One last photo before I really must go sew Shortcake's stocking. :) We usually run up to our local Ace Hardware (I know, really romantic!) for our Christmas tree. Here we are with our tree. I love making memories!

School in December

We're taking school pretty easy in December. The two big boys each have a clip board with a few items listed on their to-do lists. Mostly we're wrapping up phonics, some math, handwriting, and reading. We're keeping ourselves busy with baking, crafting, more reading, math stations, our Europe review, wrapping presents, and Christmas prep. This will bring us to the end of our second semester! And, thanks to MACHE and HSLDA I no longer have to send in a report card for Agent H - that makes me a happy girl!

Christmas Lights Award

This is not my original idea, just another wonderful idea someone out there wrote about on the wonderful internet to inspire us all to have a little fun. I bring you . . . the Christmas Light Awards! We piled the kids (in their PJs) and picnic dinners into the car and headed out looking at Christmas lights. Each kid picked out the house that they thought was decorated the most fabulous and presented that homeowner with a decorated movie size box of candy (dollar store variety). The first home we picked out belonged to an adorable grandpa and grandma who were thrilled and had to send us on our way with some yummy homemade Christmas cookies. The other homes were just as surprised and happy to be singled out. It was one of those things where you don't know who was blessed more - us or them.

After handing out our awards, we went to the drive-thru nativity in New Brighton, which was wonderful. Short but wonderful! I hope we've created another Christmas tradition.












Why post a picture of them all posed when this one shows nicely what life is really like?

And just because they will want to remember. The first photo is Agent E's house, second is Agent H's, the third is The General's.







































In case you've wondered who that is driving around with the Christmas lights in their van - well yes - that would be us. That's my husband's little Christmas fun!

Agent E is loosing teeth

Agent E lost not one, but TWO teeth in one day (Nov 30). On top of that it was the first time he had lost a tooth . . . teeth . . . something like that. Yeah for my Ebug (I had to let that slip cause even at five he's still my little Ebug.)

The General's Secret

Today The General hunted me down to tell me a special secret. He came up to me and put his hands around my ear, then cupped his ear up to mine and proceeded to whisper his secret into the air. I still don't know what the secret was. My ear was muffled by his hands and I was trying not to giggle. I love you little fella!

Advent books

We get to open one each day. Each red & white package contains a different Christmas book to read. It's going to have to be a tradition - the kids adore it! Here are some of the titles included in our stash (some were books I had requested from the library, some were last minute thrift store finds, some salvaged from my childhood, and many are gifts from over the years.


The Legand of the Christmas Tree

Little Benjamin and the First Christmas
Usborne's Farmyard Tales Christmas
The Littlest Angel
The Little Fir Tree

Barbar and Father Christmas
The Legand of the Christmas Stocking

Mooseltoe
Legends of the Faith: Issue 4

The Littlest Magi

The Donkey's Christmas Song

The Little Mouse's Wonderful Journey

Three Presents for Baby Jesus

Cranberry Christmas
The First Night
The Little Matchgirl

The last ten or so are still wrapped up but I think they include a book about The Chrismas Carol, a chapter marked from Uncle Wiggily, and a chapter marked from James Harriots Treasury for Children. I'll try to post them once they are opened.

Update:
The Pine Tree Parable
Raggedy Ann and Andy Help Santa Claus
Diane Goode's American Christmas
Bright Star Shining: Poems for Christmas

Expedition Earth: Italy

Here we come Italy! Thank you Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Ciao! Oh I loved studying Italy!

We painted (okay drew because I didn't want to clean up dripped paint) like Michelangelo. Papers taped to the underside of the kitchen table.

















Learned about different noodle shapes.











We ate our Italian meal to the sound of an Opera (Pavarotti I think).











We read about Pompei and about volcanoes. Here we are putting the final ingredients in our volcano cake. . .
















We watched Roman Holiday (love, love!), played Mario Cart and said lots of "Momma Mia!", read Tony and the Pizza Champions, watched Youtube videos of tossing pizza crusts and the building of the Colosseum, found age appropiate pictures of the Sistine Chapel (not so easy!), and The General even joined in with a little craft of his own from No Time for Flashcards. Thank you Kristie for that tip! I really have no idea what the spoon is about. :)











Here is the link to my Pinterest board for Italy.

The Life of a 3 Year Old

Stocking up for possible impromtu art inspiration, hopefully not on any walls.
















Changing the TP roll. I guess he was thinking ahead . . .?












Where did he go?
















Oh there he is! Yes . . . inside. With the pillow. And some toys. And a snack. Quietly. For over 10 minutes. He looks a little toasty!
















Potty graduate! He's been trained for awhile now (okay we still have accidents during naptime on occasion) but I just forgot to have the traditional party. A certificate of completion and some star shaped milk cake!























Stopping by to give sissy a quick smooch!
















Oh and about two months ago I clipped the ends of his nuks. He wouldn't have anything more to do with them. Yeah!

11/11/11

Oh, happy 11/11/11!

Ordering with buying clubs

What do you know, here's a little something crunchy for a change.

I am involved in four buying clubs. This may be dropping down to three soon because well, just because . . . something has to go.

The one I've been with for the longest is Azure Standard. A group of friends and I order from them once a month. This is where I buy a lot of organic grocery type items (ie: peanut butter, ketchup, pasta, snacks, 50 pound bags of rolled oats and wheat berries, etc). It depends on what you buy but for the most part their prices beat what I can get at my local co-op.

Then comes Frontier. I buy most of our vitamins and toiletries here (ie: Yummi Bears, deoderant, shampoo, Maggie's Organic, Yummy Earth lollipops). The prices are amazing! This is what my table looks like after I've opened all the boxes. It's so much fun to see all the products that other's order and recommend.

