Weekly Wrap-Up - August 11

An interesting week . . .

The summer unit of the preschool curriculum I am loosely following for Little Bit and the boys, is about seasons, and this week we've been talking about "Winter". Ever since this unit started, Sassy and MiniMe have been anxiously waiting for us to get to "winter" because they still remember when I did this with THEM, 6 years ago!

What would a study of winter be without a snowball fight?!?!?! We took the kids outside and after establishing some rules, I gave them each a bowl full of "snowballs", otherwise known as marshmallows!  I had said no being rough, at which point, Sassy and MiniMe asked if they could throw roughly at each other, if they stayed away from the little kids. I added "and don't whine if you get hurt" and agreed to it. But of course, the little kids then wanted to join the "rough" snowball fight, sigh . . . thankfully the little kids didn't get hurt, though MiniMe managed to throw a marshmallow that hit Sassy right in the eye and Sassy claimed hurt for quite awhile. I must admit, being the horrible mother I am, my main reaction was "wouldn't it be funny, if you got a black eye from it, and when people asked what happened you could say "my sister hit me with a marshmallow".  But no black eye appeared. . . The snowball fight ended when the marshmallows turned into gooey blobs and were added to the compost pile.

and of COURSE it would be cruel and unusual punishment to get to PLAY with marshmallows and not EAT any, so after the snowball fight, everyone came in and had smores for snacktime :)

(and somehow I didn't remember to take a single picture of any of that, sigh . . . )

Monday evening a police officer stopped by to let us know that a house on our street had been burglarized that day. Based on what he said, it sounds like it happened while the family was gone during the day. Which means our chaotic life, is an advantage. Even *I* can't predict when we'll be home or not, so someone watching our house would be hard pressed to do so LOL. But still, kind of disconcerting . . .

Wednesday evening my parents got here.

And Thursday we headed to Sesame Place with them. It was "iffy" because of a chance of rain, but other than a few drops of rain while we were in the water anyway, we didn't have any rain.

The rain DID keep OTHER people away though, We calculated that the big girls rode on the "rubber ducky" at least 11 times. It's the tallest waterslide, on which up to 6 people sit in an innertube raft to go down. And on one of the FOUR times I went on it, I counted the stairs going up to the top, and there are 75 (give or take a couple) stairs to get up. Which means the girls went up more stairs on Thursday than there are to get to the top of the Washington Monument! And that's not even counting all the OTHER water slides they went on or the several times they went around the "lazy river". As you can see, by the picture of them inhaling popcorn, all that exercise made them STARVING! LOL.


Little Bit pretty much spent ALL DAY in Ernie's wading pool. When we first got there she went on the spinning teacups with Mama and sissies, but then headed to that pool, until lunchtime.  And was back in that pool, after lunch. She did go on the lazy river with me, but then headed right back to the Ernie pool for the rest of the afternoon. She LOVES "swimming" by walking on her hands in the shallow water. She also discovered it was fun to sit with her back blocking one of the places where water sprays out of the wall, and then jump to the side so the water sprays out and startles people LOL.

The other "ride" she went on was a little "train" thing that has cars that theoretically move around the track by the child pumping a handle in the car back and forth. In reality, little kids con adults, in Little Bit's case, Mama or Papa, into pushing them around the track.  When she was riding it near the end of the day, the big girls decided THEY needed to ride it too.

After confirming that the "rules" didn't put an age limit on it, I told them to go for it (it's NEVER busy, so they weren't taking the "fun" from any little kids).

I had to snap a picture of my TEN year olds, squished into the little cars LOL.  Sassy actually pumped her away around about 1/4 of the track (it's not super long), MiniMe moved 2-3 car lengths and gave up, got out, and pushed her empty car, and Sassy in her car, the rest of the way around.

After a stop at Baja Fresh for supper, we headed home, and pretty much straight to bed.

Friday Rodney took the girls to visit Grandmom. They got to eat at their favorite restaurant, and Sassy played her violin for Grandmom. When Grandmom noticed that Sassy didn't have a stand for her music, she said that Rodney's dad, had one for his trombone, and that, if she can find it, Sassy can use that. So Sassy is very excited about that :)

Sabbath afternoon we headed to Great Valley Nature Center.

We spent probably the first hour in the nature center. Once again, the WONDERFUL staff there let the girls pet most of the animals, that's a chinchilla in the picture. And answering their numerous questions. While we were there E & J (and their parents) got there.

The kids enjoyed wading in the creek, then we headed toward the pond, aren't L & J cute running along together?

When we got to the pond area I sent the big girls off on their own so they could hopefully see some animals that weren't scared away by the noise of littler people. The little ones had fun "leading" each other, and their mommies" along all the paths, and then we headed back to the open grassy area where it was, apparently, great fun to try to catch leaves when the window blew some out of the trees.

