Motorcyle, Grad, Bug, Newer Pet, Garden, Piano

If there's one thing we enjoy its..
"knowing that beyond every ordinary explanation there is a deeper and more exciting discovery to be made"

Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

:::Motorcycling:::

Ethan, Cedric and Tyra got a chance to ride on a motorcycle!
Thanks to, Tyler, our next door neighbor.

:::Graduation Day:::

Amanda (John's sister) graduated from USU. Goooo Aggies!!! And way to go Amanda!

:::8th Anniversary:::

First John took some time off of working and we walked along the Jordan walkway and had a picnic with the kids.







We found a bug crawling close to where Millie was sitting.






John even let it crawl on his hand. . .

We researched this bug and found out that it was a "Toe Biter" bug which normally is an aggressive creature. Its bite is known to be the most painful out of all insects in its category (which includes ants, bees and wasps). Its crazy that we played with it like we did!

...I was warning them.








We watched a variety of birds at a nearby lake. There were different kinds of Gulls (seagulls) and even Pelicans!

All the birds took off at once after a dog ran into the water. It was thrilling!

When we got to the Jordan River there just happened to be a few men flying their model airplanes. It was so neat. These "toy" planes were huge - costing up to $9000!

One of the men in this group professionaly flies spy planes over the Middle East.

Cedric was enthralled by it all.

:::An Even Newer Pet:::

Ethan was playing with the baby snake we had recently found outside when I hear him screaming, "Mommy! mommy!!!" I figured he had lost his snake in the grass but instead came in carrying a whole other snake 10 times the size of the other one!

It measures 2 feet 4 inches long! Garter snakes usually grow to 2 - 2 1/2 feet long.

Not only are our kids enjoying the snake but the WHOLE neighborhood of kids come over daily to see and hold it! We've had multiple kids coming over a few times a day to visit these rad reptiles.

:::Square Foot Gardening:::

Yaaaay, we're finally getting our garden going. It's finally warm enough now.

The kids had a great time mixing the dirt for us. . .

. . . and starting their own garden.

:::Favorite Day:::

Our favorite day this week was the rainiest and coldest day of the week. We watched The Sound of Music - and the kids (mostly Tyra) enjoyed it and want to watch it again!

We also cuddled together in my room, playing various games as I read to them from The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.

:::Piano Playing:::

Tyra has been playing the piano. She's doing really well - considering that she isn't taking any professional piano lessons.

She loves to pull Millie up to the piano and let her tinker away to her hearts content.

Funnies, Olives, Glass, Train

Family Funnies---Greece---

We finished up our studies on

Greece by having a taste of one

of their favorite foods - OLIVES!!!

---New Pet---

We had an interesting experience by the Jordan River this week. First a large skunk scurried across the pathway about 20 feet in front of us. We didn't let it deter us from going to our favorite area though - we just tiptoed past where we saw him cross. We didn't want to annoy a skunk!

After only a few minutes at the lake we saw a snake slither across the waters edge in front of us. The kids caught it and we all decided to take it home and study snakes for the week. . . I'm not sure the river is going to be its home ever again...the kids love it and the snake seems to be happy himself.

---Glass Blowing---

We spent a couple hours at Thanksgiving Point while John shot some bridals in the T.P. Gardens. The kids wanted to go to the Art Gallery/Glass Blowing buiding. We came just in time. They had just started making a piece of art glass.

The artist has blown into the glass glob that is stuck to the end of his metal rod. He's shaping the end and widening the mouth in this photo.

After many other steps: heating the piece over and over, blowing into the rod over and over, shaping, stretching, cutting and pulling, he's flattened the glass piece and spins it to give it its shape... this is pretty much what the final piece looks like.

---Train---

Cedric is SOOO in love with trains! As we drove home from a Park Day with some other Homeschooling moms I saw a train off in the near distance as I crossed over its tracks. So we turned around, stopped near the tracks and got out of the car to watch. Boy, what a thrill. You don't realize the magnitude of the trains size nor the power in its body until you observe it up close.

The engineer even waved to the kids! Cedric is still talking about it!

"Our time is our life, and whatever it is we are doing with our time, we are paying for it with our life. The challenge of mortality is to manage our time in such a way that what we spend it on is worth our life."

Ardeth Greene Kapp

Movie, Liger, Garbage, Kenpo

These are the days...

