peter and pairs/pears

he loves this game. and he knows all his letters, but refuses to learn how to read. since mike doesn't want to sit on my lap to read or be read to anymore, i think he's afraid if he learns to read himself, i won't let him sit on my lap to read anymore. we still read aloud at night in their room, and try for once a day sometime during the school day, but he likes his special one on one time with mom. and he loves this game (even though he makes up his own rules about it)... love you pete.

field trip: crayola

the week before christmas a friend from mops and i took some of our kids (her youngest 3 of 5 girls and 3 of my youngest 4) to the crayola factory. despite driving through squall like conditions only to have it dry at crayola and at home (strange weather....) and a few wrong turns, we had a really fun time, and had almost the whole factory to ourselves.

what karis has been up to...

before she leaves for AFRICA on thursday.
she was asked to make a 40th anniversary cake for some people in our church.

here's how it turned out:



nice, huh?

the joy of new old things

we've gone "stir crazy" for our stir crazy popcorn popper that is. so much cheaper and healthier to pop your own, and the kids love to see how quickly it pops. what we took for granted as kids is fun to introduce to our kids now who think popcorn comes saturated in orange chemicals to pop in the microwave.






happy new year!

every year, hundreds of thousands of these birds stop mid-migration at a nearby wildlife refuge just north of lititz, where robin works.












so when we heard they were here, we decided to drive up and have a look for ourselves. not thinking it would be much to look at.








suddenly, as we were driving (not really sure where to go) we saw cars pulled over to the side of the road just in time to see this...........................

it's amazing, really, when you think that one bird leads the pack.

we got closer, and boy did they make the noise when a blue heron tried to close in. they squawked so much, he decided to land on an abandoned part of the lake.
talk about your cliques!

st patricks day

and yes, i know it's more than a month over due, better late than never.



this year we made more of an effort to go over the history of st. patrick and explain why he is worth a holiday (it's not just because march can be a dreary month and there's nothing else to celebrate. heh heh)

we also read the book 3 in 1, explaining the trinity using the analogy of an apple. we talked about how st. patrick used the shamrock to explain the same thing. so we did a shamrock "craft" montessori style.


and of course we had to make a green snack (the years of green eggs and ham are gone, as the kids now think they're gross and won't touch them). this year we did our classic christmas cookie, the spritz, and tinted it green with green sprinkles.

letterboxing! and a magnificent obsession

on one of the first warm days of the spring, we went on a field trip. the fact that it was 2 miles from the house was besides the point. there is an old, former railroad track that they've turned into a nice bike trail. and that is where our adventure began.



it wasn't an easy one to find. there was still some snow on the trail, and the one main marker we needed to find had been knocked down flat. but eagle-eye nick eventually found it. but not before pete found this:


a large patch of bamboo. you see, pete has an obsession with pandas. he wanted one so badly last year that he got a small one, with a book. which led him to ask beg grandma to get him one for his birthday (which she abliged, with a video). but a bigger, stuffed panda wasn't what he had in mind. he wanted a real one. and he asked anyone to get him one for christmas. he had it all worked out. room to sleep under his bed or in his spare closet. lots of water. but we finally convinced him that we couldn't afford the huge amounts of bamboo a panda would need to ingest daily.

that's why when we came upon this patch of bamboo on the side of our letterboxing trail, he stopped dead in his tracks. and you could see the wheels turning.......

on our way back to the car, the firemen were out doing 2 separate trainings (we were really close and i was trying to be clandestine). the trail runs next to their training grounds. it was fun to watch.

fearless. or not.

mike, as our 6th child, has been the fearless one. during the summer olympics of 2008, we couldn't let him watch platform diving because after he saw them do it once, we caught him out by our pool stacking chairs/tables, anything he could find to make it higher for him to try it in our deep end. he will try anything once, and comes up with the craziest ideas.

except. when we lived in florida, he would not try to learn to ride a bike. not with training wheels, not with us helping him. we thought maybe he was afraid of the busy road we lived on, or the fact that he overheard our thank-God-jack-had-his-helmet-on story so many times that he was afraid that he, too, would take a bad fall going downhill and crack his helmet on the sidewalk.

fast forward to this year. now he is 7. and our neighbors ride their bikes to our house every day (they live two doors down). they had a few spare bikes, and offered him one. with no training wheels. he didn't need any instructions. he walked up our street (it has a gentle incline), balanced himself on the seat, and coasted down to said neighbor's house.



i could tell he wasn't fearless by how white his knuckles were from holding on so tight.
eventually, though, he got the feel of peddling and could turn around in our friends' driveway.
then he could turn around and ride back *up* the street.

and eventually he looked back at me as he drove away.
three cheers for you, mike.
we love you.