It was a lovely afternoon!!!  We wrapped up our day playing outside at home with E (J fell asleep on the drive home) and enjoying Miss Penny's zucchini brownies!

Crew Review: Notgrass Company

We're a history-loving family! By the time Sassy and MiniMe were 5, they were asking so many questions showing enough interest at the historic sites we visited, that I realized I needed to start some type of a chronological American history curriculum with them so they understood how the pieces fit together. That year I found a free "book list" of sorts, online that allowed me to find age-appropriate library books moving us through American History.  They loved it, and we've included a heavy dose of history in our homeschool days ever since.  Right now we are 2/3 of the way through a 3 year trip through American History (again). We are still using the same basic approach we started with when they were preschoolers, we just use bigger/longer books now, and they still love it. BUT . . . there are SO MANY awesome books, that it's taken us 2 years to get as far as 1870 (ish), we've had a blast, but I've been worrying about getting through the rest of American History this year, how will I make sure we don't miss something important but still have time for it all? Last spring at our state's homeschool convention, one of the booths I had on my "must check up" list was Notgrass Company to check out their America the Beautiful Curriculum Package.  I loved what I saw, but was concerned that my girls, used to reading living books for history, would find any textbook, even an extremely well-written one, too summarized, so I reluctantly walked away.

Fast forward to a couple moths ago, this same curriculum came up as a possible review product, WOO-HOOO!!! A chance to test out what I already knew looked like an EXCELLENT textbook and see how the girls would do with a textbook approach :)

We received the complete America the Beautiful Curriculum Package ($99.95) PLUS the America the Beautiful Student Workbook, 5th and 6th grade ($11.95) AND the America the Beautiful Lesson Review for 7th and 8th grade ($9.95)

This curriculum is a one year American history, geography and literature curriculum, from a Christian worldview, for ages 10-14.

Because we are already studying American history, I chose to jump into the book at the point in history we are studying (Westward expansion), rather than starting at the beginning. I found that to be very easy to do. Each "Unit" consists of 5 lessons, intended to take one week to complete. Typically the first lesson is "Our American Story", an overview of the next, chronological period in history (for example, the lesson we are currently in, covers things happening during Johnson's and Grant's presidencies), the rest of the week is some combination of the following types of lessons:

God's Wonders - describing some natural "wonder" in America (for example, Niagara Falls)

An American Landmark - pretty straight forward, describing some famous place in America, for example, the Smithsonian Institute.

An American Biography - obviously, a famous American person.

Daily Life - describing some aspect of daily life in America during that time period, for example, cattle drives.

Each lesson is a few pages of reading, the length varies, but never too long to easily use as a read-aloud, though obviously the student could also read it themselves.  Each lesson has lots of pictures, but they're quite small, so from that standpoint, it would work better to have the child read it on their own, since my girls are both auditory learners AND I like that Little Bit, and our neighbor, E, when he joins us, are also at least hearing it in the background when I read aloud, we used it as a read aloud.

After the reading there is a list of 5-6 (ish) suggested activities. Most lesson include adding something to the Timeline and/or adding something to a map in the Maps of America the Beautiful. All lessons (at least that I've looked at) including doing one assignment in the  America the Beautiful Student Workbook or America the Beautiful Lesson Review, if you're using one of these optional books. Since my girls are in 5th grade, we used the student workbook. Additional suggested activities include, Thinking Biblically (reading, and sometimes copying, a Bible verse related to the lesson), vocabulary (looking up and/or using words in sentences), creative writing (writing a paragraph, or short story about the lesson topic), and Literature (in most cases there's a suggested chapter book to be read over the course of 2 units, additionally most lessons include reading a page (give or take) from We the People. Once a week, there is also a suggested "Family Activity" which varies from planning a Plantation Dinner (which the girls are very excited to do, but we did that lesson as we were travelling in Boston, so we haven't found a time to do it yet), to learning to dance the Virginia Reel, to putting on a play.

Because each child really should have had her own map book, timeline, and workbook, but we only received one of each, and I didn't want to order additional copies unless I was sure we would continue using the curriculum all year, we alternated days, one day Sassy would do the map, and MiniMe would do the workbook, and the next day they would switch. We are already preparing an American history timeline, so rather than writing the timeline entries in the America the Beautiful Timeline, we just added those entries to our current timeline.

I found that on days when there was creative writing, etc, we did better to split the lesson over 2 days. If I were planning to use this complete curriculum, at least for 5th/6th grade, I would plan on it being a 1 1/2 to 2 year curriculum. Alternately, you could decrease the activities you did in each lesson, but one of the parts that MiniMe liked best was the creative writing which is also the most time consuming.

I was easily able to find the literature books that were a part of the units we covered, at our library, and that part of the curriculum was very much like we normally do for history, so it was "normal" for us. I will admit, I didn't follow the "schedule" of how many chapters to read per day, just made sure that we were reading enough to finish the book before we got to the next unit that started a new literature book.