(((Movie Making)))

Here's the movie we made with our neighborhood friends. John did a great job. The kids can't get enough of it and it was so much fun to get together with (most) everyone who was in the movie and watch the smiles on all their faces and hear their laughter as we watched it together for the first time.

(((Museum)))

We visited the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum and found the variety of animals to be amazing! Here were some of our favorites:

Tyra was most excited about the wolves.

Ethan was most excited about the Liger.

Cedric was most excited about the Rhinocerous...and later a mini model train he saw.



(((Earth Day)))

For Earth Day we decided to pick up garbage along the Jordan River. There was SO much junk to pick up. Mostly garbage like beer bottles, cigarrette boxes, or even tobacco containers. We learned some neat lessons that day about taking care of our bodies and the earth.



We picked up 5 grocery bags of filthy garbage! It felt so good and the place looked much better after we'd gone through it.

(((Greece)))

We're still learning about Ancient Greece and this week we focused on the Greek myths. Hercules was our favorite. It nice to hear the real myth instead of knowing the Disnsey version and it opens up great conversations.

(((Japanese Festival)))

We enjoyed the Japanese culture immensley...


we watched Kenpo sword practices,



and saw beautiful Japanese flower arrangements.

(((EXTRA)))

Warm days are the best. The kids were surprised with a beautiful tray of food while they were busy playing outside.

Loving It

"All children are born artists." -Picasso
"...the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up." Ken Robinson.

>>>Greece<<<

We went on a historical art tour titled "American Dreams" at the BYU Museum of Art this week. It was really enjoyable. I could have stayed there all day. The paintings were beautiful.

It just so happend that the first oil painting of the tour was one of Greek women during ancient Greece. We were excited to have such a coincidence occur. (Explanation is in the last blog entry).

I was really impressed with the comments the kids were giving. Especially Tyra when she spoke of freeing the slaves or Martin Luther Kings dream.

We were looking at an oil painting of an eagle that flew before a sky layered in colors and stars when Tyra said, "To me, the sky seems to represent the American flag." Way to go Ty!

>>>Aesop's Fables<<<

We've been reading and learning from Aesop's Fables. I have been so impressed with how well the kids understand the moral lessons in his fables. The ones we covered this week were:

The Frogs and the Well
The Tortoise and the Hare
The Three Bulls and the Lion
The Brother and Sister
The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg


Lessons of Wisdom learned:

"We should be happy with what we have." -Tyra
"We should keep on going and going." -Ethan
"Think and look before we do something." -Tyra
"Sticking together gives us strength - so bad doesn't win." -Ethan

>>>Party<<<

John had a night out with his friends friday night so we had a night out with ourselves by having a popcorn and movie party. We began to watch the movie Dinosaur but because it was scaring Cedric we watched Hercules instead...the kids were excited to point out Greek things we've been learning about like the Greek goddesses (in the movie) who wore the Greek apparel just like the painting we saw at the art museum.

>>>Garden<<<

Our garden has been put on hold until Monday (cross my fingers) as we intermingle it with the lesson of self sufficiency for FHE. I overheard Ethan telling his friend Elaine about our garden. He was out in the back yard walking through the squares (they aren't filled in yet) saying, "...these are going to be the kids' gardens. These are the families." As he walked across the bags filled with compost he said, "...and this is the dirt. We have to use COW POOP!" I just loved his enthusiastic explanation of it all.

>>>Extra<<<

Our "Handbook of Nature" came from Barnes and Noble today. We're excited and we'll be posting our Green Hour Challenge entries starting next week.

Here's something nature-like for now. This is a poem we read before bedtime earlier this week...

"Talents Differ"

Laura E. Richards

"What are you doing there, Robin a Bobbin,

Under my window, out in the blue?"

"Building my nest, O Little One, Pretty One,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

"What are you doing now, Robin a Bobbin,

Under my window, out in the blue?"

"Brooding my eggs, O Little One, Pretty One,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

"What are you doing there, Robin a Bobbin,

Under my window, out in the blue?"

"Feeding my nestlings, Little One, Pretty One,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

"And what are you doing, pray, Little One, Pretty One,

What are you doing, tell me now true?"

"Sewing my patchwork, Robin a Bobbin,

Doing the thing that you cannot do!"

The Lehi library had their annual book sale last thursday. John was at school and had the car so my mom came over and watched the kids so I could take advantage of the opportunity. I only spent $30 on 16 movies and 15 books - what a deal! It was like Christmas for the kids when I came home with those being the contents of a large box.

