More birthdays

The end of November brings Uncle Jason's and Great Grandma's birthdays. We celebrated this year at Jason's house with a Christmas decorating party. We decorated his tree and Linsey put up Christmas villages in the kitchen. The party ended with ice cream cake.




"My birthday is coming soon, I want some cake!"

"How many candles do we need?"

Doubly good work blowing out those candles.


"I've had enough decorating"

Candy turkeys

Growing up I always remember my mom making candy turkeys to celebrate my brother's birthday. I try to do the same fun turkey making with my kids too.


Grace enjoyed eating the chocolate.

You can get a little messy!

JumpStart

It has been a week and I haven't written anything-Oops. We have been busy and yeah Jim is home now, but no deer. He is still working at it this week around home. I will post more about our week later.

Anyway, I was reading my Practical Homeschooling magazine from the library and wanted to share with you the JumpStart computer library of games. In this issue of the magazine they we evaluating software and for the preschool and K grade levels the top achiever was JumpStart. We own the preschool set and just added the K set, although we have not played it yet. If you are going to let the kids play on the computer I highly reccommend it to your little ones and so does the magazine, which by the way is worth reading if you can find it at your library.

Anyway, the game is simple enough that the kids can play it with my supervision (while I am washing dishes). They operate the mouse and click to chose their games. The software keeps track of their progress and makes the games harder as appropriate. I just learned that you as a parent can also adjust the software to make it harder. (Our computer crashed in spring, so the game memory was lost. Samuel was doing very simple counting and letters, so I went into the parent part and upped the difficulty. Awesome!)

The preschool game includes counting, colors, letters, sequencing and fun stuff like art and music. I am excited to check out the K program, just haven't had the time. And really we have been busy enough that the kids haven't asked.

The magazine also highly rated Starfall.com, which I have not personally used, but also was recommended by a friend. I think this is more phonics based. It is free, so check it out too.

Snowy Surprise

We all awoke to a wonderful wintery snow. It was almost three inches of snow and it was hanging on the trees beautifully. So right after breakfast we all headed outside to play. First we shoveled the cement in front of the garage. Then we went for a walk to get the mail. Grace was excited to ride in the sled again this winter, but she is getting pretty heavy for our half mile walk on the driveway. Noodles too enjoyed the walk in the snow. After a big hour, Grace was ready to come in, but the boys stayed out until noon when I called them in for lunch.

While on their own outside they worked to find a way to go sledding. Unfortunately our hills are not steep enough for sledding. Samuel tried tying Noodles to a sled to get a ride, but eventually the rope broke. Isaak tried going over the edge of our retaining walls, but thankfully I caught him first and put a stop to that. As the winter goes on, we pile snow next to the retaining walls to make a hill so that is why he thought of that, but there isn't enough snow for that yet.


Samuel and Isaak taking a break from shoveling.

Grace posing for a picture in front of the snowy trees.

Isaak and Grace working.

Samuel working hard and Noodles enjoying a frozen bone.

Castle at the Building for Kids

Sunday after church the kids and I went to the Building for Kids for the afternoon. We hadn't been there since September and there was a new exhibit about castles and medival times. They loved it, and I think it is a very well done exhibit. I didn't get any pictures of the kitchen and garden area, but they were very popular with everyone at the museum that day. There is also a puppet stage that we didn't even have time to play with. The boys enjoyed an interactive game of matching people with their tools and helping other people find the person to help solve their problem. If you got everything matched up correctly a large dragon head appeared at the top of the castle and a small story box lit up in the center also.

Here are just a few pictures of our fun afternoon. Grace is working to shoe the horse.

Samuel and Isaak working on matching the people and tools.

Everyone watching the dragon head.

Grace smiling by the toddler castle and blocks.

My little helper

Grace has discovered the power of a stool. She is regularly finding a stool and standing next to the kitchen counters. There is sometimes food she can get or just fun measuring spoons and cups to lick off and play with.