What we thought? For a textbook approach, I think this one is EXCELLENT! I was disappointed in some of the geography sections, though others were interesting. The girls are so used to "living books" that they were frustrated with the lack of detail in the textbook reading. They want to know all about everything, not just a brief overview, but obviously that wouldn't be possible in a one year curriculum.

 The workbook is very typical of a workbook, with things like crossword puzzles, word scrambles, etc. the girls have done lots of these while working on National Park Junior Ranger badges, but don't especially enjoy them, so while they found the workbook easy enough, they didn't love it, and if i were purchasing the curriculum, I probably wouldn't bother. But again, we're not a workbook family. At this point, Little Bit (4) LOVES workbook-y things (mazes, dot-to-dots, even just tracing letters and numbers) , so if she continues in that love, then if I were using the curriculum for her, I probably WOULD get the workbook. Since the girls are only 10, we didn't use the Lesson review book, for older kids.

The Timeline looks like a nice option if you don't want to make your own timeline, in addition to the things the assignments have you add to the timeline book, there are other historic things, and illustrations, already included in the timeline.

The map book, I'm torn about. The girls found it "babyish" to color in states on a map and such, BUT it does help them to better understand the geography, and is quick and easy to do. Even though they don't love it, they didn't whine about doing it, because it only took a couple minutes.

We the People is interesting because it's real historic documents and such, a letter from or to the president, or a newspaper article from that time period, etc. On the days when the textbook reading was longer, and we also had reading from the current literature story, it was abit much to also add in We The People. If you're committed to finishing this curriculum in one school year, this would be an easy part to "cut", to keep things short.

MiniMe loves creative writing and copywork, so loved those parts, Sassy, doesn't, and didn't. They are what they are LOL.

The Family Activities vary quite abit, but are a fun add-on to at least consider. As you can see in the picture, the girls had a blast with the Virginia Reel :)

So what are we going to do, going forward?  MY suggestion was that we use America the Beautiful, but if it mentions something that they want to learn more about, we stop, and find a "living book" on that topic and read it before moving on. Since we are right at the "semester break" for this curriculum, and I'm wanting to finish up American history this school year, it would time out just about right, I think. But even with adding in the extra living books, the girls, MiniMe especially balked at the summary-level of a texbook. She said she finds it frustrating to hear ABOUT things, but not really know what they are. So, we are going to continue with our living book approach. I do plan to continue glancing through the activities, as we go forward and sometimes use the suggested creative writing assignments and family activities. I do think this is an AWESOME curriculum, even if it didn't fit with my kids' learning style :)

Be sure to click on the banner below to see what other Crew members thought about this curriculum, as well as Notgrass's Draw to Learn series.

Our Ever-changing Curriculum

Somehow this year is flying back and it's already August! And August means the annual Not Back-to-School Blog Hop!

This week is Curriculum Week, but I already gave you an overview of our curriculum choices, but amazingly (or maybe not, considering our chaotic life) we've ALREADY made some changes, or at least modifications.

As we approached the end of the review period for a America the Beautiful (watch the blog in the next few days for that review, it's here!), we began discussing what we'd be doing going forward for history this year. I feel pretty strongly that we NEED to finish up American history this school year. We've spent the last 2 years on American History and LOVED it, but I really feel that, by next year, we need to at least get started on world history. This led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth by my history loving MiniMe, who was horrified at the thought of not reading every possible book about every possible topic for the last century of American History, who CARES if we never get to world history, we might MISS SOMETHING! We discussed this for probably 2 hours (seriously!) and really got NOWHERE. I finally just had to say, I give you LOTS of input into what we do for school but this is something I'm not comfortable with, I feel world history is important too, we ARE going to wrap up American History this year, we'll re-visit it in a few years and maybe we can focus more on 20th century then, but for now, we're going to be moving abit faster through history than we have been. The girls went to bed, but MiniMe was still very upset. I always sit in their room for a little while to help Little Bit fall asleep. That night, after Little Bit was asleep, I noticed that MiniMe was crying, so talked to her some more and THEN she had an awesome idea! She suggested that, since the World Wars were really WORLD history, not just American history, and really most everything after that is also pretty intertwined with the rest of the world, we just focus on the end of the Civil War (where we are now) up to the beginning of WWI and then switch to World History, we can cover the newer American history when we get to that point in World history.  What an AWESOME idea!! Why didn't I think of that?!?!? So that's what we're doing. I have no idea if that means we'll be switching to World history mid-year this year, or not, but it DOES mean that we can slow down and not "worry" about it. We'll just keep going forward and whenever we get to WWI, we'll switch to World History.  At this point I'm leaning pretty strongly toward Simply Charlotte Mason for Ancient World History. I know I want a curriculum that integrates Bible history with the rest of ancient history, and this seems like a good choice for that.

