Museums, Art, and Unexpected Dunkings . . .

While Daddy slaves away at audits and training, the girls and I have been having great fun exploring the city of Pittsburgh, the last couple days!

Yesterday we went to the Children's Museum. It was great!

There's a section on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, with a trolly, some of the "houses" from Land of Make Believe that the kids can go in & do puppet shows in and such, etc. Of course, I think *I* enjoyed the Mr. Roger's connection, more than my kids, who've seen the show very rarely, and not for several years. They still liked putting on their own puppet shows and such though.

Then we moved on to the art area. OH MY!!! Could it BE more perfect for my kids?!?!?! They had easels set up for kids to paint (and smocks to protect their clothes), silk screening, paper weaving, clay, paper making . . . and I think a couple other stations we didn't make it to! The big girls were in HEAVEN!!

And even Little Bit got in on the fun, playing with clay and painting her own masterpiece!!!

Once we dragged ourselves away from that area, we moved on to an optical illusion room complete with a very fast slide, that required the kids to walk through a "slanted" room to get there. I took Little Bit down the slide once, but refused to brave the slanted room again, hee hee.

And then a whole Curious George room! It was a great combination for all ages. Little Bit had fun "sorting vegetables" and moving around big foam blocks (oh, and gathering up the plastic golf balls from the "mini golf course" and putting htem back in their basket). The big girls made crafts out of straws and tape and streamers, played dress up, also played with the foam block packages (and their conveyor belt) . . . and I don't remember what all else.

We moved on to the "Garage" which was very cool for the big kids, but not so toddler friendly, so we didn't spent too long there.

And so we moved on to the water play area! They did have "rain coats" for the kids to wear, as well as "boots" (fake crocs). The big girls were already wearing crocs, and I figured as hot a day as it was, some splashes on their clothes weren't a big deal. I changed Little Bit into crocs (since she was wearing leather shoes) but again, didn't bother with a rain coat. And turned them loose. Well, turned the big girls loose, and stayed with Little Bit. Amongst other things (build a fountain, a "lock", and I'm not sure what else), there was a "pool" that bigger kids could kneel beside and little ones could stand beside to play in the water (which was probably 1 1/2 to 2 ft deep). There were all kinds of buckets and boats and things to play with in the water. So that's where Little Bit & I headed. She was having great fun splashing and such, and then, as I glanced around the room to make sure the big girls were doing ok, she must have tried to reach too far out into the pool (or perhaps she tried to climb in, I'm not sure), by the time I glanced down she had "dived" into the water & was completely under water. I grabbed her out & stood her back down next to the pool, fished out the shoe that had come off while she was in the water, wiped off her face, put her crocs back on, decided to take her dress off, since it was soaked anyway . . . she never seemed the least bit phased by any of it. I think she showed the most concern about loosing her shoes, which is why putting them back on was so high on the list . . . My little water baby, sigh . . . we stayed in the water area awhile longer (I must say, I'm abit surprised that nobody working there came over to see if she was ok, I know they can't be looking everywhere every second, and she wasn't screaming and making a scene, but still . . .) and then she was acting very sleepy (even w/o her "dunking" she'd had a very short (half hr to 45 min) morning nap on the way to the museum, and it was now almost 4pm, and no afternoon nap yet. So, since her dress was still soaked anyway (if it had been earlier in the day I *did* have dry clothes in the car, but was feeling lazy) I changed her into a dry diaper and put her in the sling in the hopes that she would nurse to sleep and the big girls could play in the "Garage" a little longer before we left. No such luck, she was much too distracted by all the noises around her, and was getting fussy, so we gave up and left (it was less than an hour till closing time anyway). Needless to say, she slept on the way back to the hotel LOL.

Anyway, it was an all around fun day, despite the unexpected dunking. We didn't make it to the "nursery" area intended for younger kids, and there were other things the big girls wanted to spend more time on, so we're hoping to find time to go back, if not this trip, than next time Daddy has work in Pittsburgh area.

Travelling The World . . . Homeschool Review

As my first review with the TOS Crew, we got to review the Schoolhouse Planner June Module ebook Travel the World from the TOS Store.

The timing was PERFECT! TOS sent us this ebook to review just as we finished up our main unit for the 09-10 school year and with just enough time to use this for 2 weeks before we head off on some travels of our own.

The Schoolhouse Planner modules are stand alone unit studies on a plethora of awesome topics. There is no need to actually own the Schoolhouse Planner (though I got it a couple years ago and it's an awesome product too!!!) to use the modules.

