April Antics

Well, it's July but what the heck.  I thought I get you all up to speed on what we've been up to over the past few months.

April turned out to be a fun month of field trips, finishing up our 6 week American Girl Group, hikes, and a lot of hands on tinkering activities.

 We subscribe monthy to Tinker Crate  .  I highly recommend these kits.  They come once a month, and are super fun.  The children are able to do much of the "tinkering" with me there for help.  I'm thinking I'll blog more about Tinker Crate at a later date.  This month, they worked on a drawbot, and the other was mixing chemicals together to make such things as goop, and silly putty.  We did this one while C-dawg was sleeping...messy, but fun.

This draw bot has a little motor that sends it drawing all around the large paper.  Changing the weight  and shape of the clay attached to the motor caused it to move in different directions.  Super cool!

Blowing goop bubbles 

Timing to see who's goop could stretch out the longest before breaking

Hiking the Table Rocks is always a great Spring event for us.  Lots of flowers, but too dry this year for vernal pools.

Our homeschool group sponsored a special performance with the Rogue Valley Symphony Chamber Players.  This quintette gives performances for school children.  A great way to share the arts!  Miss M.  even won two free tickets to the Rogue Valley Symphony.  The two oldest children and their dad attended a performance later that week.

We all participated in the annual Pear Blossom Mayors Cup Fun Run.  We all had fun with the 1-mile, so we did the 2-mile as well.  This race day is always guaranteed to have inclement weather. Thankfully, it did not snow!

I love a good family selfie!

This past year my wonderful friend and fellow homeschooling mom Stacey and I put on two different American Girl 6-week unit studies with a fun group of girls.  This time it was the historical character Kirsten.  Over the previous six weeks, we met once a week for two hours to discuss the books from the series, and do some fun related activities.  The girls worked on handmade doll quilts for the six weeks.  

It was fun to see all the hard work and different patterns they chose to design and sew.  I was truly impressed.

This week, the children also made Native American picture stories on faux leather (crumpled, wetted paper bag), then told us the stories.  We made animal track casts, and we even listened to one of our girls play fiddle for us.

Making plaster of paris animal tracks

We enjoyed our weekly Tea Time Tuesday - fun treats, tea, and poetry reading.

Sniffing pretty flowers from the garden.

The last field trip that we were able  to attend for the year with our Five in a Row group was to the Mercy Flights headquarters.  They do an amazing tour for children.  Mercy Flights is our local ambulance service as well as mediflights.  It's so great for the children to see how things are done in the event they ever need emergency medical attention.

Miss M. after hearing this mannequin can be used to practice birthing..silly girl

We learned this helicopter is moved around with a little handheld device.  Cool!

Inside the ambulance

We also took a tour/ride on the local Rogue Valley Transportation District bus.  Fun to have a private ride, and to see how the whole system works.

We ended the month with a birding trip guided by our local chapter of the National Audubon Society.  Fun to walk around with knowledgeable people.  I later found out we were guided by one of the premiere birders in the valley.

Handy H thought that if he were camouflaged the the birds couldn't see him.  Smart boy!

Silly kids looking at other kids who were looking at them.

The most impressive granary tree I've ever seen!

Miss M took a 5 week robotics class from William Hennes of Think Tank Kids.  She had a lot of fun, and made a cool robot that moves around on it's own power.

 

April was a busy month, but super fun!  A great way to end the school year!