like it when we forget our stuff

And sometimes you just huff and puff

I love you most when you read me books

And make sure I have good looks

- Ethan

I really really like your chilli

Even better than meatloaf with Uncle Billy

You don't like to wash our dishes

But you listen to our wishes

You take us to our baseball  games 

You cheer us on and say "Good game"

You take us out on lots of hike 

And we really like to our bikes

I love you and you are the best 

And I love your hugs before I rest

- Adam

The Artistic Eye

Since the main purpose of this blog is to document how we live life so that I don't have to scrapbook anymore, I have a few anecdotes about my second son. Ethan is, at first glance, a fairly left-brained person (analytical, sequential and logical) . Yet, he also has a very right-brained sense of color and composition. I have been letting all of the kids use a program on the ipad (Sketchbook) to do abstract art. Ethan takes this activity to the next level. I don't know exactly how to explain this because I don't fully understand abstract art myself but he will complete a composition and look at it and say, "It needs more blue". And, by golly, it does!
Two days ago, we took a hike and he asked to carry the camera. I loved looking at his pictures this morning as he really thinks about what he is doing and doesn't just snap away willy-nilly. I can't wait to use some of these for our nature journals. 

 Trillium

 The underside of the Mayapple

 Wild Primrose

 A young Buckeye

 Monarch Butterfly

 Skunk Cabbage Update

(He called this area Skunk Cabbage Heaven)

  Bluebells, I believe, even though they are dark purple and not the periwinkle we are used to.

 More Wild Primrose

A dead butterfly we found.

Weekend at Mimi's

This weekend me Caleb Adam and Abigail went to are Grandpa and Grandmas house because are dad and mom went on a trip.When we got there we played games and played with toys.For dinner we had tacos. Then we went to bed. The next day we had breakfast and watched some TV. We invited are friend Alec over to play and we played in the woods. We built are own fort and we each got are own room. After we were done playing in the woods Alec got to have dinner with us but I was sick and we were having pizza. After Alec left we watched a movie then we went to bed. The next day we woke up had breakfast. Then we invited Alec over again and we made a path to are fort in the woods. After we were done playing in the woods we had lunch with Alec. After we were done with lunch we made potions out of plants. After Alec left we had dinner it was spaghetti. After dinner we went to bed. when we woke up we had breakfast and then we went scouting for food when we were done Alec came over with his brother Ben. We played in the woods and played on the hammock. After we were done playing we had lunch with Alec and Ben. After lunch we played on the hammock some more. When Alec and Ben left we got ready for church. After church we had dinner it was hamburgers. After dinner we watched a movie then went to bed.When we woke up we ate breakfast then watched some TV. After that we went on a hike. When we got back home we ate lunch then me and Adam went to the police and fire station it was so fun. When we got back home we started to pack. After we packed we played on the hammock till are Dad and Mom got home. It was fun.      



                                                                                                             by Ethan

                                                                                                               

Geography Projects

This year, we have been getting together with other homeschool friends to learn about countries around the world. Each child or family picked a country to learn about and share with the group. Caleb was the last of my kids to go and he did his almost entirely on his own. (I admit, I did help with some of the cutting for his poster. It wasn't straight and I couldn't abide it.) He planned some Olympic events and also chose Aesop's fables for the kids to act out and chose all the groups.

Caleb's Greece Project

Ethan presented Egypt and I was a little unsure how he would do orally presenting his project because he sometimes gets shy but he did fine.

Ethan's Egypt project

Making a cartouche.

Getting their passports "stamped"

Some artifacts

Also, check here for Adam's project and here for Abigail's.

Funny Story

So, the lego building around here is really on the upswing (and it is pretty intense to begin with) but Ethan got a Lego idea book  for Christmas and so he is on a lego mission. They were working on something today and were talking at lunch about all of the stuff they would build if they just had MORE legos! I was incredulous and Ethan said, "Mom, I know we have a lot of kits but not so many just regular legos to build new stuff". So I suggested they look for bulk legos for sale on ebay. Everyone scurried upstairs to see how much money that they  had in their "spend" container. I showed them how to search for bulk legos and then how to organize the results so that the cheapest came up first. Sure enough, there was an auction for 300 legos for $.99. They were so excited! So, I showed them how to make a bid. And then they would periodically check back and found out that they had been outbid. If I was a really, really effective mom, I would have kept my mouth shut and let them learn on their own but before I could help myself, I advised that they wait until tomorrow in the last few minutes of the auction and then bid to avoid driving up the price prematurely. Caleb understood that this would take patience but the other two did not understand waiting at all yet they decided to wait until tomorrow to increase their bid. After all of this, I went in their room and there is this HUGE pile of legos in the floor. And I said, "I thought you said you didn't have any legos to build with?" And one of them said, "They are just not the kind that we need..."
Hmmmm. I think the value may be in the economics of situation and not necessarily getting something that they NEED but it's their money. We'll see how it goes.....