For the most part it is a cute habit, except for those times the stool lands on my toe-Owww! She is very careful otherwise and listens to our warnings very well. Today we made pancakes for lunch and she watched very happily and never tried to touch the pan. After the first batch was finished she ran to her chair, climbed in and yelled cake!! I guess she was ready to eat.

Snuggle time

Grace has been such a little snuggler lately, it is wonderful. When she wakes up in the morning and after nap time she sits with me in the rocking chair for 10 minutes of so just snuggling. I have to add that it is not me and Grace alone, she insists on at least one doggie, her blankie and another blanket to cover with.

But Grace is not the only snuggler. I think the cold winter weather might have something to do with it. The boys have been wrapping up in their blankets that Aunt Jess made them and running through the house pretending to be caterpillars in a cocoon or making nests to hatch eggs in or making forts in their beds. I think they also made beds for their dogs today, but I missed that.

Lots of cooking . . .

It is amazing how much you can get done in an afternoon if you must. I neglected to get all the food ready for Jim to leaving hunting until today and it just wasn't happening this morning with the kids, so this afternoon I had a lot to finish. But I was surprised how well it went. I was able to make a sour cream tuna casserole, pot of chili, monster cookies, mashed potatoes green beans, and meatballs (for supper), and for the kids and I later in the week a kid friendly tuna casserole and crockpot of vegetable soup. It is inspiring that maybe I should do a big cooking day more often, this will save me a lot of time. I am especially excited because when Jim is gone I tend to not cook as much for the kids-they are happy with simple things anyway, I get tired of it though.

Now I have to clean up the kitchen, I wish there was a magic wand for that :-)

Snowman shirts

On opening day of deer season the kids and I traditionally spend the day at my aunt's house with a family friend, Annette, my cousin and her kids and my mom.

This year we made snowman shirts, courtesy of my mom's creativity. The kids got to use fabric markers to decorate their shirts. They turned out adorable, I will get pictures soon.

Isaak working with our friend Annette.
Samuel is busy coloring in his large purple hat.

Chore charts

It is amazing, but we have stuck to it and achieved two weeks (going on three) of using a chore chart and rewarding the boys for their hardwork. I like the DLTK-kids.com website because I can customize a chore chart for each week and print it out. They also have a lot of children's charcaters that I can put on the top and the kids seem excited to have that variety. I can set the chart to start the week on Monday and list whatever chores I want. So far I am focusing on simple things like clearing dishes with each meal, feeding Noodles and picking up clothes and toys. At the end of the week I count up each X they have earned and that equals how many minutes of computer time they have. This is great incentive because we don't play any computer games during the summer, so it seems very exciting now. I say we have stuck with it because the whole thing requires a lot of me too. Some days it would be easier to just do the chores myself. But already I can see that they are learning to do things more on their own and without my constant reminders. Grace has even tried her hand at clearing dishes and putting her clothes down the chute!

Thanksgiving resource

If you listen to FamilyLife Today on christian family radio then you will recognize the resource I am sharing with you. This week the show which, airs at 9:00 am and pm on 91.5FM, has been featuring excerpts from their Thanksgiving audio book. I have been enjoying the story tremendously. And the commentators have been doing an excellent job of pointing out the sacrifice that the pilgrims made and their strong devotion to God. Anyway, I encourage you to check out the radio program this week, it may just challenge you. You can also check it out online at FamilyLife.com just click on the green box on the right side of the page. You will be able to hear the programs from this week and also consider purchasing the audio book set. For this week you will get the book, audio CD and a few other items for about $41 after shipping. I got it to share with the kids and help them learn why we are celebrating and it is not about the food, hunting, parades or shopping.

No more nukie, now it's Snoopy

Almost two weeks ago, I got fed up with Grace and her nukie/blankie habit. It never bothered me to give the kids these things at bedtime, but somehow Grace's habit had morphed into a habit in the car and anywhere we visited. After a long day of shopping and her throwing the thing all over, it was gone. I still let her have the blanket, but nukie is gone. It took a few days for her to settle down well at bedtime, but now all is well.

