Plants, Pilobolus, and Presentations

And...we're back to being cold!  Seriously.  This spring is becoming laughable.  I think that, starting tomorrow, we're in the clear.  I think.  No guarantees though.

Our theme in preschool this week was "Gardening".  It was so much fun, Millie joined in :)  While I do preschool with Elise, Millie goes into her room to work on cursive, language arts, and reading.  This week was no different, except I called her out of her room when we were ready to work on our fun projects.  Heck, even I join in the fun this week!

Here's what we did:

Read some great books

Painted flower pots

Planted the pots with zinnias, snapdragons, basil, and rosemary.

We worked really hard at finishing up everything we have left for the year.  We plowed through a few math lessons, finished language arts and cursive (!!!), learned about Abraham Lincoln and the beginning of the Civil War, and set up our tadpole operation in science (our tadpoles came!  They're adorable!)

See the tadpoles??  They're so tiny and cute!

On Friday, we were supposed to go out to Gale Woods Farm for a planting class.  Well, we didn't go because...you guessed it...it was snowing!!!  Last time we took a class at Gale Woods during the snow, it took over an hour and a half to get home.  So, we passed on the class.  Lucky for us, we got an email from the homeschool group that someone was unable to use their tickets to see Pilobolus, so we took them!  It was at the Ordway, which is walking distance from our house.  It was soooooooo amazing.  If these guys come to your town, I highly recommend going to see them.



Friday evening Millie had 4-H.  She got up in front of the group to do a demonstration on how to make survival bracelets.  She did a great job!  I am so proud of her.  When I was her age, I would have NEVER had the courage to get up in front of 60+ people to give a speech.  Go Millie!!

8 Days of school left.  6 Field trips, plus a standardized test.

We played at the Children's Museum

The life cycle of a frog

Millie doing her demonstration in 4-H

The girls played "school" today and made bird feeders

What are other homeschoolers up to?  Find out here!

Spring Is Here! Spring Is Here!

Shout it from the roof tops!!  Spring is here!  OK, maybe I'm being a little over dramatic, but anyone who lives in Minnesota would agree that this was the longest Winter!  It feels so SO great to have some warmth.  It's the little things that are so awesome when the weather changes, like feeling air on your arms.  So great :)

We had a full week.  Monday was Earth Day.  We watched a documentary about Jane Goodall.  She is such an amazing woman.  Millie is now inspired to join Roots and Shoots.  Luckily we have on in our area, so hopefully she can connect with them.  We were going to do a park clean-up, but they were all delayed, then cancelled because of the snow.

Millie just did her normal work this week; cursive, spelling, math, learning about creating new life in science, and that's about it.  She had a lot of outings later in the week.  In fact, the outings overtook our week a bit, and we somehow managed to skip preschool altogether. Eeek!

Wednesday we went to a playdate at a playground.  It was the first nice day (although still really windy and cold.  I did NOT dress appropriately.  I must have just been too excited about the forecast of 50*).  The girls had a blast playing with friends, and meeting new friends.

Thursday was Bring Your Daughter To Work Day.  Millie went with Bud to work for half the day.  She had a great time photocopying her hand, playing on the Kindle, and coloring.  She didn't do any of the school work I sent with her.  I guess I can't blame her!  Afterwards, we all went out to lunch together at Buffalo Wild Wings (Millie's choice).

Friday we were supposed to go to book club then go to the horse expo, but Millie was too excited, so we decided to go directly to the horse expo.  It was much busier this year then in the years past, so the girls didn't get to ride horses all day long like they're used to doing.  It was really fun walking around, seeing all the different breeds, watching a show, petting lots of horses, etc.  There were quite a few foals, which was beyond adorable.

That about sums up our week!  We officially have 11 days left of school, and we have outings planned for 7 of them, and a standardized test on one of them.  Wowza, I need to use my super-organizational-woman skills to pull through the next few weeks!  Wish me luck!

The Never Ending Winter...

