Monday, May 5, 2008

-Played outside. I'm making a stone pathway in the back yard and the girls helped me with a bit of digging for that. We dug up some sort of chrysalis or something - not too sure what it was - and they spent a lot of time examining it.
-Astrid decided that she'd like to catch a butterfly. She tried to run around and catch one in her butterfly net, but that didn't work, so she devised a trap using a jar, a plastic container and her net. She baited it with various flowers that she collected from around the yard since she knew that butterflies eat nectar from flowers. She never did catch one, but she enjoyed trying.
-The girls experimented with the pigments from different leaves and flowers by "drawing" with them on the white siding.
-We observed a large black and white spider in the garage.
-The girls each did a few math activities on the computer. Astrid did a bunch that involved counting by 5s and 10s and some involving counting money. Muirgen did some mainly about shapes.
-We went to the opening of the art exhibit "To Catch a Baby" in honour of International Midwifery Day at the Artel. We got to visit with the midwives who assisted at Muirgen's and August's births.
-We ran into the Peter's at the exhibit and walked over to the park with them where we were all going to have a Mexican fiesta with some more of our friends. In the park we met a man named Acorn who was a tight rope walker. He had his tight rope set up and let us all have turns trying it. Our friends from the fiesta came and tried it too.
-We all went and ate Mexican food, listened to Mexican music and hit a pinata.

Tuesday, April 29, 2007

-Worked on memory verses.
-Made fabric collages. The backboards we used were pieces of our old kitchen ceiling tiles! Muirgen is in a phase where she feels that Astrid's creations always turn out better than hers, so she began this project by copying Astrid. Thankfully, she eventually veered down her own path.

-Astrid helped make baked oatmeal for lunch.
-The girls did some addition and subtraction on the front window with the window markers. Astrid practiced writing her spelling words (names of fruit) next to pictures of the fruit which I drew for her on the window.
-They listened to music and played.
-We walked downtown with some of our friends to get ice cream at Ben and Jerry's. Today was free cone day!
-The girls played and cleaned up while I made supper and then it was off to AWANA.
-They helped me put the groceries away when we got home.

Monday, April 28, 2008

-Last week, inspired by our friends, the Lovedays, we decided to do some still life drawing. We have a lot of practicing to do before we're as good as they are, but we had fun and were all pleased with what we drew considering it was our first time trying this. Muirgen's tomato, to which she felt compelled to add a cloud

bananas, as seen by Astrid and myself

-We spent the weekend with my parents who were down for a visit. We took them to the library, to a fundraising concert at which one of Jason's bands (The Gertrudes) performed,to the playground, to the ice cream shop, on a walk around Kingston, to the flea market and to church. Grandpa read books to the girls and they did yard work with Grandma.
-Today the girls worked on their memory verses.
-They played in our rather wet basement. I don't know what they were doing, exactly, but I could hear them singing every song they could think of that was about rain. When I went down later I noticed that the water which had been running down the slightly sloping floor in little rivulets had been swept about to cover the entire floor.
-They spent an hour and a half playing with their friend, Hannah. Part of that time was spent outside in the rain, splashing in puddles and so forth.
-We read the first three chapters of 'On the Banks of Plum Creek' by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
-Last week we spent some time acting out the life cycle of a butterfly using receiving blankets to be our eggs, our food, our chrysalises and our wings. We were unsure about what butterflies do after they migrate south and mate. So today I asked Astrid if she thought we could find that information in any of the books we have in our little library. She pulled out a book about insects and the children's encyclopedia. We checked the insect book first. She used the table of contents to look up the section on butterflies and moths and found the page about them which we read. It did not contain the information we were looking for, so she looked up "butterfly" in the encyclopedia. It did not have the information either, but we managed to find it in the section on "migration".
-The girls listened to music and spent a fair amount of time playing Little House. August got to be baby Carrie. He's fairly willing to play the role at this point!

Recently

Well, I'm falling off the wagon again!
Here are a few of the things we've done in the last week or so:
-Finished reading 'Little House on the Prairie' by Laura Ingalls
-Prepared a Little House dinner from the Little House cookbook. We made baked beans, creamed carrots, mashed potatoes and rye'n'injun bread (which Jason tried to convince the girls to call rye'n'corn bread, but to no avail, despite talking about why he thought the name from the book was no longer a very good idea).
-Read more of the pioneer story and the underground railroad story both by Barbara Greenwood.
-Spent a lot of time outside playing and doing yard work. The girls spent an entire day with our next door neighbours, Tammy and Maria, helping them put gardens in their back yard which had been badly neglected by the previous owner. It's looking great!
-Observed ants, caterpillars, earth worms and flies. Astrid managed to catch a fly with her butterfly net and put it in a jar with an ant to see what would happen.
-Did some watercolour painting.

-Built forts in the back yard.
-Astrid did some workbook pages in math and geography.
-Hung butcher paper on the fence on which the girls made a mural using oil pastels, crayons, paints, stickers and feathers.

Tuesday, April 8, 2007

-We had circle time and worked on memory verses.
-Astrid hung up half a load of laundry. It was the first time in 2008 that we hung it outside!
-The girls played outside for much of the day. They set up a school on the deck for their dolls and played on the swing set. They pulled weeds from the gardens.
-We read a chapter from the Little House on the Prairie cookbook. (It contains a lot of information - not just recipes).
-The girls helped me plan our menu and grocery list for the coming week. They picked recipes out of the books we got at the library, including the Little House one.
-We finished making our tin can lanterns.
-Muirgen and I played a game from the Montessori learn to read program. The first step is to be able to recognize the first sound in a word (Montessori teaches sounds before letter names) which she can do without any trouble. The second step is to recognize the final sound in a word. She has a little more trouble with this, but grasps the idea and can often figure it out. We moved on to the game that helps learn this concept. We'll probably play it a bunch more before moving on.
-The girls went to AWANA.
-When they got home, they put away the groceries I bought while they were there.

Monday, April 8, 2008

-Last night after the girls were in bed I wrote some math problems on the front door with the window markers for Astrid and some shapes to trace for Muirgen. When I came down this morning, they had done them.
-Had circle time.
-Girls worked on memory verses. For Astrid, along with memorization, this includes looking up specific verses in the bible.
-They helped me make bread (in the machine).
-We read some more of 'The Last Safe House'. It talked about how escaping slaves knew that a house was safe because its occupants would hang a lantern in the upstairs window. So we started making lanterns of our own out of tin cans. We drew dotted designs on them with markers and tomorrow we plan to use a hammer and nails to punch out the holes for a candle's light to shine through.
-We baked gingerbread cookies.

-The girls listened to music and danced.
-They played outside. I think they continued on with their imaginary farm that they thought up yesterday.
-Astrid completed two pages in her math workbook. I find that if I just leave it laying around where she's likely to see it, more often than not she'll flip it open and do a bit of work in it.
-Brandon, our house mate, arrived back today after being away for nine weeks. The girls spent supper filling him in on every detail he's missed.

Sunday, April 6, 2007

-We went to church.
-The girls played outside for the whole afternoon. They helped me with a little yard work, clearing out the debris from last years gardens since we didn't get to it in the Fall. They pretended they were on a farm. They mixed up strange concoctions in pails using snow, ice, water, mud, etc. They built a bonfire (which they couldn't actually light). They swung on the swing set. They did many other things that I'm not aware of!
-They listened to music and played instruments along with it.
-While I was out this evening, they watched a nature documentary with Jason.