The differences between boys and girls

This afternoon I ended up with a house full of kids. My own 4, our 8 yr old neighbor, Austin, and 2 girls from down the road about 7 yrs old too...

The boys sit down to drive trains. They zoom around. Block the track. Crash. Fall off cliffs. Drive around in circles going nowhere. Then move on to throwing a suction cup ball at the window.

The girls sit down to drive trains. They grab the only 2 girl trains. They find husbands for their trains. They go visit the nursing home and invite each other's trains over for lunch.

I'm left remembering playing with G.I Joes with my brother when I was younger. I am pretty sure that when I played all my girl G.I Joes' had husbands too. And my brother shot the GI Joes to pieces with his BB gun.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Unplanned Additions

We have these bunnies....

Peter And Lop
We've had them about 6 months now. A few months back we could tell for sure that Peter was indeed a boy and Lop appeared to be a girl. We should have been prepared.

Yesterday I noticed hair in the cage. I know nothing about rabbits really so I figured Peter was just getting a little rough, since Lop has had some hair missing from the back of her neck. This afternoon Rylan tells me that there is hair everywhere...that they are pulling it off each other. When I opened the hutch top there was hair all over....then I noticed it moving. And another. And another. 3 babies. We had no clue she was even pregnant.

But now I know that the doe pulls out her fur to make a nest. Now I know that bunnies can be impregnated immediately after giving birth- and Peter in sitting in the cat carrier. And Cale is dancing around saying "I want to keep ALL the babies!!!"

Anyone want a bunny??

Randomness and Pictures

I am feeling very uninspired these days...


and with creativity in low supply...

I have nothing of interest to actually write about

I'll let the pictures do the talking; my 4 reasons to keep on trying.

Chirstmas Ornaments

Each year we make some sort of ornaments for our Christmas tree. From simple salt dough to apple cinnamon to salt cermaic. This year we have started a little early, moslty because a homemade Christmas is on my mind a lot these days and I am playing around with a lot of different ideas to see how they would do as gifts.

So I am using up some of our numerous eggs. Blowing out the insides and painting and decorating them in various ways. Cale's been itching to use the pressed flowers we've had since the beginning of summer.

Here are the supplies I used to blow the eggs:

You could use any thing really to hold the egg, I just happened to have this egg cup. First you want to tap a hole in the top- I used longer nail for this step. Then tap a somewhat larger hole in the bottom. Then use a needle- or anything long and thin that can fit inside the holes- to break apart the yolk.

As for the actual blowing- I did just that. Blew into the top hole and the insides came out the bottom hole. My mom gave these a try too and used a bulb syringe- she cracked a lot of eggs. And my step father tried his air compressor- and I am sure you can figure out how that turned out. I still find blowing by mouth the best way.

Once the egg is empty you want to rinse it to wash out any remaining whites/yolk and let it dry for a few days. Once dry they are ready to paint. For the kids to do this part, I used the above egg cup for my 3 yr old and used wooden skewers to hold the eggs up for easy painting/decorating for the older 2. We used acrylic paint, some glitter, glitter glue, stickers, dry pressed flowers, etc. You can use anthing that is relatively flat to decorate with.
This one is Cohen's. He painted and painted. Added some snowflake paper punches and painted over all of them. I did finally talk him into leaving some white snowflakes on the outside. I think it turned out to be one of my favorites

Once painted and dried, I covered them in Mod Podge a couple times and let them dry again. Then used wire and beads to hang them by. We've still got a couple eggs shells in need of paint and I am still trying to talk Rylan in to doing one- He doesn't want to get messy-maybe he could paint it with mud? He doesn't seem to mind getting messy that way.

Lazy Days....

I didn't feel like doing much of anything today...so I left the dishes, I left the clutter, and I left the toys....and I knitted. I have been teaching myself how to knit with needles and I also have a few circle looms- which I worked on today. It wasn't too long before I had a following...

Making a hat for Cohen...(shhh....it's for Christmas, because Cohen will forget by then...)
Making a hat for a doll....

And apparently I am knitting a neckwarmer for Lakin.

How.....

...does something start off so right and end so wrong???

The last one he did correctly- he did write 11, but we talked about it and he wrote the 2 and then I left to take Lakin to the doctor, telling Paul that Cale was finishing up his math and to check it when he was done. When I got home I asked if he had checked it....no. So we went to look and ??? If I ask him what is 3+2 he can answer me. But for some reason when looking at the facts- even if he has counters to use he just wants to combine the numbers ??

Cub Scout Achievement #6

Start a Collection

My oldest is a natural collector. He collects everything from the fake credit cards we get in the junk mail to rocks to shells to coins. Although he is normally well organized, his shelfs are not. Each collection has it's own box or bag but that is as far as his organization goes. So for the Start a Collection acheivement for his wolf badge I told him he could either fix up one of existing collection with labels and such or he could have something of mine that was in need of some work...of course chose the new collection.