Mr. Abstract

Ethan has entered an abstract art phase. His Mimi says that he has a good eye for composition. (She would know.) Anyway, it boggles my mind that this is the same kids who, last spring, drew every block on his Egyptian pyramid. His attention to the details was astounding and yet, now he is very purposeful in his abstract paintings. I am glad that he enjoys painting and recently spent the night at his grandparents where he produced the paintings pictured above.

Ethan's Power Point

Ethan completed American Tall Tales by Adrien Stoutenburg.

He then created a power point about each of the heroes with the idea that each slide would be like a hero trading card.

(I also learned how to take a screenshot and post it to the blog..!)

Ethan's Birthday

This is me opening my first present its

a lego police station.

This is my birthday dinner.

I had a chocolate cake.

I got lots of presents.

by Ethan

Ethan's Trip

This week I went to Louisville with my dad. Here are some of the pictures.

The sunset.

Watching football.

The BIG bat outside the Louisville Slugger bat factory and museum.

Jonny benches bat.

This is what they make the bats out of.

The BIG glove!

This is where they make glass.

The tree graveyard(spooky).

Comics

The boys have been busy making comics of medieval stories.

Above is Ethan's version of The Sword in the Stone. Caleb posted his version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on his own blog.

Ethan Turns 8!

This is a belated post about Ethan's Eighth Birthday. He had his friends over for a slumber party, pizza, movie and a grand slam breakfast!

Ethan's Reading List

Ethan rarely gets excited about books (I can't imagine!)- he has a much more mathematical brain. But recently we typed up a list of the books that he has read in First Grade and put it in his portfolio. He got really interested in this and was poring over our easy reader book basket to identify all the books that he has read. Once we typed up the list, I could tell that he was really proud. Here it is:

By Dr. Seuss

The Cat in the Hat

The Eye Book

Green Eggs and Ham

Hop on Pop

Little Bear by Else Homelund Minarik

Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel

by Harriet Taylor Treadwell

The Gingerbread Boy

The Old Woman and the Pig

The Boy and the Goat

The Three Billy Goats Gruff

The Pig and the Pancake

The Little Red Hen

13. Dodsworth in New York by Tim Egan

14. Dodsworth in Paris by Tim Egan

15. Sam the Minuteman

16. Billy and Blaze

17. Berenstain Bears- Class Trip

18. Amelia Bedelia

19. A Day in the Life of a Firefighter

20. Hot Dog

21. King Big Wig

22. That Bad, Bad Cat

23. Shark in the Park

24. The Bears of Hemlock Mountain by Alice Dagliesh

If you have any readers from this level that you have enjoyed in your home, we would love to hear about

them!

Theseus and the Minotaur

A tag team narration....

Theseus and the Minotaur

C: Every year King Minos ordered seven young men and women to be sent from Athens to ….

E: Crete. He needed food for the minotaur. One year Theseus went.

A: The minotaur was half bull and half man.

C: Theseus was the prince of Athens.

E: He wanted to kill the minotaur.

C: Theseus told his people that if he beat the minotaur, he would come back with white sails on his ship instead of black.

M: When they arrived in Crete, King Minos showed them the labyrinth that hid the minotaur.

C: The prisoners would be fed to the minotaur that night.

A: Ariadne gave him some rope and said that he should tie it onto the door of the labyrinth so that he could get back out.

E: He found the minotaur and they were fighting for hours. He finally killed it.

C: Then Theseus followed the string back to the door of the labyrinth and Ariadne had freed the other prisoners. Then they got on their ship and headed back to Athens but in their haste, they forgot to put up the white sails.

E: Theseus’ father, King Aegeus, saw the black sails and threw himself off a cliff into the sea.

A: When he arrived, the people told him that his father had thought he was dead and jumped into the sea. And the people told him that he was king now.

C: Theseus named the sea the Aegean Sea.

My Future Engineer

We bought a new vacuum last weekend and Ethan asked if he could open it. I said sure. Than he asked if he could put it together. I said sure (duh!). Here he is, at 7 years of age, assembling his mother's new vacuum.

I just can't get over how different each of their brains are!!!

Photo Contest Part II

The Golden Leaf by Adam

Parachutes by Ethan

A Log in the Pond by Caleb

We are proud to announce that both Caleb and Ethan won an award in the Brukner Nature Center Youth Photography Contest. Caleb was awarded the Best Landscape Prize and Ethan's was selected as the Best Photo Overall! The curator of the exhibit told us that three separate judges all picked Ethan's photo as their very first choice.