Story Starters..

I recently came across this awesome website that has some pretty fun games & activites for kids. Fun, as in educational and entertaining at the same time, kind of fun. My kind of fun. I am not a naturally creative person, and I fear that my kiddos might miss doing creative things because of that little fact. Well, with the help of very cool websites like this one, my fears are appeased a bit! We love the story starters and it really gets the creative juices flowing...

In this particular story, Brook was to write a newspaper article about a wrinkled shark who loves peanut butter and jelly.

Renaissance Artists, they are not...

We have now started Unit 2 of our 2nd year of Tapestry of Grace, which means we are studying the Renaissance and Reformation. Well, we are on the Renaissance part, particularly the art of the Northern and Italian Renaissance. So, we've been looking at lots of books and pictures and learning about Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Giotto, and Brunelleschi. It's really incredible, the colors and the details in some of the paintings and sculptures. One of my very favorites is the "Adoration of the Magi", by Gentile Da Fabriano, 1423.

Anyway, so of course we needed to try our hand out at 15th century art, right? Well, it went a little something like this...

not quite the same, but we have great imaginations!

Photos

Horse Whisperer

The girls love our "neigh"bors. (corny, I know. )

Gardens

Are you planning on having a garden next summer? Are you already preparing?
All this week I've been pouring over books and websites, looking at and writing down what I want and where I want it. John has been working hard on the fencing for it...we can't have those wild deer, pigs, and coyotes eating all of our goods!

I've been reading the best book for several months and I finally feel like I'm getting a grasp of what having a large garden and orchard will entail. The book is The Backyard Homestead.

Taste Around the World...

Tonight we went to a "Tasting Bee". Different families (that signed up) in our school group all set up tables and presentations in the gym and brought a food dish from a specific country or state that they've been studying. There were students representing Mexico and they served chips & salsa. Italy served lasagna.. yum. South Africa served some weird, but tasty cookies. Hawaii had pineapple. There were vikings that served green soup, and even some little girls that had studied Narnia brought Turkish Delight.. now that was good. There were ALOT more..John's fave was the sushi from Asia. Anyway, we haven't really studied a country this year as much as a time period. Since we use Tapestry of Grace (Year 2, Unit 1), we had been studying about the Middle Ages. We had just finished the unit, so this was a perfect opportunity for us to put together our lapbook and do our unit "celebration". So, we had done a little research and learned about some festivals they celebrated and found some recipes from a cookbook from 1600, where that author had collected recipes from history. We ended up making Fine Cakes and Wassail. They were both good and the girls have had way too much cake today. Anyway, I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures of the event, but I did take some pics earlier in the day while the girls were preparing ....




and then I just took some of our display board. I wish I had my camera this evening, there were some very cool displays.. Egypt was very creative. Anyway.. it was great and its always better to learn while having fun!





Now we'll be starting on Unit 2... Renaissance and Reformation, here we come!

Climbing a Tree