The other thing I've added since my original post, is a calendar notebook for Little Bit and E (so far this month, J hasn't joined us for Circle time, if he decides to start joining us again, I'll see if he wants a book too. He's in an interesting spot of desperately wanting to do what the "big kids" are doing, but not being quite ready for the structure and "academics" of what they're doing).  I got the idea from this post.  We're starting small and I'll add things as time goes on, depending on the kids' interest. Most of the book is in page protectors, so we can use dry erase markers and re-use the same pages every day. Only the actual monthly calendar pages are done in pencil. An added benefit of page protectors, when not in use, the kids put their dry erase marker and pencil into one of the page protectors to hopefully keep from losing them.

For now, our pages are as follows: I have lists of the days of the week, and months on the front cover. To begin our calendar book time we sing a made-up song listing the days of the week. Eventually I'll add in the months, but I want the kids to have the days of the week down first.  Next we have our reusable pages, this has the day of the week, month of the year, weather, season, and "Today I'm Feeling". They circle everything.

After the reusable pages is the calendar page. At least for August, I used the one from the Preschool pack that traces the letters, I'm going to see how they do with it, and after a month or two, may switch to a blank calendar where they just write the numbers in.  I've also seen the suggestion of having them color the dates in a pattern, I may that add that in, especially if J wants his own book, I may have him do that, since he's not quite ready for tracing numbers and letters.

So those are our newest additions to this year's curriculum. I'm sure if you were to ask me about curriculum NEXT month, I'd have other changes LOL, but it's all good :)

Crew Review: Bible Study Guide for All Ages

By far the most important subject I "teach" is Bible. I firmly believe that, no matter how "smart" my children are by the world's standards, if they don't know and love God, I have failed in our homeschooling. We've used, and loved various resources for Bible over the years, but this year I had a new challenge. Not only is Little Bit (4) getting closer to being old enough to join the big girls (10) and I in our Bible studies, but we also have our neighbors, E (6) and J (3) joining us for school 4 days a week. As I was searching for a Bible curriculum that would at least meet the needs of E and the big girls, Bible Study Guide for All Ages came up as a review product on the Schoolhouse Review Crew.

They were amazingly generous and allowed us to request products for all of the children in our homeschool, so I received the following:

Beginner Student Pages ($5.95) - 3 sets (for Little Bit, E, and J)
Beginner Time Line ($24.95)
Children's Songs CD Set ($19.95)
Advanced Student Pages ($5.95) - 2 sets (for Sassy and MiniMe)
Bible Book Summary Cards ($24.95)

Bible Study Guide for All Ages, as the name suggests, is a way for children of all ages, to go through the Bible at the same time.

I chose the Beginner Level, ages 3-K, for all 3 younger ones. We don't "do grade level" per se, and E is definitely beyond K in many areas, but since he's not yet reading independently, Beginner was the appropriate level for him.

You can see a sample of the Beginner Student Pages on the product page. The lessons come in a tear-apart pad, and are a not-standard, size. 8 1/2" by Longer than legal :).  While I understand their desire to fit each lesson on a single sheet, this does make filing it, less-than-ideal :)

Along with the student pages, for the Beginner level, we received the Beginner Time Line. This is a set of beautiful, 8 1/2x11 glossy, heavy-weight cardstock, pages. Ideally, you would hang these on the wall. They move chronologically through the Bible, with each card asking a simple question for the children to answer. As a part of each lesson, you review the previous cards and, if applicable, add a new card. You can see samples of these cards on the product page.

Our final product for the Beginner Level was the Children's Songs CD Set. This is a 2 CD set with 90 a capella songs, some are typical kids' religious songs, others are specific to this curriculum. You can see a list of all the included songs and hear samples of a few on the product page. Both Little Bit and E really liked the song, "One Day" about the days of creation.

For Sassy and MiniMe, I decided to go with the Advanced Level, which is listed as being for 5th and 6th grade. Again, we don't really "do" grade levels. For reporting to the state, I rather arbitrarily call them 4th graders, but much of their school work is probably more at a 5th or 6th grade level. After looking over the samples for both Intermediate (3rd an 4th grade) and Advanced, I decided the Advanced definitely wouldn't be "too advanced" (ha ha) for them to handle. As with the Beginner Student Pages, these are on a tear-away pad, one page for each lesson, and you can see a sample on the product page.

The final product we received was the Bible Book Summary Cards. These are used with the Advanced Level student pages. There's one card for each book of the Bible, with "memory jogger" pictures on the front, and a summary of the chapter on the back. They look similar to the Bible Timeline Cards (but they're 2-sided, so hanging them on the wall wouldn't work as well). You can see samples on the product page.

