Bird Seed Ornaments

We made some bird seed ornaments to give as a gift this year.  I used the recipe on Eclectically Vintage.  We used the measurements exactly and got these 7 ornaments, plus lots of scraps to feed our own birds!

Gingerbread House Extravaganza 2013

Yesterday was the day for my favorite Christmas tradition!  Making gingerbread houses with my kids.  2 hours of family time, being creative, and eating lots of candy!  Even though we had a baby only a week ago, I was determined to make our gingerbread.  Caleb and Rebekah helped a lot!

I think every year we end up getting more treats and snacks!  Here's the list: Chex cereal, golden graham cereal, marshmallows (mini and large), candy corn, lemon drops, mints, chocolate chips, gummy fish, gummy flowers, gum drops, cheerios, raisins, seasame sticks, dried peas, almonds, sunflower seeds, dried mango and banana chips, chow mein noodles, sugar cubes, red hots, green colored sugar, Christmas sprinkles, Dutch licorice, random candy left over from the latest parade, and popcorn!

And here are the results!  Caleb and Rebekah were very creative and did a great job this year.  Joshua decorated a gingerbread man, then ate everything on him.  Then he put popcorn in his house, and just licked the frosting off!  He ate A LOT of candy!  (Well, we all did...)

This one is mine.

And this one is Kevin's.

Can you guess who decorated this one?

Lastly, here's a close up of Rebekah's snowman!

Today is time to celebrate with our extended family.  I pray you all will have a very Merry Christmas!

Baby Matthew is Here!

Baby Matthew is here!  He was 8 lbs 2 oz, and 21 inches long.  He looks just like Joshua!

Forgive me if my posts are a little slow in coming for the next few weeks, he's my reason why!

More Little Girl Skirts (Made From Pants)

I made a couple skirts for Rebekah for Christmas.  These both started off as pants.  Follow my Jean Skirt Tutorial to make one yourself!  Below is a picture of the back.  The piece I put in the middle was part of the pant leg.  That slit was on the side of each ankle.  It makes a perfect slit!

This khaki pair of pants had some cute embroidery already on it, and it was a brand new pair!  I had to add the pink fabric instead of the khaki because I didn't have enough, but I think she'll like the pink.  (It's her favorite color and at least half of the shirts hanging in her closet are pink!)

Felt Christmas Tree Ornaments Kids can Make

My kids really love their sewing kits I made for them last Christmas.  While making them a few additions for it this year, and then I thought about simple ornaments they could make.  Here, I cut two green triangles and a brown rectangle out of felt.  Caleb cut out his own ornaments (his is on the right).  Rebekah was having trouble sewing on her ornaments because they were small, so I had her sew beads on hers instead.  The beads are easier!  Once they were decorated, I helped them tack on the ribbon hanger and they were able to sew around the tree themselves (except I had to help thread the needle and tie the knots).  Then they stuffed them and sewed them up!  Finished.  They were so proud to show daddy and hang them on the tree.  I think maybe later this week I'll see if they want to make gingerbread men the same way.  I have a big cookie cutter I could trace.  Of course, that's only if we don't have a baby!  39 weeks and counting...

Felicity's Night Shift, American Girl Doll Clothes

Here's the second dress I made for Rebekah's doll.  It's Felicity's Night Shift.  I downloaded the pattern here.  I also made Felicity's School Outfit.  Again I'll say, these patterns are a little difficult to follow, but definitely doable if you know how to sew clothes or read patterns.  If Rebekah likes them, I'll probably make her more eventually.  It's a good thing she just learned how to tie since the neckline has a tie on it!

Week 17, MFW Adventures & K

We are halfway through our curriculum!  Exactly where I wanted to be before the baby came!  This next week we will just do some fun Christmas activities, lots of reading, and a bit of math until the baby comes, which I hope will be soon!  So, this week Rebekah learned to tie a shoe!  It only took me explaining it a couple times, even with her being left handed, she got it right away.  (Yes, she does have black and blue eyes... she jumped off the couch in the basement, tripped on a toy, and smashed her nose into the concrete floor... bet she won't do that again!)

In history, we continued learning about Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road, along with the state of Kentucky.  Below are a couple books the library had.  I had ordered all our books online from our library, but with Thanksgiving, I didn't get there in time, so they all got put back.  I was so upset!  Of course, I didn't have my teacher's manual (I also didn't have a stroller for Joshua, so it was not a good library trip!)

The kids enjoyed our science experiment this week from Science With Air (Science Activities) .  We made our own weather vane out of cardboard, a thread spool, and a bamboo skewer.  We've taken it outside twice now to check the wind direction.

They've recorded their findings on a chart.  The wind was from the west both days.  We'll have to do it a couple more times this week!

Caleb has done a good job with English this week.  We talked about paragraphs this week, and he copied a story from our book, Primary Language Lessons .  It was supposed to be dictation, but I decided to let him just do copywork.  Also, one day we wrote Christmas letters, which I counted as English for the day.

