Log Cabin Project

To round out our kindergarten year we are reading Little House in the Big Woods. Mister loves learning about "Great Great Great Grandpa times". He has enjoyed every book we have read that covers the late 1800s. We kicked off our book by making a cabin. We used straws that I cut in half. The roof is made with the bendy portion. We lashed it all together with lots of masking tape.

We added some brown paint to make it look more like logs.

Mister drew the boards onto our floor piece and colored the paper plate base green for grass.

 We used foamie stickers to make 3 beds, a table and chairs, and a red fire place. He laid it all out like in The Little House on the Prairie movie we watched via YouTube.

 The finished log cabin with removable roof, door, and windows.

Of course, no house is complete till it has been successfully turned into a squinkies play set  We have a winner on that front!

Squinkies House

The Squinkies in our home are no longer homeless! I know we have all been fretting and losing sleep over their lack of housing. I first got the idea from old faithful (pintrest) to use an Altoids tin and cover it in decor. Then I saw at Toys R Us that you can get pop up scenes, like a pop up book, for your Squinkies to play in (at the low, low price of $3.99 for 2 cards). This got my gears turning and I came up with this...

I made the template for the tin cover by coloring the raised section with washable marker and stamping it onto the paper. The residue cleaned off easily. For the inside I cut out card stock. We decorated them with scrapbooking stickers and I covered them all with a layer of clear contact paper. They all have 4 sticky magnet squares on the back to connect them to the tin. We made a second tin to hold all the cards, so he has one for storage and one for play. One of our sets was an Octonauts picture I printed out and we made another from a photograph from one of our long ago vacations.

Playing with his new playset

World Travels: Introduction

Welcome to the first installment of World Travels! This all came about from our desire to do Little Passports, but with more freedom as to what countries we learn about and when. I am posting some of the material on the blog so that others can also enjoy the work I put into them. They might as well get more use than just one use at our house. The "packages" I send my little guy will include a letter from Delbert and Dinah, a photo, a flag sticker from the country they are visiting for his passport, and some fun souvenirs. If you haven't done anything like this before, you should know that we also have a map to locate the country, a small suitcase to put all these goodies in, and a play passport. Those would be great items to add to this first package. My normal set up will be letter first, then the picture, then notes about what we are doing such as souvenirs, activities, ect. My little guy already knows we are doing this and has the basics from his Little Passports from the past few months, so the letter is all he will be getting this time around.


Hello!

My name is Delbert. My good friend Dinah got a very special Christmas gift this year, a hot air balloon! Can you believe it? It is beautiful, with gold, red, and black stripes. Dinah had a great idea of how to use her special gift. I bet you can't wait to hear her idea! Well, she thought we should travel the world in her balloon. I thought it was a great idea and said yes right away.

I came up with a great idea of my own too. I knew we would learn so many new things about lots of countries we have never seen. Then I thought we should share. We thought long and hard about who we should share our adventures with, and we thought of you!

Dinah and I are going to have so much fun traveling all over the world in the hot air balloon. We hope that you have fun learning along with us too. I will write again soon when we land in our first country!

Balloon photo © Walleyelj | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Art, School, and the End of the Year

 We have been having a blast doing lots of pintrest inspired artwork this month! I even got Little Guy to let me paint his hand, a big step for a kiddo that doesn't like anything messy. We have been off of school for the entire month and it is going well. I continued to write down anything "school" related we did over our break, and if you look at the list it hardly looks like a break at all.

We have done many art projects, advent devotionals, read tons of books, and Jayne even read a few stories to me to keep up on practice. We also did some research on goblin sharks after reading about them in one of his picture books. You can see our favorite goblin shark video below.

It is only a few days till Christmas and it has been a huge month for us! Honestly, it has kind of felt like some sort of crazy dream between good news, bad news, and just good old fashioned fun. This year is certainly going out with a bang. The biggest event for us is our upcoming missionary activities, which I am sure will be keeping us quite busy in the coming year. Right now it hasn't exactly sunk in yet. I am still cleaning and cooking and doing all my normal everyday activities. For now I have to focus on those till we get the date of training, because if I don't I will wile away the hours wondering and waiting. We have had a few people ask us about details of the future and we really don't have the answers right now. God will provide a way, support us, and sustain us. He has our faith 100%

Keeping Busy

I have learned a very valuable lesson this month. School time is indescribably important to my little guy. We are taking the month off for the holidays and it has resulted in awful behavior. I have put quite a bit of focus into my growing shop and other household duties. I didn't realize just how much he needs that 1 on 1 time with me each day. Of course, once I figured out what was going on, I made sure to get back to giving him most of my day. We have both been much happier for it too.