So, how did we use it? The front cover of each pad of student pages, included suggestions for how to use the products, and we also received a page of instructions in the package with everything. That page included suggestions for using the products with multiple ages. After some trial and error, we settled into a routine where I look over both levels ahead of time, and pick any good "group activities" from either that look like they'd work well for the whole group. If one of those is an "introductory" type activity, we do that first. Then I go over the "review" section with the little kids while the big girls do theirs on their own. At first I tried reading the Bible passages aloud to everyone but we found that the breaks to fill out the worksheets didn't line up between the two ages, and with Little Bit and Jared being so close to the lower age limit, that was too much sitting still for them, even when I used an easy-to-read version. Once I determined that the verses didn't line up anyway, I just told teh big girls to read their verses on their own and work at their own speed. Instead of reading the full Bible passage to the little kids, I read the "summary story" that's listed on the back, next to the pictures, and had them do the coloring and circling as suggested. J decided he didn't even want to do that, and usually just cuddled on my lap during our Bible time. That actually made it a LOT easier, because it meant I could use his pages as my "teacher's guide". We found that on days that E and J joined us, it worked best to divide a lesson over 2 days. Sometimes when it was just the 3 girls, and I could keep things moving exactly at Little Bit's pace, it worked ok to complete a whole lesson in one day.

I think this would be a wonderful product for a church or other group to use, in which each age/grade range had their own class. It would be really great to have everything build on itself between classes, so that when a child moved into the new class, they would pick up right at the same place in the curriculum that they'd been at in their former class. I did not find that it truly worked to work together with multiple ages (it might work with a smaller age span (say 3-6th graders), as I mentioned, the verses didn't line up, and even when they did, it was alot of reading for such little ones.

Little Bit and E enjoyed this curriculum. Telling little bits of the story, and then stopping and doing something on the worksheet helps to keep their interest. I really like the idea of reviewing a few things from previous lessons each day, to help them continue remembering what we've already learned.

The big girls were not fans of this curriculum, at least the way we used it. I think we could have "made it work" for them, if I'd only been dealing with them, or them and other children nearer their age. Our Bible times have always included plenty of discussion and I think that was something they really missed. Because the Beginner student pages required complete teacher involvement, I didn't have any time/attention to devote to interacting with them, beyond answering specific questions.  Even if we could have solved that problem, they simply found the lessons too easy. They enjoyed the map part, and sometimes, the timeline, but the actual "Discover the Bible" section, they said was way too easy for them, and therefore "boring".  I don't know what the solution to that would be. I also don't know that their level of Bible knowledge is typical of 10 yr olds, we've always focused pretty heavily on Bible, with lots of discussion, in our home, so they may be significantly "above grade level" when it comes to Bible? I honestly don't know.

One suggestion I would make, for anyone choosing to use this with more than one child, it is definitely worth the extra $6/level, to buy yourself a copy of the Student Pages (or alternately, look into getting the Teacher guide, I don't know what it's like. If it doesn't include an exact replica of the student pages, I'd still get the student pages). As I mentioned above, since J didn't want to use his, I was able to use his, but otherwise it would have been frustrating to have to keep taking it back from one of the kids to read the next part and see what the directions were.

While we don't plan to continue using the Student Pages at this time (I may use them in the future with Little Bit, I don't know), I DO plan to continue using the other resources we received.

The CD includes quite a few songs that teach various Bible facts set to catchy tunes. My only complaint, for those using it, as intended, with the student pages, is that the songs aren't in the order they are presented in the curriculum.  In the age of mp3 players, this isn't a huge deal, I ripped the CDs onto my laptop and set up a playlist on amazon music that put the songs we needed in the order we needed them, but if you don't have that capability, within the first couple days we were already using 2 songs that were nowhere near each other on the CDs.

We are planning to work chronologically through the Bible beginning next month, and I plan to pull songs from the CD, as they fit into our Bible study. I also plan to use the Bible Book Summary Cards as we begin each new book of the Bible, introducing the new book, and reviewing the previous ones.

The Beginner Timeline is an awesome way for little ones to learn the chronology of the Bible. Little Bit's class at church goes through the Bible chronology on a one-year cycle, so I think when we start back through in January, I will use these in conjunction with reading her the Bible story each day.

I know that, while this, as a whole, wasn't a good fit for my older kids, many other crew members found it to be a good fit for their families, so be sure to read their reviews as well. You can click the banner below to see all the reviews for this product.

Weekly Wrap-up - Aug 4

We had a quiet week compared to the last couple, LOL.

I covered most of Sunday in my Boston post. When we got home, we found out that our neighbor, E had been sick and was in the hospital for dehydration.  So, since his mom was staying at the hospital with him, and his dad needed to work on Monday, his little brother, J, came and hung out with us on Monday.

Little Bit was THRILLED to have her friend here all day our first day back :-) So it worked well.

