Summer School

Self Portraits
Fun flying fish project

4th of July t-shirts Abby's shirt.

Our 'classroom'.
Michelle in the classroom
Another view of the classroom.

My kids love school and playing school. On the days that I work, I give Abby a class plan and she is the substitute teacher. She loves to be in charge. My mother in law's house has a neat 2nd floor landing we've taken over as our school room. The mess bugs her, but we try to keep it neat.

A few of our recent activities: We studied fish and then made a fun craft flying fish. We each had a package of m and m's we counted and then made a graph showing how many of each color was in each bag. We made self portraits. Last week we had a t-shirt making party. Six friends came to decorate t-shirts for the 4th of July. We also made strawberry freezer jam. For exercises we've been jumping rope, playing in the sprinklers and throwing water balloons.

Upcoming activities: more freezer jam, first the kids get to help pick the berries. Sewing scripture bags using placemats. We will also study birds and then paint cute bird houses I found at the dollar store. We've blown lots of bubbles, but I want to add food coloring and blow them onto paper. I have a fun science book with lots of neat experiments we plan to use in the upcoming weeks.

Abby and Peter also have jobs. They get up each morning at 6am to help change sprinklers. Then we go back out in the evening to change them again. They have also been out almost daily to help Rick with other farm related activities.

Here are a couple fun websites I've been using:http://kidscraftweekly.com/ , http://www.starfall.com/ , http://www.funbrain.com/

for some reason blogger is not letting me put spaces between my paragraphs-sorry

Laundry Update

The sheets have been saved. The shorts, too. The waist band is very stiff and feels like it may be quite scratchy, but they were salvageable. The blanket was not. I could not get very much of the gaak out of it. It looked like a snail threw up all over the blanket. It was an older down blanket and most of the down had moved to the bottom edges, we decided we could sacrifice it.

Note:
It is not a good idea to type "removing gaak from clothing" into your search engine. Lot of strange things come up.

A Little Laundry Help Please!

No, I'm not going to ask you to help fold or put it away. Instead I need a bit of wisdom and advice.

Last night in celebration of my birthday, we went to a fun local pizza place. While there, we let the kids play the super cool video games. Peter spent a fist full of tokens trying to win a teddy bear for me. Michelle and Cristine tended to play the games with bright flashing lights, while Abby earned enough tickets to buy herself a million small erasers and a bucket of gaak (or is it slime or snot?). Much fun was had playing with that oozing sticky stuff.

When we arrived home, the kids were put through the bedtime routine and hustled off to bed. The gaak, supposedly, was placed on a dresser. This morning when Peter climbed out of bed, the slime was all over his sheets, blanket and shorts, reminiscent of special effects used in alien movies. Except aliens weren't blown to bits and the slime wasn't stuck on his face and hair.

Here's the questions: How in the heck do you get the slimy stuff out of fabric? I've washed it once. The sheets look pretty good, they were washed in warm water. The down blanket and shorts, both dark colors, were washed in cold water. The gaak is still firmly attached to those. Should I wash them again, but with warm water or give it up as a lost cause?

End of the School Year Photos

This is what we made for the teachers; we wrapped mini roses in wrapping paper. We cut out a paper flower and wrote "Thank you for helping me grow". We taped those to skewers and poked them into the plants.
Peter's class went to the Portland Zoo. We rode a train. I now know why people hold their breath when driving through a tunnel. Steam engines stink. You hold your breath so you don't breath in any of the yucky air.

He also rode an 'elephant'. Not quite the cool elephant we rode at the San Diego Zoo, hey sisters anyone have a photo of that?

The zoo has a fun dinosaur exhibit for the summer. The dinosaur move and make noise. When Peter saw the T-rex, he ran right up to it, it's his favorite, as soon as he got close, it growled really loud and scared Peter. He jumped and ran back to me. A little girl in a stroller started crying and had to be carried out. Maybe it was too life like.
Hey buddy, cool dinosaur.
Watch for this one, he spits.

Abby's music teacher chose her to sing with a trio at the school concert. She was so excited. She did a great job. It was a fun bluesy song from the Wiz. She has a great bluesy, jazzy voice.

We've had a fun school year. The last two weeks have been out of control. 3 field trips, roller skating, class breakfasts and pj day, field day, clean out your desk day. etc. I'm tired and looking forward to a day of sleeping in before my friend and I start jogging at 6am.