Wednesday was birthday night at Awana. We spent some time making homemade birthday hats to wear. They were so easy to make with half a paper plate and were held on with alligator clips.

Pintrest will be helping me quite a bit with craft ideas for our winter break. This snow globe craft is one of them. All you need is a plastic bag, cut up paper, and 2 plates. We have been doing coloring pages and getting through lots of books too. All our moods have been lifted and now our "educational things we did during break" sheet is filling up too. I hope all of you are finding time to enjoy some down time with your families this December too!

Odds and Ends

Today is St. Nicholas Day! Did you know that this is the day Santa used to come? Well, at our house that is what is happening and so today's post was scheduled in advance so that we could enjoy our holiday and you can check out some of the stuff I never got around to last month...

We made a Popsicle stick theater! You can print off these guys here: http://whatsinthebible.com/popsicle-stick-theaters/

That's right, our theater is made out of an unused silverware box. It feels good to give something that is unused a new life!

Little Guy's Uncle is in Germany for a year for college and he is busy writing him a letter.  It is even legible  pretty good for a 5 year old!

Turkey Trot

Can you believe it is December already!? I haven't even had a chance to talk turkey yet! Our family did the Turkey Trot at Grace Church (our church) on Thanksgiving again this year and it was so much fun. Last year there were around 350 people trotting and this year we more than doubled at around 750! There were so many people! They played Charlie Brown Thanksgiving specials in the sanctuary before the trot started and it was a big hit with Little Guy. The weather has been fantastic every year since it started last year. We walked, we chatted, and we built up an appetite for dinner. It was great and I highly recommend it. If you want to participate next year you can get more info at this link: http://www.grace-free.org/turkey-day-5k/index.html

The Morgan family with the turkey in their turkey shirts!

Halloween

It's been a few days since, but still worth sharing. Little Guy had Awana in the evening, so he didn't get to go trick-or-treating. We wanted to still have a special day for him though. We decided to invite one of his good friends (and family) over for a special halloween lunch. The kiddos loved their special food and play time and us grown ups got in a few rounds of Carrcassone, a board game, and lots of adult interaction. Want to see the menu?

Cheese slices prepped

Jack-o-lantern cheeseburgers and banana ghosts...thank you pintrest!

Little Guy and his friend spend the last bit of time in the classroom coloring and using stickers.

A Bed for Taylor

This week we have been learning about the french nobles and a little about the revolution. For some hands on time we made a 4 post bed for Taylor, Little Guy's little guy. It turned out great and Little Guy made sure all the details were just so. Here are some pics:

Pencils, a box, and some scraps of fabric are about to transform!

Lots of  glue!

We have since glued down a fitted sheet, because Little Guys bed has 2 sheets and so should Taylor's

The finished bed with Taylor all tucked in!

K Week 2

Still having a blast here! A certain someone, I'll let you guess who, has been quite a bit less attentive the last 2 days because his daddy has been home during school time. We still got everything done including some fun projects. We are both enjoying the curriculum a lot and I don't think we will be making many changes next year. I'll share a bit of what we did this week...

The first part of the week we continued to learn about the first people. We made these coracle boats out of wiki sticks and plastic bags. They did not take on water, but I certainly would not have wanted to ride in one!

Jayne "leveled up" in reading and was so very proud of himself. Leveling up on anything that is real (not a video game) is very exciting because he didn't realize you could level up for real!

History moved to ancient Egypt this week. Jayne is painting an ancient Egyptian gold collar. That has to sit and dry for the next step.

We are still learning about air and weather this week. Today we made a snake and  and held it over the heat of the oven. Adam had to force himself to bake a cake to make the heat worth the time. He will be especially sad to have to eat the cake, I'm sure. The snake spun and excitement was to be had.

Here is the finished collar, thank you foamie shapes, the fantastic snake, and out first country marked on the map, Egypt!

It is fun to see what really sticks. He asks me questions about stories he tells me because, "well you know, you ask me questions about The Boxcar Children!" He also is aware of new words in the real world. They mentioned the atmosphere during the weather on the news and Jayne asked how they new about the atmosphere. I love that he thinks our home holds all the secrets to the universe. I'm glad he think he has a great teacher at least.

One Week Down

The bottle is full of air!