Tuesday was our "try to get back to normal" day with groceries (beyond the bare necessities that I grabbed Sunday evening),

By Wednesday, E was home and back to normal, so he came over to do school with us. J came for a little while but HE wasn't feeling well, so went home soon thereafter. In addition to normal school, the big girls decided to "teach" E and Little Bit to play soccer. They got out their soccer goal net, and the cones and had quite the training camp going out there. Since it meant all 4 kids playing happily without fighting, I was all for it :)

Thursday is normally music lesson day, but last week Miss Pat was out-of-town, so, we did school, and ran a few more errands.  The library's summer reading program is set up such that for every 5 books a kid reads (or for longer books, every 50 pages counts as one book), she gets a token to put in a big "gum ball" machine. Inside are the little plastic capsules filled with stickers, junky little toys, etc. Little Bit had cashed in a couple slips before our trip, but the big girls finally got some of their slips filled out, and turned them in. Sassy turned in 8 slips and MiniMe turned in 4 or 5 (and has more to turn in, that's just all she got done by the time we needed to go to the library). Of Sassy's 8 tokens, 4 of them were coupons for a free ice cream at Chik-fil-a. MiniMe got one ice cream coupon. Little Bit was thrilled with stickers LOL. So, we HAD to stop for ice cream on our way home :)

Friday, the weather was GORGEOUS!! I couldn't bring myself to make everyone come inside for circle time, so we just played outside most of the morning, with the big girls coming in for some school at one point.

Friday night we lit a fire in the fire pit and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and had corn-on-the-cob and oven roasted potatoes to go with them. YUM!!! What an awesome way to welcome in Shabbat!

Sabbath was a typical, busy Sabbath. Church, lunch at the church, and supper with our neighbors. Nice to be home and into our normal routines, crazy as they sometimes are :)

And my picture of the week (LOL).  Little Bit wanted to mop, and insisted she need BOTH sets of mop shoes (and yes, she also chose her own outfit, why do you ask?):

Crew Review: Legacy Documentaries

Growing up, I loved the Little House on the Prairie books! My friend and I read them over and over and then we'd rope our younger siblings into acting them out with us, over and over!  So, as soon as Sassy and MiniMe were old enough to enjoy chapter books, we read the Little House books, and they loved them too!! We even did a whole school year focusing on the Little House books for history.  So, when Legacy Documentaries gave us the chance to choose between TWO DVDs about the Wilders, one focusing on Laura, and the other, on her husband, Almanzo, I was thrilled! And for once, I honestly didn't care WHICH one I got, I love learning more about Laura, but I've never heard much about Almanzo, besides what Laura put in her book, Farmer Boy so, learning more about him sounded fascinating too. We ended up getting Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura.

As soon as I knew we'd be getting it, I dug out our audiobook version of Farmer Boy and we all listened to it in the car over the next couple of weeks.

By the time we'd finished the book, our DVD had arrived, and we were all anxious to watch it!

As the title suggests,Almanzo Wilder: Life Before Laura is a documentary about Almanzo Wilder's childhood. It is available for $21.95. It's a great video for the whole family, but the target audience is ages 8-13, the reading ages for the Little House books.

The video is shot mostly at the restored Wilder Homestead in New York state. The "narrator" for the video is Dean Butler, who played Almanzo on the Little House TV series. It uses a combination of recreating/acting out scenes on the homestead, quotes and drawings from the books, and narration to share details about Almanzo Wilder's childhood.

I think the biggest thing the girls and I took away from this video was a strong desire to go visit the Wilder Homestead! In fact, as we were watching the DVD, I was googling to see just how far away it is from us. Unfortunately, while New York is our "next door state", the Wilder homestead is about as far away from us as you can get and still be in the state of New York, sigh . . . I'm still adding it to our "someday field trip" list though :)

The girls were disappointed that the DVD didn't really give much additional information on his childhood beyond what Farmer Boy already tells us. They, and I, were hoping for additional historic information about his life, and there wasn't much on that.

I think this would be a great resource for a Homeschool Group Library to have available for their members to use, or for a group of families to go together to buy and share with each other. It's not a video that I'd expect most people to watch over and over, which is something I look at when purchasing resources. I'm glad to have it, and it's a great addition to my "Little House Unit Study" shelf, but I find the price higher than I'd be willing to pay for the amount of use we will get out of it.

Click on the link below to see what other Crew members thought of this video, as well as one about Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Boston!

And now (finally) the rest of our week in Boston . . .  (part one is here)

Wednesday we finally made it into Boston. We went on an interesting tour in the morning about Samuel Adams to the site of the Boston Massacre, Old State House, and the Old South Meeting House. Then we visited some sites on our own, ate lunch in the Chipotles that is now housed in a building that was the publishing house that Alcott, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and several other authors whose names escape me at the moment, visite the Great Hall in Faneuil Hall where we happened to catch a ranger talk about the Great Hall. I had to laugh, there were probably at least 20 people at the talk, but the only ones the ranger interacted with were Sassy and MiniMe, who were, of course, on the front row LOL.

