First day of Scout Camp

No pictures today, but we had our first day of cub scout camp. We had to leave the house at a time when the kids are not even normally up yet (7:30). That made for some sleepy campers this afternoon.
The kids had fun. The girls went with the "lil buddies" and Joseph and I were with a group of wolves and bears. Joseph refused to do two of his four activities today. He participated in a group painting and building a bird feeder, but he would not do flag football or bb guns.
Libby woke up crying this morning and cried until I dropped her off. Then she was fine all day. Until it was time to go home. Then she cried some more. She calmed down long enough to get bathed and convince me that she was OK to go see Kung Fu Panda before German dancing. Well, she made it through the movie and then promptly went to sleep at German dancing. When I picked her up to bring her home, she was very warm.
So, now I am wondering how we will work that out tomorrow. That was not part of the plan.

Summer Fun

Today when I got home from Super Target (where I spent $60, because $210 wasn't enough at the grocery store yesterday), I found the Slip N Slide set up and the kids were having a blast!

Botany and Balloons, part 2

While I was grocery shopping today, I picked up 200 water balloons. Do you know how difficult it is to fill up a bunch of water balloons?! Alex and I spent about 45 minutes and ended up with about 40 of them. The kids enjoyed them though and were ready to do more after the 30 seconds it took to explode the first batch. Perhaps another day!

Botany and Balloons

Today, the kids started their Botany unit. Since today was the introduction to what we are doing, they tasted different parts of plants. They had pepitas (seeds), radish (root), asparagus and broccoli stems (stems), spinach (leaves), marigolds (flowers), tomatoes, red bell pepper and cucumber (fruit). Libby was our most adventurous...she tried all of them! Actually, I told them that they all had to eat at least one little bite of each, but Joseph and Caroline were much more resistant and refused to even try a few things.

Libby enjoyed some of it so much, that she went back for more pepitas, spinach and cucumbers.

Oh, did I mention that I even provided Ranch vinaigrette spray to make it more palatable?

I guess it was inevitable

I have to be the last person on the earth that has all of the conveniences of the 21st century, but hasn't started a blog.

Will I be able to keep it up? I am not a writer. I think it must be why my 8 year old hates writing so much. I tend to be very sparse with words and would prefer to SAY what I am thinking than try to write it down.

But, I should have a way to document and remember what happens to us in our daily adventures, right?
Maybe someone could benefit from reading about what we do. Maybe my family might like to see our day. It's not everyone that has a kid in college, going through eye surgery and three more at home being homeschooled.

Except that right now we are pretty boring. Gas prices are high, so we are staying home more...very unusual for us, but I guess that is what made me think about the blog in the first place.

I guess this is a good way to upload a few pictures without boring my dear friends at Dallas Area Moms. :) The one today is a picture of Caroline at the pool.

Economic Unit from last year

I wasn't blogging last year when Joseph did his Economic unit. It was one of our favorite all time projects that we did and I wanted to add it here so that we would have it always.
So the following is from a post that I made on Dallas Area Moms:
Joseph's current unit in Moving Beyond the Page that he is working on is called "Economic Cycles". It was kind of funny the other day because I was supposed to explain to him what supply, demand and equilibrium are. I start out by asking him if he knows what the words mean and he launches into a whole monologue about what they are and how you can graph them to illustrate it and that the point that it crosses on the graph is equilibrium.
Well....um....yeah.
So, that was a quick lesson.

(BTW, he is not some kind of Economics Savant. He learned all of that on BrainPop. I don't know why I even bother trying to do anything with him. )

Anyway, we finished up that unit and his end of the unit project is "Becoming an Entrepeneur". He has to make four types of flavored popcorn and then do market research on which type people prefer.

First of all, He named his company "American Popcorn".

His four flavors are:

Honey Bun--A buttery, cinnamon and honey coating.

Chocolate Malt--A chocolate topping with a touch of malt.

The Big Cheese--A cheddar cheese flavor

Old Glory--(this is the most interesting one ) It is a glaze made from gelatin. So we used Blue Raspberry and Strawberry to make Red and Blue to go with his American Popcorn name.

You should have seen my kitchen this afternoon.


We made 20 samples of each and took them down to the park for market research. He approached 20 people and had them sample each one and took down their preference. The purpose was to find the two most popular, so that he could package them and sell them.

Old Glory won with 7 votes
The Big Cheese and Chocolate Malt each had 5 votes
and Honey Bun had 4 votes.
(and, yes, our sample did end up with 21 votes)

Now, we have to package them and make labels so that he can sell them. He also has to figure out how much to charge for them....which is going to require some math.
I didn't take any pictures of the process today because I was going in four directions at once trying to help him with all of the recipes. I will get pictures of the final product though.

Just thought I would share. He really enjoys these final projects after each unit.

Here is the album of pictures:


And a few updates that I made later on the board:

He sent an email to our co-op group telling them about his project and let them know that he would have popcorn for sale at co-op.The popcorn sales went very well!
He sold out of everthing by lunch!

Each bag was 50 cents...that was about 2 cups of popcorn. He came home with about $13.

SENSEible Party

The girls have been working on a five senses unit in Moving Beyond the Page. We finished it up and the end of unit "project" was a Senses Party. The girls had to plan the party and get everything together.
Here is what we did:

These are there planning pages...
Libby's


Caroline's


After we got home from Peter Piper's today, we made cupcakes (smell, taste) and frosted them...






Caroline wanted pictures of their five senses... (seeing)






For our sense of smell, Libby wanted flowers and Caroline wanted candles...





Here is our party room... (The streamers were also decorations that Caroline wanted and Libby wanted colorful plates and napkins)


They also planned games...
Libby had a find the real flower with your nose (Yes, we watch Amazing Race )





Caroline had a "Guess the sound" game...


Libby had a find the cupcakes game She WANTED to leave a scent trail that we had to follow (she had visions of squeezing an orange and leaving a trail through my house ), but I talked to her into leaving visual clues that would lead them from place to place. This is the first "clue"...


That's a picture of our couch There were five more clues that were very similar and the cupcakes were hidden in her room.

Eating the cupcakes...









Our lovely candles.

Can I just say....my girls are party planners.


Oh, and while the girls were busy with this all afternoon, I had Joseph make me a powerpoint about Japan. I wonder if I can upload that here. His powerpoints are pretty amusing.

ETA: We ran out of time and couldn't do the fingerpainting tonight (our sense of touch activity) because we had to go to swim lessons, so we are going to do that tomorrow.