Monday, June 16, 2014

Field Trips Spring 2014

 
 This school year we took a tour of history from creation to early American History.  Roo especially connected with the American Revolution- thanks mostly to am exciting Adventures in Oddesey...We decided to visit a Museum about this time and see a Liberty Bell replica.

Our tour guide was awesome... she let the girls ring a REAL 250 year old bell...

And climb under the replica to really see for themselves how bug and useful those bells were! the patriots used them to signal codes from town to town- the sound of the bells ring could travel over 40 mikes back then(no buildings or sound pollution!!!)
 
 
Pip found it all very interesting too!
 
We've also done several "Nature Walks" at our local park this year. :)
  

she said,"here let me take a selfie!!"


Around Home...Outdoor Spring 2014 Addition...

Busy... busy... busy spring!!! April brought beautiful weather and lots of projects out doors!


Last year you might recall The Great Deck Demo of 2013
 well we laid the patio... and I finally finished it a few weeks ago!

The first update after that was a new sandbox...



"Easter" gift from Nana! Huge hit, it gets so much use.
 We moved the garden bed

The girls have one too (picture further down)


we added a teepee for peas to grow up...
And I dig up the entire hard (by hand!) over a weekend, leveled it out, and seeded it for grass..

 and waited for it to grow...



And boy, did it!! A real lawn!
an abundance of tomato plants!
And then I finished the flagstone hammock patio my Mom had started last summer...

 

That has been lovely... almost always in the shade and extremely relaxing...


(from the hammock)

I still have some work to do in the front half of the yard..I've got the ivy bed torn out
all the ivy vines wrapped up and gone... now to dig out the roots and set up a corner for a garden bed and seed the rest for grass.
 
It's been a productive spring for sure! After the brutal winter of staring at all the potential, it has felt fantastic to dig in and get so much done! Still a million little projects: lattice at the bottom of then deck... painting the front porch... lots and lots of garden things. It's a long list, looking forward to all the little projects it adds to life.  
 
Oh the garden beds at night...
it looks really uneven, but it's mostly the old old side walk: another project: ripping that out and ...?

Sunday, June 15, 2014

closing out the school year...

Our first year of home schooling is coming to a close, it's been a fun year!
a random craft Friendly created. Rainbows.

she is so good at building these towers. Her math and reading skills amaze me.
 
A drawing by Roo.

coloring too!
painting a favorite activity
This is Monticello- Thomas Jefferson's house

 The girls made these crowns-decorated themselves!
she was proud of her crown.



school on the computer....
Pip's work, always finding the funniest little creations and stacks of things around the house.
Friendly working on her "design skills"... she likes to "design" dresses in her princess drawings.
 counting the circles she drew on the card she made. She can count to 14...She counts everything- especially steps! She tells me a few times a day now, "dere 13 steps in living room" there are!
 Outside school!! Mud play whole mommy reads aloud...

 outside school...
 a team project...

 They did this together, all their own initiative!
 This year we learned seasons, months, days. The girls both know and can recite the days of the week, months of the year, and the seasons. We made this poster together.


 This baby is a little genius in the preschool apps... She knows many letters and sounds, shapes, colors, and a few number symbols. She whips through the levels.
 School in the attic: messy!

 a kite she designed and made herself...
 Pip has recently taken an interest in trying to figure out scissors.

 A picture by Friendly...
Painting... Both girls really increased their skills in this over the course of the school year.

An "abstract" by Roo
 Roo is beginning to truly get the code!!! She's started writing words she thinks if and sounds out alone.

some of the longer words are from a few months ago when she was playing doc McStuffins, but "Bat" and her attempt at pip's name, all her own!
 
 
celebrations...evening dance recitals...
 



we were given fake flowers and instructed to throw them at the dancers when the song ended. 
 
Many pictures to come soon and a bit of an update on everyone!!