north museum of science and natural history

we love that our library offers free family passes to some local museums. this month we took advantage of the one to the north museum of science and natural history. instead of bemoaning the fact that we so rarely can do field trips with all 7 kids, i've decided to embrace the relative ease of keeping track of only 4 (and console myself with the fact that the oldest 3 have been to many, many more museums, even if they don't remember all of them).

it doesn't look very big from the outside, but inside there was so much to do. i feel like we went through it quickly, and we were there for over 2 hours. the discover room alone (with all those delightful labeled boxes of things the kids could touch, including animal feet, skulls, native american things, etc.). we're getting ready to study astronomy in the spring, so their whole section on that was inspiring, not to mention the traveling exhibit on blood suckers which was very well done and full of information.

the mind of jack

catching up....before the new year

olivia had her first of many concerts with clchm (see collage for what that stands for). she has enjoyed this chorus made up entirely of homeschoolers. you can see where the orchestra (also made up entirely of homeschoolers) joined them later. mrs. lasala, the director, has very high standards, and the results show it. we really enjoyed the concert, and are glad olivia enjoys it as well.

landis valley museum

another benefit of the library is a free family museum pass to some local museums. we were planning on going to another museum about an hour away, but their special festivities were cancelled due to the weather. it turned out to be for the best anyway, since it was only gray and slightly drizzly and robin got to go with us. the girls were all busy, so it was just me and the boys. fun!

they already had the visitor center decorated for christmas. the museum shop was having an open house, with carolers dressed in time period garb and free refreshments. jack saw his awana teacher, and robin met up with an old co-worker.

i love it all, but i especially liked the school house. that is, until the boys got carried away in their make believe outhouse adventure (but all that pretending did send us on a quest to find the nearest "real" bathroom).
silly boys.

fountain of youth

one book i'm so glad i kept from our homeschooling days is anna comstock's handbook of nature study.



i read this today and found it to be so true among the various people i've met:

"it is not years which make people old;
it is ruts, and a limitation of interests.
when we no longer care about anything except our own interests, we are then old, it matters not whether our years be twenty or eighty."

opportunities

olivia has the option in her co-op literature class for some extra credit.
she had the opportunity to herd or milk cows.
she chose both.

our friends, the linds, live next to an amish farm and have become friends with them.
they graciously allowed us to come to their farm.
however, the cows were a bit spooked by us (14 children, 5 adults!).
the older amish girls said it was because of our "bright" clothing (i was wearing gray and denim, as was olivia, but one kid had on a bright pink shirt).

did you know you can earn a lot of money from renting your land to cell phone companies?
yup. about $1,000-$2,000/month!
the amish know this.
but they don't want obnoxious english cell towers on their property.
so they only agree to do it if the company agrees to make the cell tower look like a silo.
you can't tell from a distance.

the fence around the bottom is a dead give away.
normal silos don't need large square concrete slabs or fences.

a fun day, and the kids were sure cute (no face pictures please).

they had 10 kids. so cute.
thank you linds and stotlzfus'.

fall in the montessori classroom

it's so fun having a just turned 4yo.
his small motor skills have improved so much through activities like this.
i change up the objects according to the season.
i used a coupon to a.c. moore to get these multi sized pumpkins for about $1.50.
there are so many ways to use them!
here, he practices the pincher grasp using tongs to transfer them from one basket to another.
then, we had him sort them by size. then by color. then by color and size.
just one thing pete's been up to lately.

multi-tasking

moms are famous for their unequaled ability to multi-task.
but don't you love it when you find a product that does the same?
enter cheez-it scrabble edition.

you can give the kids their snack/challenge their spelling/play a game all at the same time.

jack was hungry but displayed the family name

olivia did more playing than eating and came up with quite a spread

book review

a recent library treasure is this book published by the metropolitan museum of art.

titled, "can you hear it?" it features 13 songs on cd that accompany art pieces and challenge kids and parents alike to hear what the composer was trying to convey in his piece.

we enjoyed this book (and boys will be boys, pete and mike liked the war one best). highly recommended!

hands on house-slide show

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we studied nature

we found a bird's nest (empty)
we wonder how long ago they made it


it was in this box in the garage!
to the best of our knowledge, the door has been closed for 3.5 months.
but the pool guy and the neighbor have access.
hope the birds weren't too discouraged all that work for nothing.

you learn something new every day-for those who asked

i don't pretend to be a computer guru.
i don't even know much about blogging.
but i know how to use google, and so far, it's answered all my questions.
how do i consistently post at 5:30am, you ask?
i've started scheduling my posts.

after writing a post, click on that blue link in the bottom left corner that says, "post options."
put in the date and time that you want your post to be published and click on "publish post."
if you want to just save it for an unknown time, click "save now" and go back and change the date and time when you want to publish it.

there you go.
a new post every day at the same time.
rhythm. good for the soul.
and you don't even need to get out of bed before the crack of dawn.