Rebekah has been doing a GREAT job with reading!  She's been reading all the Bob books we have, including some that have letters she hasn't officially learned yet!  She doesn't really need my help at all, and she doesn't get frustrated like her brother did.  Their personalities are so different!

She also learned about telling time this week.

And here are a couple goat books I found.  She also made some popsicle stick puppets of farm animals, which we used to sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm", but I didn't get a picture.

That's the end of our first semester!  I'll be back posting our weekly updates next year!  Then it will really get fun to school with a toddler and a baby!!!

Sewing Felicity's School Outfit (American Girl Doll Clothes)

This is another one of Rebekah's Christmas presents!  She received an 18 inch doll for her birthday this year and she requested some old fashioned clothes for it.  Because we have been studying about the colonial times in school, I thought making Felicity's school outfit would be perfect.  (Felicity is an American Girl Doll with accessories and books from the colonial times).  I downloaded the pattern here. This site has the patterns for 6 of the dolls.  I'll have to be honest, these were not easy patterns to follow!  Everything took much longer than expected, and I was frustrated more times than I can remember.   I don't recommend them for new beginners, but if you have experience sewing clothes and using patterns, you should be able to figure it out (or at least fudge it when you can't... like me!).  I chose more modern fabrics than Felicity would have worn, but I think she's going to love it!

Week 13, Thanksgiving with MFW Adventures & K

This was our Thanksgiving week of school.  Our curriculum had a special stand along week for Thanksgiving, which we really enjoyed.  Caleb still did his spelling, but we took a break from English and math.  Above are the lists the kids made of what they were thankful for. Caleb's is on the left.

The best part of the week was the pumpkin science!  We asked 4 questions about our pumpkin, and then made predictions before we did the experiments.  Caleb's chart is above, Rebekah's is below.  The questions were: will it float, how much does it weigh, what is the distance around, and how many seeds does it have?

Our pumpkin floated!

Here are the kids weighing the pumpkin.  They weighed themselves with the pumpkin, and then we subtracted their weight to get the weight of the pumpkin.  It weighed about 11 pounds.

I didn't take pictures of the kids measuring it, but it was 29 1/2 inches around.  I thought with this big of a pumpkin, that it would have tons of seeds!  We got lucky, only 205!  Each kid picked out the seeds from half the pumpkin and put them in groups of 10 to count them.  Caleb guessed 200, only off by 5!

 We also read these books:

We made hand turkeys that I forgot to take pictures of.  And then they made Indian vests out of paper bags.

Even Joshua colored a paper bag!

As we were driving in the car to Grandma & Grandpa's house, we listened to Justin Morgan had a Horse, which is about the Morgan horse breed from Vermont.

Once we were done with our pumpkin, I cooked it and make pumpkin bread for us to enjoy too!  Yum!  I also attempted to make Rebekah a dairy free pumpkin pie, but it didn't turn out very good.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with both sides of our family, I hope you did too!  God Bless!

Sewing Kit Additions

Remember the sewing kits I made for my kids last year? They really loved making the little dog I had put in there from Little Family Fun, so this Christmas I'm giving them a sewing kit add on! I made 6 more felt animals for them to make. (They each will get all 6). This was one really easy present to make, I only had to cut out all the pieces and put them in a bag!  Here's Rebekah's finished dog.

Week 16, MFW Adventures & K

This week Caleb decided to write his own stories, there are two on this page.  He did this all on his own, not during school time.  Of course, I encouraged it, and didn't correct him at all.  (Although, I just noticed I did write the correct spelling of "of"...)  I really want him to have a love of reading and writing.  And below is a picture of our history books this week.  I actually remembered to take a picture before we went back to the library!  We learned about Rhode Island and Vermont, and then spent a couple days on Daniel Boone.

Here are the state sheets Caleb did.  We also tried some real maple syrup, which was a big hit with everyone!

I dropped the ball a little bit with our science this week.  We are using Science With Air (Science Activities), pages 6-9 this week.  We talked about what happens when air gets cold or hot, which makes different weather.  I wasn't prepared for the experiments, so I quick made one up.  We took balloons filled with warm air outside to see if they shrank in the cold air (they did, but only a little).  Thankfully, I had gotten several weather books from the library that we read too.

English and spelling were normal this week.  In math, Caleb was introduced to multiplication!  It's only a quick introduction, but he's doing good with it.  Next week we'll be introducing division, then on to some easier topics like money and time.  We still review addition and subtraction facts every day, and he's definitely getting better at those.  He's about halfway through Singapore 1B, looks like I'll be ordering the level 2 books soon.

Rebekah's cruising right along in Kindergarten.  This week was the letter I, which stands for insects.  We learned "I am a wise child, so I work hard." (just like the ants!)

We read lots of insect books!

And then we made peanut butter honey balls!  (Bees make honey, so we had to try it!)  I mixed peanut butter, honey, oatmeal, ground flaxseed, and a bit of powdered sugar.  I rolled them in more powdered sugar so they wouldn't be so messy.  Yum!

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