This particular module is a world geography study. I didn't see a stated age range, but this would be a great multi-grade study for the whole family!!! From coloring pages and some cute little puzzles that preschoolers could enjoy, to a high school expansion, there's something for everyone! There is SO MUCH in this e-book. Tons of hyperlinks to information, games, etc, which makes the 56 pages seem like so much more. Wonderful integration of Bible texts throughout the unit, reminding us that God created our wonderful world. All for only $7.95.

This unit starts out with easy to understand information about reading maps and globes, that easily captured and held the attention of my 7 yr olds. Next we learned some fun "new" verse to the song "He's God the Whole World In His Hands" that helped the girls quickly and effortlessly learn the continents, and then we moved on to learning about each continent individually.

There's even a "lapbook beginnings" section., which, for us (we're far from being die-hard lapbookers, but it's fun to do one occasionally), is just the perfect amount to do a quick lapbook without getting bogged down.

Depending on your needs, this would be great to use for a couple days, or do what we did and spend a few minutes per day for a couple weeks. We spent a day or 2 learning about maps, then took a day per continent, then another day or two to review, put together our lapbooks and wrap up the loose ends.

The girls weren't sure about it, going into it . . . we tend to choose our topics based on their interests and neither had a burning desire to learn world geography right now, but once we got into it they enjoyed it. My perfectionist-child (A2), started to get bogged down when I added the rather detailed coloring pages into the mix, it was "too much coloring" and she was stressing about it (did I mention she's a perfectionist and a worry-wart?) but when I told her she didn't HAVE to color them, I'd just given them to her (and A1) in case they WANTED to color them, all was fine again.

I'm keeping the links to the online games on my computer to pull out on rainy days or this winter, since the kids don't spend alot of time in front of the computer now, while it's summer and they have lots of outside time, but I love having these games "up my sleeve" for when we need to mix things up.

All in all, this was a great product!

Disclaimer: I received the above mentioned product in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was received, my opinions are my own.

Another Weekly Wrap-Up

I wrote this post on Sunday, but then forgot to actually PUBLISH it!!

It was HOT HOT HOT last week! Did I mention HOT!!!! We were very thankful for our a/c! On the other hand, the hot, dry weather was great for drying laundry outside LOL.

We enjoyed finishing our world geography study (watch for the review on that, coming in a few days!). And art, handwriting, spanish, etc.

Our big project for the week was blueberries!! Eating them and freezing them (see my last post).

And did I mention, did our best to not melt in the heat? Listening to a nice long Your Story Hour story about Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica, which timed out perfectly since we listened right before studying Antarctica in our unit study. We were even able to find the islands mentioned in the story, which was pretty cool.

And, while not school related, so as not to leave Little Bit out, I'll mention that my attempt, to cut her from 2 naps to 1 was an epic fail! She's been pushing her afternoon nap later, which in turn, pushes bedtime later, so I thought maybe it was time to switch to one mid-day nap. So I tried it on Friday. I didn't put her down for a morning nap, and left around noon to go pick up milk (which I get from a farm about half an hour away), and as I expected, she fell asleep quickly in the car and slept through me picking up the milk and coming back home. All seemed to be going well. After baths for all 3 girls, and tucking the big girls into bed, I nursed Little Bit and she fell asleep almost right away. All STILL seemed to be going well. But then, about an hour later, she woke up and apparently thought THAT had been her afternoon nap, sigh . . . she was ready to go again, and continued to happily play in the family room until a little after 1am. UGH!!!

So that was our week. It started raining during the night Fri. night, which brought some much appreciated relief from the heat!

Gratituesday - Blueberries!

Apparently I can only actually get a post up for one meme per week, last wee

k I managed to get menu Monday up, this week I'm squeezing under the wire and getting Gratituesday in.

Last summer we were able to order blueberries in bulk through my husband's employer and we enjoyed those blueberries (I think we got 30 lbs) all winter long. So needless to say, we've been anxiously awaiting a chance to order blueberries in bulk again. When the information came out, we started talking about it, and first said 40lbs (this time it needed to be in 20lb increments), and then last minute, upped it to 60lbs!!!

The blueberries came in today and hubby brought them home mid-morning.

So our day was spent washing blueberries, spreading them out on towels to dry, putting them in freezer bags, and putting them in the freezer. We got 40lbs frozen and part of the 3rd box washed and laid out on towels to dry. So tomorrow will be another blueberry day.

I am SO thankful!! I am thankful for all these yummy, super healthy, blueberries that we will SO enjoy all year long, in muffins, smoothies, pancakes, on ice cream and just straight from the freezer. I am thankful for how A1 & A2 dove in and helped without complaining today. They spread the washed blueberries out on the towels, they helped put all 40 lbs into freezer bags. Such good little helpers! And this evening, A1's main question was "so when can we go pick the raspberries?" (the wild raspberries are ripening, but it's SOO hot this week I've been putting her off). And just in case you wondered, this is what 20lbs of blueberries looks like!

