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Need I say more?
Oh, yes, I do! I need to say YIPPPPEEEEEEE!!!! Cause . . .
School’s out!
School’s out!
The monkeys let the teacher out!
Yeah, I know I got it backward, but in my case it’s true. The kid’s are done with school, so that means I am on summer vacation! Woo hoo! We’re celebrating! The boys are going to grandma’s for the evening. Joel and I are going out on the town, which means dinner, shopping, and back home by 9pm (10 if we’re really feeling daring) to watch old movies. Ha ha! Sounds great doesn’t it!
Poppies!
Poppies will make them sleep . . . sleep.
- Wicked Witch of the West (from the Wizard of Oz)
Well, I don’t know about that, but we did learn about poppies in school this week. We learned about the Opium Wars between China/England. We LOVE our history curriculum! It takes a classical approach, meaning that it is chronological. Start at the beginning, and go through to the end. Great idea! Supposed to be sarcastic! It’s much more interesting and understandable that way.
So, since we studied about opium, which is made from poppy flowers, the activity for today is to make lemon poppy seed cake. YUM! Noah is worried that we will be eating opium, but I reassured him that the seeds contain NO OPIUM! This cake is DRUG FREE!!!!
Here are several favorite recipes using poppy seeds . . .
Lemon poppy seed shortbread - use the lemon zest and poppy seed mix-in’s
This is our year for dealing with baby birds. While at my mom’s house over the weekend, we found another baby in her grass. After the previous debacle with the other bird, we got on the internet to see what to do for baby birds, so we were prepared for this one.
Baby with fuzz and shafts = nestling. Ok to put back in the nest, if you can reach it. (We couldn’t.)
Baby with feathers = fledgling. Leave alone. He’s old enough to fly, but lazy. Mama has to give him a nudge toward flight school and when he’s brave enough, his little wings can do the job.
This bird was a pudgy blue jay fledgling, and his story was a successful one. THANK GOODNESS! Although we, with the help of mama blue jay, had to chase off a fat cat licking his chops. That mama chirped and swooped at that cat, and gave him an all out cussing. So, I guess you could say she renewed our faith in mama birds. Sigh of relief!
Sometimes nature’s rules seem so harsh.
A baby bird fell from the nest in our tree. Poor little thing. We saw him in the grass moving around and chirping. Mama bird was in the nest directly over him, so we didn’t want to touch him. We figured she would take care of him. We came out and checked on him periodically and mama was always nearby.
Noah is my compassionate one. He was very worried about the little bird. We talked about how the mama’s take care of their babies, and that sometimes things like this happen. In the evening when we checked on the bird, “Peep” as Noah named him, he was barely breathing. Tears came and we talked more about our little bird. We put “Peep” in a box, covered him with some flannel, and put him in the garage.
Our hearts are a little sore as we remember one of God’s creatures. But we also remember that if God knows and cares when a little bird falls, how much more does He care about us.
I participated in PE yesterday!
Don’t fall out of your chair! I know it’s shocking, but I promise I really did. Unathletic me played tennis with the guys. The whole family went to the park and broke a sweat.
PE for the boys is nothing like what I used to have to do in elementary school. Does anyone remember “Go You Chicken Fat Go”? My PE teacher would turn on that dumb record (oh yes record) and we’d get “feet and shoulders with the part” and get to work. Cherry pickers, bicycles upside down, etc. Can you say boring? Of course we did do some other things like volleyball (I was too short to get it over the net), races (I wasn’t very fast), basketball (yep, too short again). About the only thing I enjoyed was playing with the parachute, probably because there wasn’t much too it! Somehow I don’t remember jr. high PE. Did I skip it? And in high school I got out of it, because 4 years of marching band counted for my credits. Whew!
Joel usually does our “PE” with the boys, after all HE was the PE major. They go jogging, or play athletic games that he makes up. He’s really good at making up fun games for them. He takes them for bike rides, and does baseball/football. Talk about a great dad!
Well, the past few weeks they have been doing tennis. Both boys enjoy it and so does Joel. They asked me if I wanted to go. Sure! I took tennis lessons in jr. high and it was about the only sport I enjoyed. Of course I never got really good, but I did have fun. Today’s hour on the court was spent shagging balls, and getting back in the swing of things, but all in all I had a good time. I’m sure I’ll feel it tomorrow when I try to get out of bed, but that’s ok. It sure was a lot more fun than “Chicken Fat”.
