Lucas’ first 6 weeks

Logan Draws!

We have two magna doodles.  One in the car and one in the house.  Logan LOVES to draw on them.  He will draw for hours and tell me little stories about the pictures he draws.  I find it quite adorable as you can imagine.  Here are a few of my personal favorites:

“Dis an Easter egg.  The dots are de jelly beans in the middle”

“Dis a scared monster!”

“Slug Monster.  See dos big teeth?  Dey gonna bite you!”

“Dis a ‘Bri-Nation’.  It eats hot lava, humans, and hair!”

My new favorite book

This book is adorable!  I am tempted to tell you all about it but it is almost better if I tell you nothing and let you get it for yourself (I hope your library has it!).  Very simple and very subtle.  Pro homebirth.  Love it!

Back to the fun stuff…

Adding the fun back in a day at a time.  Today it was our bento lunches.  How the kids have missed them!  Cheese and crackers on the bottom, carrots, dip and a few graham cracker goldfish on top.  They so enjoyed going to the spring party today and bringing their little lunch boxes and water bottles.  Even Alex said he liked it, although I had to pack a fruit bar on top of a double portion of lunch for his ever growing appetite.  (He is now 5’10” and wears a 13 shoe!)

I lead a butterfly craft at the spring party today.  I got to learn a few things about being a mama of a newborn and a teacher.  The baby woke up just before I started and so I had him on my lap the entire time.  It made teaching really difficult and I was flustered and hard to follow most of the time.  When I got done and we were all sitting down to lunch I had the grand idea of putting Luke in the sling (which he prefers to being on my lap anyhow, the cuddler that he is) and then thought how helpful that would have been had I thought of that while I was trying to teach the craft!!!  I will know for next time. 

My babymoon being nearly over (7 weeks old today!), I am excited that I am starting to get my grove enough to want to do things like lead a craft table or pack a bento lunch. I have loved taking the time off to love on my sweet new babe, but I am guessing I will love living my life with him along with us even more.

Live Eagle Cam

For the last three days we have been keeping up on the live eagle cam that is showing the hatching eggs from a nest in Iowa. (Link) It has been SUCH a cool experience!  The last time we were watching a cam of baby birds none of the eggs hatched.  So I was thrilled to see that ALL THREE of these eggs are now hatched and healthy! 

We have captured these bald eagle parents feeding their new eaglets, bringing in fish and dead critters for the attending parent to eat, sleeping, flying off… we even have seen both mama and papa eagle there at the same time and were able (for a brief time) to figure out which was which.  It is so neat!

However, there have been many times we have checked and seen nothing but black feathers… so my 4 yr old has nicknamed the channel “Eagle Butt TV”.

All morning long all three kids  have been making ‘eagle nests’ and taking care of ‘eagle eggs’ (although Alex would NOT pose for a picture). 

Later we are making ‘eagle nest’ cupcakes (with jelly beans on top) and perhaps even some ‘eagle food’ (fish, although it means a trip to the market)… 

Fun day in Unschooling land!

A beautiful homeschooling moment

History class

SOTW class went on for Cyan while I was on maternity leave.  My wonderful friends found a new place to have class and did the first 6 chapters of SOTW Level 3 with Cyan still able to attend.

This last two weeks we have been back to doing history class here and I am completely impressed with what the class has been doing without me.

Chapter 7: They learned about the spread of slavery in the American collonies, and made patterned stamp art like Adinkra stamped cloth.

 

Chapter 8: (Happily back in my homeschool room!)  We learned all about how many groups of people took over the land that is now modern day Iraq.  For craft we built the bridge of 33 arches.

Chapter 9: We learned about the Thirty Years War in Germany and made paper lanterns to share in the festival of lights.

More fun with Dry Ice!

Ok, so after my dramatic disclaimer yesterday I feel the need to say that doing experiments with dry ice is fun.  Just not while breathing it!  It gave both my big kids a stomach ache that night that they were playing with it. 

Yesterday we tried a safer dry ice experiment… Singing spoons!

This is one I will have to get video of for the full effect, but basically it makes the spoon ‘sing’ with the below zero temperature.  We were very careful and used chop sticks to pick up the dry ice and put it on the spoon… then of course, after we were done, we dropped it into hot water in a bowl:

That is always a crowd pleaser, as long as no one is sticking their face in it. 

DISCLAIMER

Please do not breathe in the gas from dry ice! Alex was doing it the other day and I got some really good pictures of this cool effect, but it is NOT something to do. I didn't know this at the time, but suspected it was something that could hurt you and when I looked it up, all my fears were true and more.

Dealing safely with dry ice.

Muffin Tin Monday! "Cloudy with a chance of chocolate"

Getting back to the fun stuff doesn't just extend to school work! That means we are back to the fun stuff in life too! Like Muffin Tin Monday. Today I just used what we have on hand and only loosely followed a theme (which is honestly perfect for our 'Spring' we have had so far. It has been pouring for days), but I look forward to enjoying many more MTM's in our near future.

Pirates Booty 'clouds', water (in best homemade sippy EVER), Roast chicken and cheddar roll up

Peanut butter and chocolate peanut butter (it is NOT Nutella, that stuff is filled with nasties), celery, and a couple of shortbread/chocolate mushrooms.

Back to it!

Cyan's first science experiment in a few weeks. It was called "Sweet Leaves" from Biology for Every Kid by Janice VanCleave.

Cyan wrote up the lab notes and then asked me if she could do 'salty leaves' too. Of course I said "let's try it!" and we put cilantro leaves in salty, sweet, and unflavored water. The next morning we woke up and the salty one (the one in the middle) had developed TONS of bubbles! The other two had a regular amount of bubbles for tap water.

The sweet and salty water produced both sweet AND salty leaves (although the sugar was much more distinct in the flavor and we got to talk about how plants use sugar and not salt and therefore the plant would actually suck the sugar water up into it faster than the salty water, etc) but the bubbles were the talk of the experiment. Now she is looking for why salty water would produce so many more air bubbles at room temperature than the others. Esp the sugar water. I was thinking it was the molecules of salt that did it, but then, wouldn't sugar do something similar? Science questions in the making. ;)

Fun with dry ice

We are finally getting back to school stuff. We have been doing nothing but bookwork for weeks and weeks. Frankly, bookwork is easy. It still teaches them and when pregnant, overdue, or cuddling a newborn babe it makes perfect sense... but I have been really excited about starting to enjoy our school days just a little bit more lately.

We have been taking everyday opportunities for fun experiments and today was a really cool one. We got dry ice in our weekly grocery delivery! The kids have played with it many times before, but today, Alex asked if he could put it in really hot water. The effect was really cool. Gaseous bubbles billowing everywhere making one of my mixing bowls look like a witches brew, and the kids enjoyed it as well:

It was quite the cool effect. I look forward to what they will think of to do with next weeks dry ice!