Happy Independence Day!

On occasion, we have watched the show "Jon & Kate plus 8." While I am saddened by the recent events in this family's life, I am not really surprised... living your life under a microscope (or in front of a camera) must be very stressful.

Anyhow...the point of this post, is that on one of those episodes, while the family is vacationing, Kate and the kids made this yummy flag cake. Well, dd6 was just in awe of the cake. (She loves strawberries.) So we made a plan to make this same cake for the Fourth of July.

And we did...





I hope your family had a wonderful holiday!

*Ü* Blessings,

Daddy gets involved

Daddy loves hearing about our day, and it's really not surprising that he wanted to be more involved than his work schedule would allow. He opted to do some "manly" activites with ds5...but dd6 joined in, too!

We took a Saturday morning, and went to several stores so daddy could get all the necessary supplies for his project. Then I left them alone so daddy could have complete control of the chaos lol!

He taught them how to use a hammer and nails. This was just a "practice" session, but the kids loved it...here they are hard at work:





I can't wait to see what they really build!

*Ü* Blessings,

New World - New Faith part 3

Moving on from Europe, we next talked about the settlers who came to the New World.
We read about Jamestown, how it was springtime when the settlers arrived in Jamestown. We painted some lovely paintings of springtime in Jamestown based on a description in our book.

We learned about "Indians" who helped the settlers learn to fish and farm. We did another art project for this, too.

Then we learned about the Mayflower's journey to the New World. This activity was a HUGE hit! We had to go from "Europe" (the playroom) to "America" (the livingroom) by traveling across the "ocean" (linoleum in the schoolroom and kitchen.) The kids were each giving to pieces of paper. They had to step on one, then put the other in front of them and step on that piece. Then they had to take the piece from behind them and move it to a spot in front of them...the process was slow going at first, until they got a rhythm down. They have actually played this more than once! Too funny!





The last part of this week was the first Thanksgiving feast. Even though it is not November, we still enjoyed a small feast, and pantomiming the hard work the pilgrims had to do in order to enjoy the harvest.

*Ü* Blessings,