We have one whole week of kindergarten under our belts now! We have a good routine down already and I think it is working well. Days 1 and 4 were a ton of fun, while days 2 and 3 were a little rougher. I can tell that we are both greatly appreciating our day off and it will be very low key around here today. 2 things really stuck out for little guy this week. He really likes the Boxcar Children, who found the dump and many kitchen items for their home there during our reading yesterday. He also had a blast with our 2 air related science experiments.

Handwriting Without Tears...so far so good.

We spent the week learning about what it was like during the time of the first people. On the last day we made "clay" bowls just like the first people.

After making bowls we turned our focus to what they ate. Here is a bowl of blueberries and a fish for the first people to eat. Little guy says he wants to be one of the first people when he grows up, also an Olympic gymnast.

First Day of K

Today was Jayne's first day of Kindergarten! All the planning was entirely worth it because it went quickly and efficiently. It only took us 2 hours and that includes P.E. time! It will take a little longer next week because we will start regular reading lessons, this week we are doing review. I will see how things go over the course of the year, but after today I think my curriculum choices are going to be a great fit. We started the day with what will be our first day of school tradition: belgian waffles and a first day pic. Jayne chose apple pie filling and carmel drizzle for today. We got a few shots of his first day pic, but this is my favorite even though it is a little blurry.

Then we cuddled up on the couch and did our reading. While Jayne did some computer stuff from our Internet linked encyclopedia, I checked off what we had done and got the second half of the school day ready. Crocie came out to help Jayne through math, reading, and science pages and then it was time for P.E. We played bocce ball and watered the plants. He played on sesamestreet.org while I fixed an extra special lunch. I made him a PB&J with blue jelly (his favorite color), angry birds crackers in a blue cup, pineapple in a blue cup with a blue sword pick, and string cheese. I have never seen him so excited about a meal! Now we are done for the day. We did a great job this morning and are going to spend the rest of the day relaxing after a very busy weekend.

Reading time: 2 Encyclopedia sections, Boxcar Children, Bible, and Nursery rhyme

Fluffy Clouds

Made of soap? That's right! I have seen this activity floating around in the blogosphere and we just had to try it. Here is what you need: a bar of Ivory (that is the only kind that works, it has to be ivory) and a microwave. Some parchment paper underneath might be good too, it saves on clean up any way.

The bar goes in the microwave. Cook till you are ready to take it out.

The resulting cloud, let it cool before taking it out. There was still half a bar in the middle and so of course the man of the house had to see if it would go again. We ended up with 3 clouds this size after re cooking the cores.

Time to play with and break up the cloud into very tiny pieces. Add just enough water to make it moldable and fill some cookie cutters with the gloopy (clean) mess.

Tada! Super fun shaped soaps. They are very light and fluffy and made by Little Guy.

A Day at the Campground

We had so much fun! It felt great knowing that we would still be on vacation when the trip was over. It made it possible to really enjoy every minute of the trip...except sleeping as you may know from yesterday's post. We were camping with my moms in step group and there were only 3 families camping both nights, including us. It worked out great for us because we are really not big group people. We like to be more 1 on 1 and the turn out was absolutely perfect for us. There was so much to do, so here is a taste of our trip:



 The kids played in the spring. Little Guy got upset because it was wet. He did let me get this great shot for his birthday invites though.

We got him on a horse! He wasn't entirely sure about it, but when we were don't he asked when he could go on the pony ride. I told him that was the pony ride and he said, "That was the horsie ride!"

He asked me a few months ago what kind of car his great great great grandpa would have driven which resulted in our reading little house in the big woods. I was really excited to be able to show him a great great great grandpa "car" in person and we even got a photo.

This was probably the highlight of the trip, if you don't count a horse peeing in front of the kids. We watched The Secret World of Arrietty outside. Adam cooked popcorn over the fire in the popcorn maker handed down from my grandmother. It was just a great trip! I think my allergies flared up especially bad because of the horses, but the weekend was still fantastic. Tomorrow we are biking to the hotel and I am sure it will be just as wonderful. I can't wait to share that trip too!

DIY Night Light

We wanted a solar powered night light. Did we want to spend $50 or more on it? No, not really. While on an errand to Seargents when the sollution sprung out at me. for $12 I found a mason jar lid with a solar powered light on it. What a find! I got an antique blue jar from my grandmother and Jayne and I put in some sand and his favorite shells, rocks, and button.

Solar panel on the top along with light sensor so it lights up when it gets dark in the room.

Light off...

 It's nice because it lets off enough light for him to feel comfortable in his dark bedroom, but not enough light to see his toys and spend half the night playing with them.

Light on!