Maternity Shirt Fixes

I had a couple maternity shirts that needed a little help.  In the picture below you can see what the sleeve of this shirt used to look like!  That mess of fabric is supposed to be a bow, and there was one on each sleeve.  I remember loving this shirt when I was pregnant with my daughter, but now, let's just say it didn't look good!  I used my seam ripper to take the bow off and then ironed it. That's it!  Now it looks decent and will be a nice shirt to wear to church.

And this shirt was missing a button and it was missing it's dark purple ribbon that tied around it.  I gave it a new button and found a light purple ribbon that will work.  Another good shirt for church!

A Little Something for the Baby!

I finally made something for the baby!  Just a simple burp cloth.  I found this blue fuzzy fabric at Walmart on clearance, so I had to get it.  It's so soft!  The animal fabric is some left over flannel I had already.  I think I'll make at least 1 or 2 more.

My sewing area is in the basement, where all the little toys have been banished.  I haven't let Joshua play down there by himself because I need to keep an eye on him.  But last night I decided to try sewing downstairs while letting Joshua play.  And it actually worked really good, so hopefully I'll be getting more sewing time now!

 

MFW Adventures & K, Week 3

We made it through week 3 and I am loving Adventures!  This week we learned about Jamestown and Pocahontas.  Caleb's favorite part of the story is John Smith's boat exploding, and of course Rebekah liked Pocahontas.  I was able to borrow some Lincoln Logs from my sister-in-law, so we built our own version of Jamestown.  I also bought some Jamestown figurines from Hobby Lobby (go to their website for a coupon).  Once Caleb figured out how to build with them, he loved it.  He is definitely a perfectionist!

My mom gave me a Better Homes & Gardens Heritage Cookbook a while ago.  I finally got around to looking at it, and it had ton's of recipes from long ago in it!  I'm so glad I looked at it when I did.  We tried Johnny Cakes for breakfast one morning (basically a corn pancake).  They were okay, but I don't think I'll make them again.

Here is Caleb's history page about Jamestown.  I required him to write 3 sentences, but I did write it first and then let him copy it.  I really love his picture of Jamestown.  You can see his cannon balls being fired at each corner of the fort, and that square on the top is a cornfield.

And here is the page he did about the Tall Ship Festival we went to last week.  He really wanted to picture of the cannon.  (I've noticed a theme here!)

Here are the books we looked at, as well as a movie about Pocahontas.  We also read aloud the book Squanto Friend of the Pilgrims by Clyde Robert Bulla.  MFW schedules this book as a read aloud for 3 weeks, but one chapter a day is not enough for my kids.  They were begging me every time to read more, so we went ahead and finished the whole thing this week!

In our bible time, we've been talking about the name of Jesus.  We've read several scriptures about his name, and then did this craft shown below.  It's crayon shavings melted between wax paper. The kids like it, but I had a hard time shaving crayons with a knife!

Math and spelling went well this week.  We've moved on from addition to subtraction in math, but we're still doing flashcards every day so he gets his math facts memorized.  He's been doing 1 lesson a day.  Below is just a picture of him working on math while Rebekah paints. 

For science, we've been learning about air.  Below is Caleb's picture of our experiment we did.  We talked about how air pushes on everything.

Here is the nature journal page Caleb did.  It was a cloudy morning, so instead of going for a nature walk, I had them draw a picture of the sky.  (That's our duplex too!)

The best science activity happened with daddy this weekend!  Our lawn mower bit the dust, so daddy took it apart to show Caleb how it worked.  Here I snapped a picture of him showing them a video about a small engine.  Caleb kept running in the house to update me on the progress of tearing it apart.  He's been "mowing" the lawn ever since with the mower - minus the engine!

And lastly for Caleb, here is one of his art pages.

Now for Rebekah.  She was really excited to start her "real" school!  The last two weeks have been an introduction to school, learning about creation, and reviewing her letters.  This week we started learning about the letter S and the sun.  Our bible words were: Jesus is the light of the world.  Here is a picture of all her worksheets and projects.

We also made a sundial.  But...we forgot to check it later and it got blown over and rained on...

And we've read a couple books about the sun.

That's all for week 3.  I'm already off the Mon through Fri week, so I'll just be posting our week as we finish them, no matter what the day is.  I just do the next day in the curriculum if we get off instead of trying to catch up.  That's why I start early!  (We missed a day because my husband surprised me with a night in a bed & breakfast for our anniversary!)

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MFW Adventures & K, Week 2

Hello again.  Welcome to week 2 of MFW Adventures and K.  Above is Caleb working on handwriting while Rebekah matches upper and lower case letter cards.  You can see below that we took our school outside this week.  Rebekah is matching the letter cards again.  Upper case on one side of the driveway and lower case on the other.  Caleb is practicing lower case "b" and "d", which is mixed up on his spelling test.  I wrote several words on index cards and had him match them to the right letter (I made him flip them upside down so that he couldn't just match what they looked like).  