Grace has decided to replace nukie with a large Snoopy dog she got at the 4th of July parade this summer. But for the most part she is learning to keep these two special things in her room and they don't generally accompany us on outings-Yeah!

Grandpa's Birthday

We celebrated my dad's birthday on Sunday. The kids enjoy sharing in everyone's birthday candles and cake!

For presents Isaak painted 2 pictures of tractors and Samuel made a color by number picture of a tractor. Actually he made two, the first one got lost in our house before he could finish it and bring it to the party. So minutes before we were leaving on Sunday morning, I had to quickly print out a new copy for him to bring and color again at Grandma's house. Of course when we got home Sunday night, Samuel found the picture in his room. (Note: we are cleaning the boys room today, who knows what else we will find hiding in there!) Grace and I colored a tractor picture together to give her papa, as she calls him.

Saturday at Lowe's

Jim was gone for the weekend at an Intervarsity conference, so I found one of those built it workshops for kids at Lowe's on Saturday. My mom watched Grace and my brother came along to help with the boys.

I was a great time. The boys nailed together semi trucks and then had to sand and add stickers. The projects turned out great and the boys are excited to try it again!

Yummy, yummy applesauce

Last week, we watched an episode of Sid the science kid on PBS. It is a cute show, that we watch ocassionally. That day they were discussing heat and how it changed things. It focused mainly on the stove and food. The teacher showed the kids how to make applesauce and they discussed how the apples were hard at first and then after heating them on the stove they were soft. It even covered that the apples can never go back to being hard again-irreversible change.

So the grocery store had a super stock up on apple sale and I bought a lot. Today we took the challenge and made our own applesauce. I cheated and used the crockpot as recommended by this recipe http://www.recipezaar.com/Slow-Cooked-Cinnamon-Applesauce-16587. The kids didn't seem to mind that it wasn't the stove. It saved me the stress of three kids huddled around a hot stove and allowed us to put it together and play outside the rest of the morning. We came in to a warm pot of applesauce.

After I ran my handheld blender over it. This is what we had. (Note-I used more apples than recommended, added dried cherries and extra cinamon.)

What a wonderful color. I normally don't eat applesauce, but needed to try it before I gave it to the kids. Yummy-a perfect dessert or snack or breakfast! Samuel said he prefered his applesauce cold, but otherwise everyone ate it and I have enough for a few more meals and maybe to freeze. We will definately be making this again!!

Paper Airplanes

Today we drove past the toy airplane field near our house and the boys got to see a plane flying. They came home and had their own visions of flying. I found this website with easy directions to make planes http://www.funpaperairplanes.com/Plane%20Downloads.html. So as I write they are outside working to take flight! How fun! We may just have to skip nap today and have a lesson on flying :-)

Here is a picture of our fleet (is that the correct term for airplanes?). Once Jim sat down with the boys our airplanes really took flight. He made multiple planes on his own with no cheat lines and directions. The boys were impressed at how well he could fly them and hit mom! Samuel is still asking for me to attempt some of the advanced and specialty planes, I will keep you posted on that progress.

Anyway it was a successful learning experience too. From the website I was able to talk to the boys about the four forces acting on flight (lift, gravity, thrust and drag) and they even related it to birds and how they fly, which we have studied some. The next day they were able to tell Grandma the 4 things as well as talk about the pilot for their planes. It was so cute when Isaak was trying to say pilot it came out pirate and Jim and I laughed hysterically.

Halloween 2008

For Halloween this year the boys and I made the armor of God from Ephesians 6. It was a pretty simple costume and a great opportunity for us to study the armor of God and each of its 6 pieces.

Grace was a princess and wore a yellow dress from Linsey's wedding. She had a wand and a simple crown which she decided mom should wear instead. Her favorite things were being pretty and getting candy!

We visited Big Papa's house and Uncle Jason's. The boys enjoyed a little trick or treating with the neighbors at Jason's house. Grace was scared of the costumes. Then we headed to church for Fall Festival for supper and lots of games and candy. Everyone enjoyed this part of our Halloween.