Next is our milk club. Since raw milk farmers are so harrassed I won't be giving out the name of our farm but I'll just say that I'm so grateful to this farm. They have had such a hard time of it and yet they still work hard to provide us with what they/we believe to be a healthy product. I won't go into the praises of raw milk here but if you'd like to you can read more about it at realmilk.com or at the Weston A. Price website. For the record we've been drinking it for about five years now without any problems and my dad has some good stories about growing up with it.

The final club (the one I'll probably be dropping out of . . . again) is the produce club. It's like going to an indoor farmer's market with all the fresh, organic produce. It's a wonderful resource but since I can get apples from Azure, carrots, romaine, and spinach from Costco during the winter months I'll probably be simplifying.

We're always open to new members with Azure and Frontier so if you'd like to order with us get in touch with me.

Expedition Earth: France

Here we come France! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Bonjour! I have fallen in love with The White Cliffs of Normandy. Breath-taking!

See? I told you so. :) Photo curtisy of Wikipedia.

Here is some of what we studied:

I found this great Kid's French CD on Spotify.

Viewed some of Claude Monet's work.

The Eiffel Tower. Anything that includes Legos is always a hit so I found this Youtube about the Lego Eiffel Tower. The guy did pretty good. He even talked about some facts about the tower. Did you know it was supposed to have been torn down after the World Fair? I learned that one from my dear husband.

And the food. While it may not be exactly French I decided to try out some Nutella. We put it on the remains of those shortbread-like cookies I made during our Isreal week. I love recipies that freeze. The nutella went over VERY well. I went for the cafe experience and I got down the crystal goblets and we had some grape juice.

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for France.

The General and his acorns

The General had a major obsession with acorns this fall. He was forever collecting them and they were always falling out of his pockets. It's a wonder Shortcake didn't swallow a few. You could find him doing this activity at the kitchen table every couple of days for a few weeks. A pie tin, muffin tin, tongs, and frosting knife were his tools of trade.

Expedition Earth: United Kingdom

Here we come United Kingdom! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Good grief - reviewing what contries make up the United Kingdom was a good study (I honestly have to say I had no idea - have I said lately how much I enjoy learning along with my kids? I do!).

A few of the highlights:

Recreating our own Stonehenge. This being dirty work and boys being boys, off came the shirts. It took some of me just being quiet and letting him observe his brother before Agent E agreed to put his hands into the sand clay we mixed up. He was way too concerned about worm poop. I'm proud that in the end he overcame his hesitations and plunged in.

Making a paper model of Big Ben

Having a tea party complete with homemade scones (recipe via Tea with Grace) and my Grandma's wind-up musical teapot.

We watched some great Youtubes of the changing of the guard on this wonderful blog.

My absolute favorite would have to be putting on the James Bond music and watching the boys dance, dance, dance.

Here is the link to my Pinterest Board for the United Kingdom.

Expedition Earth: Russia

Here we come Russia! Thank you to Confessions of a Homeschooler's Expedition Earth for a great journey!

Three generations ago my family journied from Germany to the U.S. via Russia. I pulled out my copy of An Introduction to the Russian Mennonites and spent some time discussing with my dad some of his memories.

Some of our other highlights from the week include:

Visiting a Ukranian shop to purchase some perogies and sweets.

Agent H trying to be positive about his perogi experience.

Reading about the International space station (and eating astronaunt ice cream)

Watching a Youtube about the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Listened to parts of the Nutcracker

Watched parts of Fiddler on the Roof and practiced our Russian dancing.

Crafted some lacquer boxes. These turned out kind of cute. I took mint tins, had the kids use metalic pencils to draw on black paper, then we modge podged the picture to the top of the tin. The idea was to do something like this.

All this was accompanied by the reading and assignments in our E.E. Curriculum.

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for Russia.

Halloween 2011

I didn't think it would bother me to see Shortcake in the boys' hand-me-downs on occasion but soon after this outing I went to a second hand shop and picked out a pink snowsuit. I think it's just that she is assumed to be another boy - no wonder!

Baby kitty (warmly straped to me), clone trooper, Luke Skywalker, and a firefighter. This year we painted our pumkpins instead of the usual carving. I love how they turned out! Agent H's only complaint was that he missed the glowing candle.

Practical Science: Fruit flies

The art of catching fruit flies was mastered by Agents H & E. Agent E carefully photographed the entire event.

Items needed:

Jelly jar(s)

Apple cider vinager

plastic bag(s)

rubber band(s)

tooth pick

Fill jelly jar about 1/4 full of apple cider vinager. Place plastic bag taunt across jar top and secure with the rubber band. Prick 2-4 holes in the plastic top you just created with the tooth pick. Place in a location near your infestation and watch them get trapped inside the jar. Yeah, no more annoying bugs. By the way it IS helpful to keep up with the dishes so that there is not so much sitting about for them to feast on.

Setting up your work station.

Plastic baggie fitted over jar.

Polking the holes. As you can see it was a cowboy hat kind of day.

Asia Review

Let's see here . . China, South Korea, Japan, India, Israel, and Thailand! That wraps up the Asian countries we studied. It's so fun to have real, live friends to go through this Expedition Earth curriculum with. Here is a get together we planned to review Asia. My friend planned a great facts review with Jeopordy. I planned the craft and some Russian foods since we happened to be wrapping up Russia that week. We decorated with all our Asian crafts and they brought theirs so it was a kind of show-and-tell.

I'll give more detail on the craft when I blog our week on Russia.

The General and his sandals

I'm not sure how many times this summer folks pointed out to The General that his shoes were on the wrong feet. I let it go because he insisted that was the way they were supposed to go and HEY it was something he could do HIMSELF and he was proud of it. So way to go big boy, I'm happy for you!