I thought the eggs might be a little bit of a let down for the kids, since we “do” Easter eggs here in America. But from the response last night, you’d think that the kids had never dyed Easter eggs before. And maybe they hadn’t . I just assumed everyone would have done this one before. Two of the little boys went home with about a dozen dyed eggs each. And it would have been more, but the mom’s said NO MORE!
Tonight is Madagascar. Finding a craft for this one was tough. Most of their crafts are made out of woven raffia. I wasn’t in the weaving mood (we did that a few years ago).
Another thing they are known for is their fruit and vanilla. So we will be “cooking”.
Fruit salad with a vanilla sauce.
Doesn’t that make you hungry for “plump and juicy” fruit? “Plum and juicy” is the phrase that Joey, one of my favorite two-year-olds, uses to describe his fruit. I’m sure he’s going to be a rocket scientist when he grows up. He is a SMART cookie!
Yesterday’s craft went quite well. The children came in evenly throughout the night, so that we never had an overabundance of kids at one time. Also, I picked very easy/fast crafts so that neither I nor the children and their parents had to be there all night!
You can always tell the parents who are not artsy. They look at you like you’re doing what with this potato? And when they see the outcome, they think you are the most brilliant person in the world for figuring out that a potato doesn’t just have to be eaten.
Next on the docket is Ukraine. Known for Pysanky – an intricate way to decorate Easter eggs.
Our craft - wrapping hard boiled eggs with rubber bands, then dying the eggs. Here’s a recipe for homemade egg dye.
I am in charge of doing a craft session with the kids this week at church. We are having our Missions Conference and each night after the service is done, we will be doing a craft that has to do with the country for that evening. The ages of the kids range from about 4 to teens and I am prepared for 50 kids. (I don’t think I will have that many, but I always like to be ready. Better to have too much, than not enough.) We will all be doing the same craft, but the teenagers will have a more challenging version.
Tonight’s country is Kenya. Africa is known for its hand stamped fabric. The craft – carving stamps out of potatoes and stamping a flour sack towel.
Version 1 – I will have pre-cut potatoes for the younger children to use to stamp their towel.
Version 2 – The teenagers will carve their own potato and then stamp the towel. Their imagination is so vast! A few years ago, we carved soap (country – Ivory Coast). One of the guys carved his bar of soap into a perfectly shaped, hollowed out pair of underwear. I laughed and laughed! What an imagination!
Our watercolor assignment for the week was fun, fun, fun.
The book gave us the outline of a shape and an landscape idea. We had to do a wash (the background) and then after it was dry, come back in and do the landscape.
Washes were tricky at first, but after several weeks of practicing with them, we are getting the hang of it. “Watercolor Friday” is fast becoming my favorite subject to teach/learn with the boys. It’s fun, creative, doesn’t take a long time, and there is no sweat involved!
And we’ll have fun, fun, fun . . .
When we watercolor next Friday! Lyrics adapted.
News Bulletin:
Race results are in. We didn’t win in speed this year, but we did take home a FIRST PLACE TROPHY in design for our TIDE stock car!!! Congratulations Landon!
We had a very fun, exhausting weekend. Birthday boy was totally floored with his present. I’m telling you, that boy raked in the dough. He will be able to create an awesome room. Little brother was a little disappointed with the present though. I think he’s getting used to the idea now, but it was quite a shock to him. His comment was, “Now I’ll be lonely.”
So, with all the partying and playing this weekend, the boys totally wore themselves out. I had a hard time waking them up this morning, and a harder time getting them to keep their eyes open and focus during school. After doing Bible, History, and Read Aloud, I saw it was a loosing battle. They were wiped out! So, I sent them to their beds for a morning nap. They were glad to go! Two hours later, and after I had made the grocery list and done the shopping for the week, they awoke with a much better outlook on the world. Now we can finish our school day! (P.S. Let me reassure you that this morning nap thing is not a regular part of our homeschool schedule! I’m not one of those kind of homeschool moms!)
Saturday was so pretty that I decided to photograph a new header for the blog. 
Something spring-ish. Our petunias are thriving, so I put a piece of my favorite fabric Amy Butler’s Lotus in the middle of the flowers and took the picture. I am not a photographer, so you should imagine my surprise when I pulled up the picture on the screen of my computer and saw that I had captured some of the shadows through the fabric. Wow! Could I ever do it again on purpose? Probably not, but I’ll have to give it a try next time we have some sunlight. Today is cloudy, windy, rainy, and COLD! A good day to go get under my quilt and take an afternoon nap. After all, I deserve a nap too!
Turn out the lights!