I read a great post about the winter doldrums yesterday.  I can safely say that I'm in the midst of the winter doldrums.  A few weeks ago we were able to walk to the History Museum without coats on, and it felt so good!  Since then, it's been cold, snowy, and wintery.  In fact, we even had Christmas dinner tonight (chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberries...the works) in an attempt to embrace this never ending Narnia winter.

Well, despite my extreme lack of motivation, and extreme desire to stay in bed with a cup of coffee, notebook, sharp pencil, and laptop, I have kids to educate.  Here's what we did this week:

We started out the day with a regular Monday.  I love Mondays!  We always get everything done that day, we're well rested, and everyone is usually in a great mood.  Millie learned about classifying animals in science, started to learn about the civil war, plus did the usual line up of math, spelling, reading, etc.

Wednesday we went out with out Jr. Rangers group to learn about bird migration.  The National Park Ranger took us on a hike along the Mississippi to check out a Great Blue Heron rookerie.  I had never seen a rookerie, and was not expecting to see what I saw.  It was pretty amazing! Can you imagine those huge birds (we're talking HUGE 6 foot wingspan birds), living high up in these trees?  It was pretty spectacular.  Along our hike, the kids found a tree that had been struck by lightening and was still smoldering, attempted to build a lean-to, found a cool animal carcass, and best of all, got to soak up some of the "heat" (it was in the 30's, but not raining or snowing!  We'll take what we can get these days!).

Thursday and Friday were really bad, weather wise.  Roads were horrible, so we stayed home.  We were supposed to go to the Minnesota State Orphanage Museum, but that was cancelled because of the weather. While I was glad I didn't have to drive in the ick, I was super bummed to miss that field trip.  I had been looking forward to it for months!!  It'll be rescheduled.  I just need to be patient.  ;)

For preschool this week, we talked about how gardens grow.  We read a couple good books, practiced counting with beans, cooked 15 bean soup, and started growing some beans (black, white, and kidney) in a clear plastic cup.  The girls hypothesized that the black bean would grow roots first.  They were right, but were surprised when the other two beans kept on growing like crazy, while the black bean stopped with just a couple little roots.

Millie had her 4-H Share the Fun skit competition on Friday night.  She had a blast!  She has made some great friends in 4-H, it's honestly one of the best things she's got going on.  Her skit came in 3rd place!!  Congrats to the St. Croix Clovers!!

See my little peanut, right in the middle?

Millie is "Pinkie the Ghost"

Back to my winter doldrums...my goal for next week is to break free from the doldrums.  I'm calling it "willpower week".  Here are my goals for the upcoming week:

• Drink 5 glasses of water per day
• If the temp hits 40*, I will go jogging
• If the temp is too cold, or it's raining (or heaven forbid...snowing!!), I'll do a Turbo Jam video
• I will purchase supplies to create a household management binder
• Teach Millie how to make breakfast so I don't have to buy cereal anymore
• No sweets, unless I make them myself.

Check out what other homeschoolers did this week, here!

Did You Miss Them? River Room Popovers!

Long, long ago, pre-kids, pre-ever-going-to-River-Room, the Pioneer Press posted this recipe, and for some reason I clipped it out.

See how old it is?  It's yellow.

Anyway, whether or not this is the "official" popover recipe from the River Room, it tastes exactly the same.

Here's the recipe:


Popovers - Makes 12-18

5 Eggs
1 2/3 c. Whole milk
5 T Melted butter
1 2/3 c Flour
1/2 T Salt

To prepare oven, baking pans:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Lightly coat popover pans or deep muffin tins with nonstick spray.  Heat pans in oven for at least 15 minutes.

To prepare batter:
In large bowl, use electric mixer on medium speed to beat eggs until frothy.  Add milk and melted butter.  Mix well.  Add flour and salt.  Mix just to combine.

To bake popovers:
Divide batter among preheated pans, filling each cup less than half full.  Bake for 30-40 minutes or until puffy and well browned and popover pull away from pan easily and feel light to the touch.  Remove from pan.  Serve warm.

Enjoy!

Nano Science, Leprechauns, and Wolves, Oh My!

Wow, what a fantastic week!

