Planting seeds

 Here are the pictures of our planting project.
We planted Peas, purple beans, cherry tomatoes, carrots and lettus

more to come. :)

feeling better and farm

The Gidster is feeling much better! He's still not 100% but his antibiotics are working really quickly which is great because taking care of a miserable 7 month old is EXHAUSTING!

Today we started our farm unit which we'll be working on for whole month of April (besides a little break next week to talk about Easter for a couple days) We'll be spending a lot of time on different farm animals (and visiting some to see them in person which she will LOVE) and learning about how plants grow. This is the first time I have really done a real, focused unit so I am excited and nervous about that.

We started our plant part of the farm study today by planting out seeds (last week Aurora picked 5 different plants to grow and we bought the seeds) and picking out some books about farm animals and plants.

We are still working through the alphabet as well but she seems to be really struggling with some of the letters so I think we have to stop pushing forward and go back to spend more time on some of the ones she has trouble with.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring less runny noses, happier kids and lots of fun and learning.

This basically sums up our weekend....

Aurora and I both have cold and poor Gideon has an ear infection and a cold. He had a pretty rough night last night. :( 

We didn't do any preschool today at all, I had a newborn photo session this morning which takes a good amount of the day (it takes a LONG time for them to go to sleep so you can pose them usually) so between that and everyone feeling crummy we decided to take the day off.

We did do our last bit of worm study on Saturday though, it was a perfect rainy day so it was easy to catch a bunch of "wormies"

I had looked up ideas for worm units and seen the idea of letting the worms "paint" to see how they move. We (obviously) used non toxic paint and were carefull to get it all off the worms before letting them go again. After all, we like wormies. :)

Aurora LOVED this project. She finally got up her nerve to actually HOLD a worm (only the really small ones though)

Bible lessons

This is called an evangelism cube (it's the kid version, there is an adult version too) It's a pretty cool tool for teaching kids about salvation. I first saw one when a friend of Aurora's was playing with one and used it to explain salvation to me! (this was a year ago, he was 3!) After that I was sold on these! 

I found them at one of the Christian book stores near us a few months later (CBD also has them) and Aurora still loves it. She looks at it all the time, opens it all the different ways to see each picture and tells me what they mean (or mostly, I keep explaining it to her)

Oh, an something funny,

The verse Aurora is working on learning right now is Proverbs 12:22 ("The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in men who speak the truth") and Aurora loves it, but she thinks it says "lion's lips" not "lying lips". No matter how many times I tell correct her she is convinced it's about lions. :-) It makes me laugh.

more creepy crawlers

We found this spider in the backyard. (actually it was two webs the dark spot is another spider on another web right behind this one, both were eating something too!) Since spiders seem to be more terrifying than other bugs to Aurora we took some time to talk about the good things spiders do, like catch flies, mosquitoes and other bugs that bite.  

 Aurora used our old pocket camera to take some pictures too.

 Gideon is getting so close to crawling. He gets up on his hands and knees and rocks but is not quite ready to take a "step". He's been really fussy lately too, He's probably got a tooth coming, poor guy. Thankfully it seems to help to put him in the snugly backpack and go for walks, he really enjoys that.

Spring

Since Spring seems to be in full force (at least for now) we are studying everything spring. Today we studied Robins.


We went up to the library and got a book about them, It turned out to be a really good book for young kids! It had lots of great pictures and was a lot of information but they kept it simple. I learned a few things I didn't know, but it was easily understandable for Aurora to. :)

 We also got a few books about bugs and beetles and have been studying them (in an attempt to help Aurora get over her sudden crippling fear of all things creepy crawly.)

Here is a beetle we found in the garden. Around here you find these pretty often when you dig, but this time we stopped to really look at one.

 (Then we had some fun blowing bubbles)

We are certainly enjoying this warm weather, but man am I tired at the end of the day!! I have been falling into bed exhausted way earlier than usual!! (that may also have something to do with Gideon deciding to get up earlier than he used to though)

warm weather, worms and water

The weather has been gloriously warm here! It's really crazy to think that this is March!! Usually we still have a lot of snow!! Instead we are wearing flip flops and shorts, getting sun burns if we aren't careful and really enjoying being outside.

This week Aurora has become very interested in worms. We've found quite a few and some really huge ones hiding under the leaves that we cleaned our of the garden, so we've been talking about worms, what they eat, how they help plants and what animals like to eat worms.

We've also been talking a bit about how dams work. There is one by our house that she loves to walk to and we've been talking about how it can stop the water or let the water flow through.

We started reading Little Women. I wouldn't have picked it for her yet, but I have a really beautiful edition with greats pictures in it so she got excited about it and begged me to read it to her. We are also reading an old book called Adventures in Animal Land. It was mine when I was a kid and loved it. She's really enjoying it so far too, we are about 5 chapters in.

again....

Man, It's already been a week and once again my good intentions have not led to more posting at all!!! This is terrible. :( With a 6 month old who seems to be in a "hold me all the time please mommy or I will scream" stage and Aurora, and life of course, I seem to find time for either this or my photography business. It seems to go back and forth between those two depending on what's going on, how many clients I have and all that.

So despite putting most of my "free time" (ha ha!! as if we moms of babies and young kids have any REAL free time-which is why I stay up WAY too late every night) into my business, I have been tossing an idea around in my head for a long time for a series o(n this blog) that I am pretty excited about. I haven't seen anything like it yet (doesn't mean it's not out there, just that I haven't seen it - nothing new under the sun right?) I am hoping to get it up pretty soon!! I am so excited! so stay tuned!!

Besides that our week has mostly consisted of keeping Gideon happy, or that is how it seems to me. (It's just a stage, it's just a stage!) The weather is starting to warm up so we've been getting out more which is great!!

My family tapped trees to make maple syrup this year which was AWESOME!! We've talked about doing it for ages but finally did this year. Now I admit, I was really only supervising ok, just watching and chatting and taking pictures which Gideon strapped to my back while Aurora running around in the mud with my nephew.(it was super sunny and Elliot is very fast, but here is a quick pic of him covered in mud and completely drenched eating ice cream)

 And here is one of the sap! :)

I'm excited that spring is finally on it's way so we can get out more, do more nature studies and all the wonderful things that come with spring, summer, and fall.

So bear with me if I am bad about keeping up, and stay tuned for the series, I think all you homeschool moms will really enjoy it, or I hope so!! :)