Dance Party-House Party

Last week, we got to host another House Party. This one was for Wii Dance Party 2 and what fun it was! We hosted our Girl Scout Troop's Holiday Party and the girls danced for 3 hours!

Here is our fearless Scout Leader, Sally, joining in the fun

Midsummer NIght's Dream

I can't believe our fall semester of co-op has ended! We had such a blast with our Renaissance themed semester.
My class was called "Shakespeare Shorts". The kids spent the entire semester working on an abbreviated version of Midsummer Night's Dream. The entire play was 15 minutes long! We had 10 weeks to get our act together, so to speak.
All three kids were in the play. Joseph was Oberon, the Fairy King, Libby is Helena and Caroline is Titania, the Fairy Queen.
A few of the kids braved going scriptless and did fabulously. Most of them could have done it without their scripts (I know that I have been hearing lines spontaneously for weeks from my three!) However, with 10 weeks of 1 hour per week to get it all together, I didn't push memorizing lines.
The kids DID gain a really thorough understanding of their character and the language of Shakespeare.
I had my kids watch the movie version at the beginning of the semester and then again at the end. Their comprehension of what was happening in the story was completely different by the end of the semester.
Yay for "Shakespeare Shorts"!
Here is Helena, talking to Hermia and Lysander and learning of their plan to leave Athens and marry.

Here is poor Helena following Demetrius around (and annoying the heck out of him) while Oberon watches.

Oberon, sprinkling the flower into Titania's eyes.

Curtain call

IESI Recycling Day

Our trash and recycling company sponsored a "Recycling Day". Who could pass up an opportunity to see a recycling plant in action?!
They had a lot of different exhibitors. This one is demonstrating worm composting while Libby snuggles the earthworm.

The medical center demonstrated some first aid and had cool hats

The fire department had badges AND hats.

This table is a demonstration of erosion. The kids really enjoyed predicting which houses would fall into the river and when.

We also got to see where our recycling goes when it leaves our house. It was like a giant Rokenbok set!

Finger Knitting

Yesterday, at co-op, I professed my absolute boredom with knitting. I just can't sustain my attention on it. Maybe that is partly because I have never learned to do anything other than just knit. I would not have a clue how to begin making a recognizable object.
But after making this loudly known yesterday, today Libby asked if I could show her how to finger knit again. She was quite the expert when she was about 5, but she hasn't done it in a long time. Then Joseph and Caroline thought that sounded like a really fun thing to do today, so we headed for a quick trip to the store to buy some yarn (because Ginger has found our yarn box and likes to take off the lid and remove the yarn from the box...not good for yarn.)
Libby is finger knitting. Joseph and Caroline are using spool knitters. They are basically the same technique...one uses fingers and one uses little posts. 

We had to give Ginger some of the old yarn that we had. She must be part cat. She really wanted to steal the yarn that the kids were working with.

Halloween!

This year, we ALL dressed up in some form or fashion.

We had Alice

The Mad Hatter

The White Queen

The Cheshire Cat

You can see the Jack of Hearts in this picture (walking the White Rabbit)

Some places we didn't spend much time at...