See other Gratituesday posts here. Pssst! As an extra, this week Laura's included a giveaway on an awesome sounding, brand new, preschool e-book, in her Gratituesday post! Check it out!!!

Weekly Wrap-Up

We had a good week overall! While the first part of the week was hot, the weather was GORGEOUS the last few days (hotter today, and supposed to be HOT this next week), we've had the windows open and I'm loving falling asleep to the sound of frogs on the pond, and waking up to the sound of bird singing in the morning. Today we gave in & closed up & turned the A/C back on though.

We've been enjoying our world geography unit, this week, we've learned about North & South America and Asia, as well as how to read maps & globes, so far. We'll learn about the rest of the continents this coming week.

Have I mentioned yet that we've started working on cursive, at A1's request. Interestingly, now that we're into it, A2 seems to be more "into" it, and progressing more quickly. I think in time, being able to write cursive will cure alot of A2's dislike of copywork/writing.

For some reason, one of our flower beds this year ended up full of tomato plants (tomatoes have never been planted there, the only thing I can figure out is that one of the packets of "mixed flower" seeds that we planted in that bed was actually tomato seeds, good thing I didn't really care about the flowers LOL). So, we spent time this week transplanting a bunch of the tomato plants to another part of the garden, we'll see if they survive. I still have some in the flowerbed that I either need to just pull out or find another place for, because we ran out of room where we were moving them.

In other gardening news, the wild raspberries are ripening. Despite the extreme heat, I'm hoping we can get out & get some picking done this week, since I'm sure they'll be gone by the time we get home from our travels with Daddy. The girls have been keeping the bushes in our backyard picked. One day they took Little Bit with them (she was more than happy to help eat what they picked), all was going well until I heard a scream & A1 came running and told me that "A2 and Little Bit are covered in big black ants!!" Apparently A2, while holding Little Bit had stood or sat (she was sitting when I got there, not sure if she sat down before or after she saw the ants) on a nest of the big black ants. They were crawling ALL over both of them. Once the girls moved OFF the nest area it was just a matter of brushing all the ants off, there are a few spots on Little Bit that look like they might be bites (A2 is a bug magnet, she always has bug bites of somesort, so no telling if any of hers are ant bites), but neither seem any the worse for the experience.

Yesterday A1 & A2 told children's story at church. They'd been planning to tell a story about the cats, but then Daddy suggested a "4th of July story" so they ended up telling part of the Sybil Luddington story that's on one of our Your Story Hour CDs.

As already mentioned, last night we went to fireworks.

Today we went to a local town parade, complete with decorated bikes and strollers, so fun! We'd talked about grilling this evening but it's SO hot, think we'll do something INDOORS. Once it (hopefully) cools down later this evening, the girls have some sparklers they want to do.

Fireworks!!!

Tonight we began our 4th of July celebrations by going to fireworks. A local high school does a fireworks display that conveniently can be seen well from the parking lot of the Rite Aid near our house, so, we went to Rite Aid LOL. Before we left we snapped a couple pictures of the girls in their matching 4th of July shirts & denim skirts (all 3 have matching 4th of July flip flops too, but Little Bit didn't keep hers on very well LOL).

A1 was sitting in the recliner and Little Bit climbed up beside her, so we had A2 jump into the picture too.

The big girls posing for the camera.

Watching fireworks from the Rite Aid parking lot.

Little Bit sharing candy with Daddy.

I was rather nervous about such a late night (the fireworks didn't START until 10pm) but we had the big girls at least lay down for awhile this afternoon. They insist they didn't sleep but they rested quietly in their rooms for 2 1/2 hrs, I'm pretty sure they slept!!! And let Little Bit take a later, longer-than-normal, nap too. And we chose Rite Aid's parking lot (rather than some of the other stores in the same area, because we could turn w/o having to cross traffic and take back roads home. We got there a little before 9pm, and between snacks and running around on the grassy hill, the time didn't drag too badly. The big girls did awesome about jumping right in the car when the fireworks were over and we were able to come home w/o any traffic/crowd issues, whew!

We'll continue our fun tomorrow, with a local town parade, and sparklers tomorrow evening (thanks to Miss Tami, at church who gave the girls some sparklers).

WHAT A DEAL!!!

Why yes, I *am* yelling! This is an amazing deal! One of my favorite homeschool magazines is The Old Schoolhouse Magazine! I won a subscription to it in a blog giveaway a couple years ago and have been a subscriber ever since. And then, I got this information . . .

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That's $17.76 for TWO YEARS!!! AND . . . you get 5 free e-books and an absolutely adorable tote bag too!! Note that the tote bag is only available TODAY!!!

I just had to share this deal with all my friends!!!