“Hey kids!  Let’s have a scavenger hunt!”

“Yea!”, “I love scavenger hunts!”

“This is going to be a measuring scavenger hunt.  Okay?”

“Okay”, “Cool”

So I handed them a sheet with the following and gave a little basic instruction on what they were looking for.

FIND SOMETHING THAT IS:

1 - 3 INCHES _____________________

5 - 10 INCHES _____________________

10 - 15 INCHES _____________________

15 - 20 INCHES _____________________

20 - 30 INCHES _____________________

30 - 40 INCHES _____________________

40 - 50 INCHES _____________________

50 - 60 INCHES _____________________

She was to write in what they found and he was to take a picture.  They were over halfway finished and all was going well until he decided to be a typical boy and swing the camera like a lasso over his head and she decided to react like a typical big sister and tell him to stop.  It pretty much deteriorated from there.

Still, I maintain that in some ideal world this could work.

*updated to add a couple of pictures that survived the carnage

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Here is Brother dutifully completing a phonics worksheet.

Here is said worksheet. Not sure what the random gunman at the top has to do with the letter “B” but there you have it.

Each Wednesday, Grandma and Papa bring my niece for an afternoon of play.  The kids do well enough together on their own but today I thought it might be fun to have a project.  Brother’s been learning about cave dwellers and our art book has a great picture of the Lascaux cave paintings.  A quick search turned up this fun art project.

First the making of the mud … I mean, paint.  We collected the dirt ourselves but left the lard making to Crisco.  I’ve been down that road before and it ain’t pretty.

See all those bowls?  You can never have too many shades of brown.

We hung open paper bags in a little alcove outside my front door then had the kids go into their “cave” and start painting.  Technically speaking letting them paint directly on the brick would have been more realistic but the Lascaux paintings have been there for hundreds of years and I wasn’t sure I wanted muddy drawings on my alcove for that long.

Ultimately this experience taught us that although cave paintings may look primitive anyone who can get mud to look like anything other than mud is one heck of an artist.

Lego Attack by Brother

Rock Monster Attack by Sister

Why is stop motion animation so violent?  Peace, Lego people, peace.

Last time we opened boxes from Sonlight I was overwhelmed to say the least.  It seemed like so, so much to cover.  This time Brother joined the ranks of little people to be educated and there arrived even more.  That overwhelmed feeling started to creep in but I reminded myself ~ we don’t have to do it all.  So, like before we’ll take what works, toss what doesn’t and use the tools on our schedule.

It may be worth noting here that last time “our schedule” meant we took a year and a half to complete 9 months of curriculum.  Though in our defense I’ll add that we moved and had a baby during that time.  Ah, c’est la vie.

*This post backdated for chronological reasons.

A tour and ice cream ~ what could be better?

One year for a birthday long, long ago I got Will a magnet of a special sort.  Mostly it sits in a drawer but every now and he takes it out to amaze the children.

The amazing floating top.

Attack of the amazing floating top.

This is what happens when Will has extra time on his hands.  It’s why we try to keep him busy.

*edited to add:

Could this writer possibly have used the word “amazing” any more in this post?  She needs to get a thesaurus. (I always talk in third person when admitting my faults.  It makes me feel less … um … faulty.)

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A read-aloud and cookbooks by fellow bloggers (this one and this one).  Though I don’t know if I can really refer to them as “fellow” bloggers since they each receive more traffic in a day than I see in a year.  Still, a girl can dream.

Food for the soul.

Lessons to be learned

Just Finished on the bottom (Betsy-Tacy recommended here) , In the Queue between (Follow My Leader and The Phantom Tollbooth) and two delightful picture books on top.

I first checked these out from the library and fell in love with their adorable illustrations (Jim Arnosky has a number of wildlife books we like as well.)  Thinking to myself that such small books would most likely be well within budget I headed over to Amazon to place my order.  Imagine my surprise at finding prices started at $49.95 and went up!  Apparently I’m not the only one who likes these out of print books.  For two years I’ve been waiting for them to drop to a reasonable level.  Reasonable being a relative term here since I hardly expected to get them for the $4.95 listed inside the cover.  Finally for a paltry $20 I acquired them both.  I’ve been gratified too to see both the children return to them again and again in the week they’ve been here.

What are you and your children reading?

We belong to an awesome homeschool group.  Our leader is always finding unique opportunities to explore and while we can’t attend everything Tuesday’s event, a guided tour at the Arabian Horse Show, has been on our calendar for over a month. You’ll remember, of course, that we have a little girl ~ an eight year old girl to be exact ~ prime horse lovin’ age.

See that little bit of white in his forelock (the hair between his ears)?  They threw that on special just for us; so we could see how a horse is groomed for a show.  In reality that is probably the most unkempt this horse has been since birth.

Actually Sister’s seen, touched, ridden many a horse at this point but when you’re eight and you love horses it’s always exciting.