I think that sums up the bigger things of the week for us...

We have felt wonderfully satisfied with our family life. Lately I feel like shouting from the rooftops, "Homeschooling is incredible!"

What can I say, we love it!

First Turning - "the High"

There's been a lot going on around here. I'll attempt to do a brief summary...(but, first, this is a photo of Ethan taking in the contents of a book as he's sitting in his basket of books)

We recently did a homeschool "re-construction". It's necessary every now and then. Usually the "pre-construction" time periods are painful for me - nothing productive is really happening and excitement for learning has become close to extinct.

But, it's much like the theory about the cycles of life considered "turnings" from the book The Fourth Turning. The first turning being the "High", the second turning being the "Awakening", the third turning being the "Unraveling", and the fourth turning being the "Crisis". We just came out of the fourth turning and are now, once again, in the first turning - the "high". And boy are we ever! We are loving the opportunities homeschooling provides!

Along with doing our regular reading, writing, and math we are focusing much of our learning on History! Isn't it wonderful? For the next couple months or so we're learning about ancient to present

Greece

How could there be a couple months worth of learning about Greece? We realized how many neat things came from there! We'll be covering:

Aesop's Fables
Alexander the Great
Greek construction and buildings
Greek Gods
Greek Philosopher's
Olympics
Spartan Army

How fun is that? ...Well, I think it's exciting! Here's something else we'll be doing -

Green Hour Challenge!

It's made up of a set of 9 assignments and there's a fabulous book titled, "Handbook of Nature Study" we will be pulling a wonderful amount of information from throughout the assignments.

We'll spend time outdoors observing what we see, finding things we're interested in to focus on and do further investigating on. I'll be posting our entries on this blog.

We'll be observing, sketching, brainstorming, describing, and memorizing...and we get to do all of this enjoying and learning from the beautiful world Heavenly Father blessed us with - it'll be great!

Free Friday!

Friday's will be our reading day. We'll read any (or all) learning and fun books Tyra and Ethan chose from the library earlier in the week without having to write about what they learned from it...so, no strings attached. :) We'll focus a lot on poems and will work on writing our own as well.

We'll be checking out poems written by teens at the Sandy Library this month.

Along with all of this we'll be working on our garden thanks to SFG! The kids each have their own little 2x2 garden where they chose to plant things such as watermelon, lettuce, carrots, beets, and collard! I can't wait to see the results.

I'll be posting the photos from our big activity we're doing today which is

Movie Making

Tyra and Ethan's friends will be coming over and they'll create the story to and act in their very own movie...I hope they dress up! :) John will be recording and editing it and I will be....assisting wherever needed. The results will be posted soon.
All I can say, is there are so many wonderful, fun, and exciting things to enjoy and learn about and that's just what we're doing!

I've detached myself from the internet...I found it to be addicting and mind numbing. It reminds me of Elder Ballards talk to young mothers and the suggestion he gave to stay away from things that numb the mind such as the TV or the internet. He is SO right!

So, interestingly enough, even though I've started a whole new blog I'm cutting back, big time, on my computer time and only stopping by once every couple days or less - to do what I need to do (and stop by everyone's blogs every now and then). My other blog might just go to pots - and this one, being our homeschooling journal, will be tapped into most often.

Our New Blog

I decided to start a blog dedicated to our home school happenings. We've been sick for a couple weeks now which took us out of our normal way of things. But we're getting back in the jist of things. Here's a look -

We just started having Tyra read to Cedric (and Camilla) while I help Ethan with his reading. It's a good thing for everyone - Tyra reads, Cedric loves to be read to, and it keeps them busy to let Ethan and I work together on his reading.





Tyra and Ethans reading lessons















We enjoy playing games together. This is a photo of John and the kids playing Trouble. Other games we like to play are: Life, Zingo, math card games, Uno, Mensch Argere Disch Nicht, Cagola, and the classic - Candyland.








We've had a lot of time to read while we've been sick. Bridge to Terabithia and The Moffats along with a handful of Junie B books were ones we read during our two week flu epidemic. Bridge to Terabithia was probably my favorite one, although I would recommend scribbling out the innapropriate words before handing the book over to a child to read. Something about taking away a persons only good thing in life is absolutely heart wrenching to me.

More homeschooling adventures to come...