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.
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| 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! |
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| Blowing goop bubbles |
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| 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!
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I love a good family selfie!
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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.
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| 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.
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Making plaster of paris animal tracks
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We enjoyed our weekly Tea Time Tuesday - fun treats, tea, and poetry reading.
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.
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| Handy H thought that if he were camouflaged the the birds couldn't see him. Smart boy! |
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| Silly kids looking at other kids who were looking at them. |
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| 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!
