The Red Wheelbarrow

2009-08-26 14.59.43, originally uploaded by TeriMomof4.

Along with the US States study, the kids are doing Poetry in Moving Beyond the Page, as I have posted before.
Today, they had to illustrate "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Alaskan food chain

2009-08-26 14.58.03, originally uploaded by TeriMomof4.

Today, the kids had Alaska and Hawaii. We are wrapping up our quick tour of the US regions in Moving Beyond the Page.
Joseph made two Alaskan food chains for one of his assignments.
For dinner, we went to the Hawaiian BBQ place in Frisco which the kids loved. We will definitely be going back there.
The food chain says:
Polar Bear
Fur Seal
Squid
Crabs
Debris

Southwest Region and adobe

2009-08-26 14.57.23, originally uploaded by TeriMomof4.

The kids have been studying regions of the United States in Moving Beyond the Page. Today was the southwest and they made adobe pots.

Summer on the Stage

I haven't posted in a long time. I guess it is time to play catch up!

A few weeks ago, the kids all attended a drama camp and had a blast. The last day was a performance day to show all the skills that they learned. Libby had a cold though, and she didn't feel like performing. Alex brought her up in time to watch Joseph and Caroline.

Caroline was a "blue" person in her play. We are all about costumes here! ;)

Joseph was the king in his show. The kids were divided by age group, so the girls were together in a group called The Actors and Joseph was with the big kids in The Thespian group.

Joseph's group taking a bow

Our Little Engineer

2009-08-06 20.29.27, originally uploaded by TeriMomof4.

Joseph built this last night after his shower. He is kind of amazing with the Keva blocks.

Poetry

We have officially started our new Moving Beyond the Page school year...as of about a week ago. If I had to pick a subject to start the year off for Joseph, it would not be poetry. LOL He is a bit underwhelmed by it, although he did get a momentary surge of interest when he started connecting how patterns played a part in poetry...but, it faded.
Today, we went over Quatrains, Onomatopoeia and Haiku. Onomatopoeia...he can handle. Haiku, not so much.
Here is Joseph's haiku:

Haikus are so lame
they are boring they are lame
haikus are boring.

Well, he DID follow the 5-7-5 syllable rule. :p

Here is Caroline's haiku, which is much more in the spirit of what I expected. You know, all that stuff about haiku being about nature and having imagery and all of that. ;)

bark, pinecones, rocks, sticks
we buld fairy houses outside
and play with our friends

Swim Lessons this week

Last week and this week, the girls have been in swim lessons. I registered them for Level 2 because I wasn't sure which level to put them in. There seemed to be a big difference in the description of the two levels, so I went the cautious route and put them both in Level 2. The first day, they were bumped up to level 3. So, they are having a blast. They have learned the elementary backstroke, worked on their crawl, learned "that bicycle kick" (aka treading water ;) ) and started diving in the deep pool. Today, they had their Safety Day which had the usual jumping in with a life jacket on but they also did the beginning part of CPR and played lifeguard by throwing the lifeguard floatie thing to someone to "rescue".