Friday, September 10, 2010

Making a Nomad hut


Part of our study on Mesopotamia was regarding the building of different kinds of houses depending on the culture and their livelihoods, especially the nomads. The assignment for this week's history lesson was to create a place for a pet or stuffed animal to live using things you could find in your back yard. I think that the hand towel was a little bit of a stretch but the rest of it was great. They lined the inside of their hut with dry grass so that Stella would have a comfy place to sleep. 9.10

Does it get any sweeter than this?



Dominic with Stella & Krypto. 9.10

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Camping Fun





The kids have been begging to go camping and we thought this would be a good year to give it a try since the kids were old enough to really enjoy it. But being the practical person that I am, I thought that maybe we should have a trial run in the back yard before we attempted the real deal in a new place. So we unpacked the tent and got all the fixings for a fun camping meal. The weather looked great and we thought we would give it a try. The kids enjoyed setting up their beds in the tent and bringing all their books and flashlights out. We made hobo meals (potatoes, kielbasa, onions, carrots, peppers, all mixed together in a foil pouch then placed in a aluminum pan and set into the fire) and campfire cobbler. All of it was super yummy! Then of course we also toasted marshmellows and told stories before tucking the kids into bed and hoping that they would go to sleep. Apparently Labor day weekend is not the night to camp out in your back yard because there are lots of people staying up really late making lots of noise which makes it hard to go to sleep if you are an adult. I tried my best but sleeping on the ground, no matter how padded is not for me. I slipped out at around 3:30am to retreat to the couch for more comfort. Less than 45 minutes later the whole troop was coming up the stairs due to the thunder that they heard. Everyone was awake and hungry. We all ate a bowl of cereal and then crashed into our bed where we all finally got some good sleep! That is my kind of camping.....the kind where I end up in my own bed! 9.5.10

The morning after: Camping




After a nice peaceful sleep in our own bed we decided to continue to pretend that we were camping and we hauled out all the essentials for breakfast by the tent. The leftover hobo meals were mixed into some eggs to make an awesome omelet to go with the whole wheat pancakes Michael whipped up on the griddle. This might be the best camping situation ever. Who needs a campground? 9.5.10

Friday, September 3, 2010

Cave Painting


In studying about ancient civilizations we started to study about early writings, cuneiform, hieroglyphics and cave paintings. The kids got to have a practice session on cave painting today. Dominic decided to paint a spider with red web. They were only allowed to use relevant colors from ancient times: reds, browns, and blacks. 9.3.10

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Happy Birthday Daddy



We celebrated Michael's birthday with pizza, presents and chocolate cherry ice cream cake. Dominic even made him a Superman puzzle when we were at Kaliedescope a few weeks ago. 9.2.10

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

My little Archeologists



We all are loving our new history program this year called Story of the World. One of the fun projects we got to do was an archeological dig that we created in our sand box. We buried things from our time period and then poured water in the sand to let them "set" after a few days we made a grid over the dig site and commenced digging for artifacts. The kids were careful not to damage any of the artifacts we found. We made a grid-map of everything we found. Even the cats participated in the fun. 9.1.10

Daddy's working late



Since we found out that Michael wouldn't be home for dinner we decided to mix it up a bit and have breakfast for dinner. The kids ordered pizza eggs and pancakes and they were very surprised to see how they came out! Yummy. 9.1.10