Then we headed out for another tour. This one was about Paul Revere and led us by his house and the Old North Church. Right away the ranger (Ranger Eric) zeroed in on Sassy and MiniMe and appointed them his assistants. The rest of the tour, they walked with him, talked to him as they walked, and had the time of their lives! After the tour, mom and I were talking to Ranger Eric for a few minutes and thanked him for involving the girls in his tour. He said he could see in their eyes that they're really into history, so knew they'd be great assistants :)

It was an EXCELLENT tour, but involved quite abit of walking. In anticipation of that, and the fact that, while Little Bit rarely naps anymore, she does still get tired and fussy in the afternoons, I had brought along my trusty wrap. I bought this wrap when the twins were 2 or 3, and it has served me VERY well! Little Bit's never been big on baby carriers but now, at almost 4 1/2 she's decided it's a pretty cool thing LOL. I put her on my back and she fell asleep. Can I just say, despite being THE BEST (IMO) carrier for heavy toddlers, when you NEVER wear a toddler on your back, walking long distances with a 4 1/2 yr old on your back finds muscles you'd forgotten existed LOL. Still WAY easier than carrying her OR dealing with a tired, fussy, whiny 4 yr old would have been!

After the tour, and after Little Bit had woken up, we noticed a cute little door in the side of Old North Church. No idea what the door is for, but it was pretty cool to see a door that makes Little Bit look like a giant. She thought it was cool too :)

Then we stopped and watched a chocolate-making demonstration (all 3 are my kids, they all love the very rich, VERY dark, colonial drinking chocolate! GOOD STUFF!!!) and also a printer. I was thrilled to see that in this smaller, more one-on-one (or one-on-three, anyway) environment, Little bit seemed to actually be interested as well. I'm hopeful that she'll start to catch the history fever this fall at Williamsburg.

Next we headed back along our tour route to actually tour through Paul Revere's house. There's an extra fee to tour the house so Papa and Rodney decided to take Little Bit across the street to a "park" area to run around while Mama and I took the big girls through the house.

The Junior Ranger book had a note saying that you could try on colonial clothes there, so we asked and sure enough. AND there weren't any kids' dress-up clothes either. They were authentic colonial clothes!! The girls, especially MiniMe, were IN HEAVEN! There was only one outfit, so we had to take turns, AND photos weren't allowed in the house, so we had to dress one kid up, take her outside and take her picture, then go back inside so the other kid could get dressed, then back outside to take HER picture. And I must admit, they ARE identical twins, sometimes they seem SOO different to me, but when they're dressed the same AND have their hair up, yeah, they look kinda similar LOL.

Thursday we headed back into Boston. But this time my parents had some National Park passport stamps they wanted to get, so they went to do that while our family went back to the Freedom Trail. Our first stop was the Boston Gardens where I wanted to make sure we saw the sculpture of "Make Way for the Ducklings" all 3 girls thought it was cool!

Then we gave Little Bit the choice to hang out with Daddy by the duck sculpture or go with the big girls and me to tour more buildings. She chose the ducks LOL. I think she made a good choice, while we were enjoying history, more on that in a minute, Daddy spoiled her at Starbucks, where she also got to watch some Netflix on the iPad, a TREAT after a week at a hotel with such a slow internet connection that Netflix wouldn't work on the iPad! Then they rode a carousel and played at a playground at Boston Commons :)

Meanwhile, the big girls and I headed back up the Freedom Trail. Our first stop was the Old South Meetinghouse. We'd been outside it during our tour on Wednesday, but this time we went inside! I've always been abit confused as to how speeches to large groups worked pre-electricity. We got a taste of it on Wednesday in the Great Hall, where the ranger's voice echoed, plenty loud, through the whole space.  Even more interesting, in the Old South Meetinghouse, we saw a "sounding board" above the podium, to bounce the sound out to the audience, how cool is that?!?!

We also toured the Old State House, VERY COOL, including an interactive area for younger kids! Then headed back to see how Daddy and Little Bit were doing. It was lunchtime, so we ate lunch and then went to visit Cheers for Daddy's benefit, but it was MOBBED, so he just peeked inside and called it good :)

By then it had started raining, so we scrapped sightseeing for awhile and took a Starbucks break :) When the rain stopped we decided to go back to the Old State House and let Little Bit enjoy the interactive area. There's a fee for adults, but kids are free, so Rodney waited outside while I took all 3 kids in. We'd been there a little while when they announced a living history thing, where someone dressed up like, and pretended to be, someone from history, and gave a talk/answered questions. Sassy and MiniMe LOVE LOVE LOVE stuff like that, so I told them to go ahead and go to it while I stayed in the next room with Little Bit happily playing. While that was still going on, my parents got back from their adventures and it was raining again, so when the living history thing was over we all headed back to the hotel.