I have this old box. And it is filled 500+ of these:

Some of them are from when I was a collector as a kid. Most I 'inherited' while going through the attic in my childhood house. They've sat in this can for years and years. So the other night we set to work sorting them. Presidents, animals, holidays, famous people, countries, historical, etc....

Last night I gave him my scrapbooking letter stickers, photo splits and an extra photo album and he worked on a couple of pages....

He's about halfway done. I can tell he's proud of it; he's picked the book up and looked though it a few time this morning and showed it off to his brothers.

Homeschool Memoirs: Games

This week's theme asks us to share our favorite games used for learning in our home. Here are some of our favorites.

• BINGO! We use bingo for just about everything around here. Language arts especially. We also use it for math facts and number ID for preschoolers.
• Concentration/Memory- along the same lines as bingo. We don't use it quite as much, but we have a store bought memory game and plus homemade version for upper/lower case letters, number/word matching, and our math fact flash cards- I lay them out and they choose 2 facts that equal the same answer- flipping will reveal if they are right or not.
• Knock Out! I am not sure if that is the official name, but it's what we call it. For addition we wrie the numbers 2-12 on a 2 sides of a white board and start rolling 2 dice. As each sum is rolled erase the numbers, first one to get them all wins. My oldest and I used to play this every night when he was in K...it really helped him learn his addtion facts.

As far as store bought games: we have a lot of the standard childhood games: Monopoly, UNO, Candyland, Mouse Trap, Yatzee, Scrabble, Battleship, Clue, Cootie, Trouble, Life, Rummy-o, Sorry... some we still waiting to grow into. We probably don't play quite as much as I'd like....probably since the 2 youngers are limited to Candyland and Cootie and can play with Paul or me when we play the ones that require a little more (like Great States! Guess Who, Sorry...etc) I am sure as they get older our game playing will be a little more frequent.

Aviation Unit

First...this picture has absolutely nothing to do with aviation or the rest of this post....but the trees in our back yard are so pretty right now that I had to take a picture...and I am sharing it since I have not taken any pictures about the following topic:

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We are studing aviation this week, and will continue as long as there is interest. Our library doesn't have the best selections....a lot of books I came across that looked wonderful weren't available, and someone out there checked out every single book on Amelia Earhart....but I did get a few good ones.....

• The Jet Alphabet Book and The Airplane Alphabet Book both by Jerry Pallotta. We love all Jerry Pallotta Alphabet books and almost all of our units include at least one.



• The Glorious Flight: by Alice Provensen. My boys LOVE this story. It is about Louis Bleriot and the first flight across the English Channel.



• Will and Orv by Walter A Schultz. This is a short biography on the Wright Brothers. It kept the boys' interest well, and was written on a level Rylan could read.



• Glenn L Martin: Boy Conqueror of the Air by Ruth Harley. These are our new favorite biography series (The Childhood of Famous Americans) We read one on Harry Truman and this library trip Rylan was pulling them out all over the biography section and finally landed on this one; since none of us knew who he was and he was in aviation we brought it home. So far it is very good.



• All Aboard Airplanes by Frank Evans



• Dover's History of Flight Coloring Book. I really like the Dover coloring books. And it keeps their hands busy and less wiggling around when we do our read alouds. So far they've done the Wright Flyer and the Bleriot XI.


• The Value of Patience: The Story of the Wright Brothers (a ValueTale)We all really like this series too. We've read a lot: Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Louis Pasteur....and all have gone over really well.

Today they labeled the parts of an airplane. Homeschool Share has a unit on The Glorious Flight and has some printables avialable. I am not feeling like lapbooking right now, so we probably won't use a lot of them...If I get industrious we might make these models. Once we study all the parts and such I will let them have free reign over craft materials to see if they can invent their own model airplane. We will do some mapping as we study different pilots and important flights; such as the English Channel and the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. It's a work in progress since I am trying to let go a bit and let them do the leading....

Who's Who

Cohen kept asking me about when he wore the bee costume....so I found the pictures for him, along with some of Cale and the other costume doubles.....he couldn't tell which bee was who, neither could Cale....they are definately brothers...

My Trick-or-Treaters

Here they are....all dressed up and ready to go...

Cohen, the pirate
Lakin, the beeAnd back home again, with WAY too much candy....

Rylan, the dinosaur
Cale, the fire man

We went to a trunk-or-treat/carnival at a church down the street from us and then stopped at a second church, since a friend was participating in the trunk decorating portion and invited us.... thier pumpkins were overflowing! Now let's see if I can come up with an alternative to eating all of the candy!