This week we went out of our normal "comfort zone", and went out on a Monday!  We went to the Wescott Library for a class called "Nano Nano: The Science of Small".  It was pretty good.  Millie liked it a lot, but most of the class was over my head.  Can I admit that?  Yes, my 3rd grader is starting to do things, and becoming interested in things that I can't teach her.  Thank goodness we live in an area rich with outside classes that she can participate in!!

Let's see, what else did we do this week?  Well, besides the normal math, cursive, piano, reading, spelling, etc, Millie also did some creative writing.  Her assignment was to write a lyric poem with a rhyme scheme.  Here's what she came up with:

A little baby bumble bee, 

Is busy drinking a cup of tea.

And along came a bunny,

who said "here, have some honey".

On that note, I will also mention that I've made the executive decision to switch back to Bob Jones for English next year.  I like that it switches between grammar and writing.  I'm afraid we're not doing enough writing, and I'd like to "bump it up" a little for next year.  I think she'll be old enough to handle the rigors of Bob Jones next year, in 4th grade.

We can't forget to talk about what little Elise did this week in preschool!

Our theme for the week was St. Patrick's Day.  We read a few good books, practiced writing the letter Q, practiced drawing animals, and made leprechauns from our Wee Folk Art curriculum!  It was so much fun!  Here are some samples of what we did:

To end the week, we went on a field trip with Millie's National Homeschool Book Awards book club group.  They're currently reading Summer Of The Wolves , and for their field trip, they went up to the Animal Science Center in Forest Lake.  We'd never been there before.  It was sooooo amazing!  Hands down, the best field trip ever.  We got to learn about and see wolves, bobcats, mountain lions, foxes, a lynx, and a screech owl.  It really was fantastic!  Not for the weak stomachs or super sensitives though, as there was a pile of dead deer by the entrance as we approached (road kill that was being fed to the animals).  The wolves were very proudly carrying around deer legs in their mouths ;)  We found it to be very interesting!  Millie now wants to be a wildlife biologist...

Wolf girl checking out the wolves

Screech owl.  The cutest owl EVER!

Explaining how to tell the different breeds of fox apart.  Red fox have white tips on their tails.

Mountain lion. I can't believe we have these in the wild here!

So proud of her deer leg!

Elise just danced...

...and danced.

Aaaaaaand, afterwards we went to McDonalds because the girls were DYING to have a Shamrock Shake. I caved.  Who am I to deny them this once per year indulgence?  The person working was nice enough to split a small into two cups so my girls could share one :)  

Here's What I've Been Up To - A Sneak Peek!

I've been really preoccupied, which is one of the reasons I have had a really hard time finding time to blog about my kids.

Here's a little sneak peek to shed a little light on what I've been doing for the past few months.  Things have become really serious over the past 3 weeks (we are soooo close to being ready to launch!), and have been really time consuming.  It's good to have a light (or...er...a box pile) at the end of the tunnel!

The Warehouse

Expect big news on Monday!!  

So Tired of Blogging!

Well, I see it's been one day shy of one month since my last blog post.  Wow!  I have clearly lost my mojo.

I have a new found admiration for the mommy and homeschool bloggers that never lose their mojo, and continue to find new and interesting topics/projects to blog about!

The past month has been a regular month of schooling, falling behind, catching up, and having lots of fun.  Here are some of the things we've been doing:

• Millie started learning about the Westward Expansion
• We saw (and danced to) a fabulous Zydeco band at the Ordway
• Had a couple book club meetings with the National Homeschool Book Award group
• Went to a fabulous Valentines day party
• Attended Phantastic Physics, a really REALLY great class.
• Went to an animal care class at the Kroening nature center
• Had a fabulous 4-H meeting, where Millie got to hold a bunny. 
• Created a collage at an art class.

I can officially say "I'm back" and ready to blog again!  Perhaps I just needed a break.  Anywhoo, the blog will change a bit now.  I had been doing weekly updates on Elise's preschool classes.  Now, I'm going to include everything from both preschool and 3rd grade.  Millie has been learning about so much fun stuff, I hate to leave that part of it out!  

I'll be back soon!