Friday we went to Charlestown Navy Yard. On Wednesday, when we'd talked to Ranger Eric, we'd found out that he'd be giving tours there on Thursday and Friday (both areas are considered Boston National Historic Park, so the rangers move between them), and we hoped we'd be able to figure out and take another of his tours at Charlestown. As SOON as we got there, we happened to see him, and he was just getting ready to lead a tour to Bunker Hill, so we joined in.  Again, he talked with Sassy and MiniMe the whole time we were walking, they loved it! Little Bit still isn't into all this talking, she entertained herself playing peek-a-boo and such LOL.

After our tour, my parents took the big girls up the 294 steps to the top of the Bunker Hill Memorial. Much to Little Bit's dismay, I only let her go up the first 75 steps, then told her it was time to come down, she was doing good but as tired as MY legs were getting, I knew she'd hit a breaking point before much longer and I really didn't want to have to carry her DOWN those steep spiral stairs (because we had planned to wait and do a tour in the afternoon, I hadn't carried my wrap from the car, and didn't have time to go back for it and still join Ranger Eric's tour, so I didn't have it along).

After lunch we waited for.ev.er! To get to tour the USS Constitution "Old Ironsides" SOOO COOOL!! Even Little Bit got into it a little bit LOL.

Next we headed to the museum where there was TONS of interactive stuff. The kids had a blast "sleeping" in ship hammocks, "cooking", sanding the "deck" and climbing in the "rigging".

Finally, near closing time, we headed back to the visitor center to get their Junior Ranger badges. Because the visitor center is in the Navy Yard (I guess?), you have to go through security to get to it. As we were waiting through security, my mom saw Ranger Eric go into the Visitor Center, and commented that it would be really cool if HE could give the girls their Junior Ranger Badges. By the time we got through security, he was nowhere to be seen, but Mom asked at the Ranger desk and they called him. He was just leaving, had changed out of his uniform and, I think, was literally on his way out the door, but when he heard the girls' request, he agreed. The counter was too high for Little Bit to see, so I was holding her and couldn't take pictures. My dad got some pictures, so hopefully sometime soon I'll remember and get his pictures. Because the girls had done the requirements for both downtown Boston AND the Charlestown Navy Yard, they also got a "Master Junior Ranger". Instead of being a badge shape like most of them it's a round button with a picture of a ranger hat on it, and Eric mentioned, as he was giving them to the girls, that it's actually a picture of his hat, that he photoshopped to make the buttons. The girls thought that was SOO COOL!!

And proof that Ranger Eric made an impression with all THREE of my girls, later in our trip, when I said something about going to talk to the ranger, Little Bit asked "can we find Ranger Eric?" So she's a member of his fan club too LOL.

Sabbath we started our trip home, but took some time to visit New Beford Whaling on our way. It was fascinating! While I was helping the girls with their Junior Rangers, the woman (not sure if she was a volunteer or ranger) behind the desk told my mom that in a little while she and another woman would be dressed as "Ruth and Abby" from the 19th century, and in a garden nearby. So, after we finished up most of their Junior Ranger requirements, we went in search of Ruth and Abby.  We found them, and one of them (Ruth?) was knitting. She proceeded to teach both MiniMe and Sassy the stitch she was doing, and let them practice on her project, and write down the pattern for her. The girls stayed talking to them forEVER, and had a blast!!

Sunday was mostly driving home, but before we headed out, we stopped by Springfield Armory so dad could get some passport stamps, and since we were there, the girls decided to do the Junior Ranger there as well. I have to say, I'd hoped there would be more about the history of the Armory itself and less "boring" (for us girls, anyway) stuff about the specifics of various guns. But the girls stuck with it and finished that Junior Ranger too. I think the only reason MiniMe stuck it out was the promise that the final requirement was to make a "doll", she LOVED that part! And it WAS a cool idea! They gave the kids a little kit that had a wire hanger bent into a person shape and then the kids used yarn and fabric scraps to make a "Rosie the Riveter" type doll. On the drive home MiniMe proceeded to use the embroidery floss she had along for her current cross stitch project to add a face and other details to her doll LOL.

Most of the requirements were over Little Bit's head, but she enjoyed the puzzles and crafts, and thought it was fun to "be a park ranger" LOL.

One of the questions for the big girls was to estimate how many muskets were in a "gun organ" there in the armory. MiniMe, who's usually my "everything must be done perfectly" child, rolled her eyes, groaned, and said "can I just say 1,000?" Yup! And we moved on. But Sassy wanted to actually figure it out. I'm not sure how much help my dad gave her, but she got within about 50 of the actual number, so I was impressed!

Once we finished at the Armory we found a Chipotles for lunch and then headed home. It was a fun trip, but it was good to sleep in my own bed, and start back into our normal routines :)

By my rough count, Springfield Armory was Junior Ranger #40 for the big girls, give or take a couple that I might be forgetting, or that they started but didn't finish.

The final list of Junior Rangers earned on this trip (for all 3 girls) is:
Saugus Ironworks
Minuteman
Lowell
Adams
Boston/Charlestown
New Bedford Whaling
Springfield Armory

Not to shabby for a little over a week, huh? :)