Girl Scout Cookie Booth Sale

Caroline attended her first booth sale today!
It is very windy and chilly out, but she did great.

Dallas World Aquarium

Yesterday, we went to the Dallas World Aquarium with our friends, the Daltons. Cameron is Joseph's best friend (Joseph talks about their twin bond ;)). We had a really good time there and it was fun to have a grown-up for ME to play with.

Here is one of those rare Libby smiles...


Love Parrots....


Caroline drawing the fish (we took drawing books with us which attracted a lot of attention yesterday, for some reason).




Check out the giant sea turtle behind Libby....


Joseph's favorite animal....


The stinky penguins...


A thoughtful Joseph...


Cameron drawing...


and the amazing Three-Toed Sloth. It is amazing how long he can remain absolutely still.

World Thinking Day

On Tuesday, it was World Thinking Day at Girl Scouts. Each of the girls was supposed to present on a different country. Libby and Caroline (and Joseph!) presented Germany. They wore their costumes and did the Chicken Dance for the rest of the troop. Joseph was a real sport!
We go to Girl Scouts straight from Scottish Rite, so the kids decided that the best thing to do was to wear their costumes TO Scottish Rite. So, they wore them from 8:00-1:00 that day.

Interrupting a sister moment

The other day, I looked outside and saw the girls like this. I just love that they are this close!

Animal Adaptations

We have started a new unit in Moving Beyond the Page. We are now in Animal Adaptations. The kids are pretty fascinated by this and have enjoyed some of the things we have gotten to do. I utilized my iTouch for this unit and downloaded a couple of episodes of Extreme Animals (they air on Animal Planet). The kids enjoyed getting their individual turns with the ipod.
Joseph was quite impressed with the Water Bear. SO much so, that when instructed to create a character for a book that would represent himself as an animal, he chose the Water Bear.
Today, we looked at special adaptations needed for living in the desert and in the arctic. For the arctic, we did an experiment simulating "blubber".
First, the kids put the hands in a bowl of ice to see how long they could keep it there.
Libby is our cold loving girl and she lasted about 45 seconds.

Notice Caroline looking anxiously over Libby's shoulder. She was not thrilled with the idea of putting her hand in a bowl of ice. She touched the ice so she could see how cold it felt (yes, she is the one that was born in Vermont.)

Joseph was so fast that I couldn't get a picture (seriously, about 3 seconds).

Once we had our blubber mitten on though, it was MUCH easier.
Joseph made it all the way to 2 minutes


We made Libby stop after 5 minutes


Here is Caroline watching the stopwatch for Libby...


Caroline is still not thrilled with the ice thing, but she did say it was much better with blubber.


The blubber, for inquiring minds, is crisco sandwiched between two ziploc bags. I taped the edges together to make a mitten that the could put their hand into.

Oh, and yes, they were doing the experiment in character today. We had Underdog, Princess and Little Red Riding Hood.

A paragraph

Joseph wrote a paragraph today. That wouldn't seem like such a big deal, but is a HUGE deal around here. Especially since he got it done in less than thirty minutes (and it didn't take threats, and lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth).
That's a major breakthrough for us!

Medieval Times

Last night, Joseph's cub scout pack paid for ever scout and their family to go to Medieval Times. The younger three had never been and they had a BLAST! Caroline and Libby both caught flowers tossed up by our Knight. Caroline commented that there were not many parts for girls at the show (it's all knights and squires and there is only ONE princess).
The show was part of our Blue and Gold Ceremony. Joseph is now an official WEBELO!
Caroline with her flower....


Libby and her flower....


"Joseph, I want to take your picture."


"Let's try that again, Joseph."


"OK, one more time Joseph. Don't wave the flag and look at the camera."

Back to the Nasher

Today we had our second homeschool class at the Nasher. It was another fabulous class!
Today they talked about the subject matter in Segal's sculptures (ordinary, everyday people doing ordinary everyday things). Joseph went with the "big" kids again and I stayed with the girls.
The girls learned about how Segal would pose his friends and then they tried out poses on hinged paper dolls and told the teacher about their poses. Caroline made hers dance and Libby's was swimming.




This one was doing a very complicated yoga pose.


For the project today, they made their own miniature scenes of everyday things.
Joseph chose a scene from a movie ("Hotel for Dogs"). His is a man sitting on a bench eating a hot dog and a dog sitting on a trash can with a banana peel on his head waiting to snatch the hot dog.






Libby kept hers a secret until she was finished. I am not sure if that was because she didn't want us to know or if it was because SHE didn't know. ;)
Hers is a very tall pink hotel in the background with a girl eating cotton candy in the foreground.








Caroline's scene really was from her life. She did her Karate class. In the background are the mirrors, the mats are on the floor and little karate girl is the sculpture (complete with curls and a belt).

Our Valentines

Here are the Valentines that we made this year. For the last three years, we have done the recycled crayons into multi-colored hearts and they turn our super cute and they are very well received. But, I was tired of them.
So, this year, my man, Steve Spangler gave us a new idea.
We are giving out Baby Soda Bottle Lava Lamps.

Since the idea of giving out EMPTY Baby Soda Bottles didn't sit well with us, we filled them with SweetTart SweetHearts.

In our family, we make a group valentine and we all help out. I typed and printed the instructions and the quotes. The kids cut, glued, signed and addressed.

Our loves quotes are direct from Albert Einstein.

The first step in making the lava lamp (once the kids get them home tomorrow) is to 3/4 fill the bottle with cheap vegetable oil.

Then fill it the rest of the way with water.
Add the fizzy tabs (if they want to try this again another time, food coloring and alka seltzer will get the same effect).

The bubbles will start forming....Isn't it pretty?

And this is courtesy of Steve Spangler's website:

How does it work?First of all, we know that oil and water do not mix. The molecules of water do not like to mix with the molecules of oil. Even if you try to really shake-up the bottle, the oil breaks up into small little drops, but the oil doesn’t mix with the water. Food coloring only mixes with water. That’s why it does not color the oil. When you poured the water into the soda bottle with the oil, the water sank to the bottom. That’s because water is heavier than oil. Scientists say that the water is more dense than the oil. If oil from a ship spills in the ocean, the oil floats on top of the water. Here’s the surprising part... The Alka-Seltzer tablet (we used fizzy tabs instead of alka seltzer) reacted with the water to make tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas. These bubbles attached themselves to the blobs of colored water and cause them to float to the surface. When the bubbles popped, the color blobs sank back to the bottom of the bottle. Now that’s a burst of color!

Libby is reading!

I am so excited for her!
She has made that jump beyond having to sound out every.single.word. Last night she read me three first grade readers and made appropriate comments about the story line and she used the context of the sentence to give her clues...all the things that Joseph and Caroline seemed to do instinctively that Libby has really struggled with.
Yay Libby!

Young Impressionists

The kids are currently studying Europe and reading Charlotte in Giverny in Moving Beyond the Page. During the course of reading the book, they had a study of Monet that they are doing.
First, we learned that Joseph can never be an impressionist. He is very exact in his pictures and they ALL take a really long time for him to do. And he got cold.
The girls, on the other hand, have more of an appreciation for this style, especially Caroline because speed is the name of the game when it comes to art for her.
Here are the girls doing a study of water reflections. Joseph went home with nothing on his paper because it was too cold and windy.








Joseph has enjoyed the rest of this unit though. He is very into the European maps. He insisted on doing both of the "food" projects even though it said to pick one. So we are having vegetable soup tonight AND we are doing a poll of family members to pick our favorite types of jams (and we got them from La Madeleine which makes it extra yummy!)