In math, Caleb is cruising right along.  We got to addition, which is a bit harder for him.  Well, not really, he just thinks it is and gets frustrated when he doesn't get everything right on the first try.  So, we've only been doing one lesson a day this week instead of two.  Here's one of his pages:

Learning about Christopher Columbus was great fun, especially learning about the ships!  Below is his notebook page.  He REALLY doesn't like writing...  I'm trying to ease him back into it gently, but he's driving me crazy!  I'm getting worried about starting our English curriculum.  Right now we're working on handwriting first.

All the kids loved making tin foil boats and sailing them from Spain to America (aka the bathtub).

I heard on the radio that there was going to be a Tall Ship Festival not too terribly far from us, so I declared Friday as field trip day!  We got to tour 3 ships, one was 200 years old!  We wanted to see more, but the lines got too long and Joshua got too cranky!  I plan on having them make a scrapbook page for their history notebooks.

Here are some of the books we read (and one DVD).  I have to say that I didn't like Pedro's Journal very much, and we ended up not quite finishing it because it got difficult.  Before you read it, you should know that Columbus steals several Native people, and is generally written as greedy, selfish, and cranky.  He may have really been like that, but my kids had a hard time with him also praying to God.  The kids couldn't connect the different behaviors.

Art went okay this week.  We spent most of the week practicing people, which they didn't like much.  Rebekah actually didn't do much.  I looked ahead though, and I think next week will be a little better.

Rebekah finished her creation book and poster this week.  We finished on Tuesday and spent the rest of the week reviewing her letters.  She's doing a great job.  She can't wait to start with the "real" school.  She really wants to learn to read!

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Homemade Bagels

Homemade bagels!  Who knew they'd be so easy to make!  I've already made them twice, and I think I'll make more soon (this batch is already gone).  I used this bread machine bagel recipe.  My bread machine takes 1 hour and 20 minutes to make the dough, but it only takes 2 minutes to put all the ingredients in.  Then you shape them and let them rest for 10 minutes.  Below is my picture of them resting.

Then you boil them in water with a little sugar for only 1 minute!

Drain on a paper towel and put on a cookie sheet with cornmeal.  Brush with egg white and bake.  Here they are ready to go in to the oven.

That's it, super easy!  Are you going to try now?

MFW Adventures & K, Week 1

We finished our first week of MFW Adventures and Kindergarten!  You can read about our first day here.  The rest of the week went really good, much less complaining!  Below you can see Joshua very excited to be sitting at the table with us (it only lasted a few minutes though...)

Here's Rebekah working on a sorting activity.  I put together a few "busy boxes" for her to do when I'm busy with Caleb.

For our bible study this week, we talked about how important names are.  I wrote a letter to each of the older kids explaining why we chose their names.  They also wrote their meanings on a picture of themselves, and then made bookmarks (see below).

I was really proud of how diligent Caleb worked on his spelling right from the beginning.  This is a new subject for him this year.  When he took his first test, he still spelled everything phonetically.  I had him write the 4 words on a chalkboard 3 times, and then he did the test again.  The second time he only missed 1, but he knew it was wrong, and was able to fix it after looking at the reading chart from 1st grade.

For math we are using Singapore 1A.  We started at the beginning so it would be easy, and he's done two lessons almost every day.  We've also been going over flashcards for his addition math facts, and I can tell he's getting better.  I add a couple cards each day to the stack (without him realizing it of course).

For art we are using I Can Do All Things.  The first day they thought it was boring because they just practiced lines, but I think they liked drawing Wallie the Worm.  Rebekah's is the second picture.

I am most excited about our history this year.  We are going to be learing US history, I'm sure I will learn as much as the kids.  We started out with some basic map work.

Then we learned about the Vikings, who were actually the first Europeans to come to North America.  Below is Caleb's summary of what we read about Leif Ericsson.

Here are several of the books we looked at this week.  We didn't read them all, but I had them available for the kids to page through and look at the pictures.  We did read Viking Adventure, and even I thought is was very interesting!

Below is our timeline this year.  I decided to tape 6 cardstock sheets together to make an accordion style book for our timeline instead of taping it to the wall.  We have textured walls, and last year all our pieces kept falling off.  I think I'm going to like this way better.

We went to a balloon festival this weekend end too.  See that red balloon?  The pilot's name is Aric.  Guess what his balloon is called?  Aric the Red!  (Eric the Red was a Viking we learned about). 

On our nature walk at our local nature center we saw 3 turkeys and 4 deer!  Here is Caleb's nature journal page.  I required him to write at least 3 words, and that's what I got!

Now for Kindergarten!  Here is Rebekah's creation poster.  She's really had a good time making this, and she likes that Caleb doesn't get to make one!

She's also making a creation book, and loving that too.  She has been reviewing her letters and numbers as well, which is easy for her.  She joins Caleb in most of history, science, bible, and art.

That's our first week!  I'm excited to see what next week will bring as we study Christopher Columbus.