summer library programs and fun

We have hit the Wilsonville library 2 weeks in a row for their summer fun programs and science story times.  It has felt like we are there all the time lately.  What's even better is we are going to be there on Monday again!  We are starting up volunteering again to get hours for our library card.

Anyway, the shows have been great.  This picture is of the family story time.  We love their storytime.  They act out the stories, and it's always pretty funny. I even find myself enjoying them. This day was The carrot seed.  I was thrilled because we had just gotten done with rowing the carrot seed.  The librarian in this picture is holding a watering can, and acting as the little boy.  They did it along with the old radio program.

 Afterwards they have science activities and games.  Alex wanted to build with the foam blocks for a while.

They have a fun superhero photo booth set up.  We finally got pictures with the pad.

So fun!

 What a face!

 After the library programs....

We think we get to go swimming.  This kid puts his swimsuit on everyday hoping for a jump in the pool (even on days when we aren't :)

 We do science projects.  Aric pulled out some old science kits I had forgotten about. It's always nice to find old unused things. We did some baking soda and vinegar "volcanoes."

We picked strawberries one day.  I finally made my own strawberry jam!

 Aaron just loved this strawberry...

 Here is another old kit I remembered about one Sunday afternoon.  We sat down and made all together. I bought this a few years back for Aaron, but he had given up on it.  It really needed an adults help.

 So, I sat down and did it with them!  I enjoyed working with them on this project, and I'm kinda glad I didn't get rid of it like I thought about doing a few times.
(ahem, please ignore my pie in this picture :)

It turned out to fun to make, but not so great in functionality.  The loop didn't work at all, so we took it out. But then parts kept falling off. So, good idea, but not so great product I guess.

What are you up to this summer?

Desiree

Learning about fish part 1

We took a little break from Swimming Creatures of the Fifth day for a little bit, but we have picked it back up for the summer.  We started back into it with Chapter 6--Fish!  I skipped a few chapters because I wanted to get into the fish first since the boys requested to learn more about Fish.  They had started fish lapbooks recently, so it seemed like a good place to start. 

I picked up this magnetic fishing set at Lakeshore. I decided it was necessary for our upcoming fish unit, and that we must have it (wink!).  I have some fun ideas for games with it.

 It was fun fishing one morning before we sat down to read.

I found this game on pinterest I think.  It was a big hit with my little guy. He worked hard to get those bubbles all lined up.

He petered out at around 12 though.

Those fish were pretty fun to make too!

This is the last thing I have pictures for right now, but we have done a ton more.

We made these tissue paper fish kites.  They turned out pretty cute, and remind me of windsocks.

 I'll post some more pictures of the lapbooks when they are closer to being done. Also, we are going on a fishing trip this week, maybe we'll have something interesting to show from that too!

Desiree

science exploration: stars and constellations

so

We had a fun night last week staying up late and looking at some stars.  It was one of our science explorations for the summer reading program.

I pulled out a book that I have that has glow in the dark constellations.

It worked great when we shined a flashlight on it.  They lit up so well, and the little guy had fun making those light up while we were waiting for the sun to go down all the way.

Aaron took out his play telescope.  I'm hoping that we'll be able to get the real ones out this summer.  The boys sure would love it.

The boat made the perfect star observation deck.

I LOVED letting the boys stay up late to look at stars, it was so much fun.  Such special moments too.

The next day we made some constellations out of marshmallows and toothpicks.  I drew them on cards to make it easy for them.

Aric made virgo.

I was impressed with Alex.  He made quite a few, and totally got it.  Having them drawn out on 3x5 cards really helped.

All in all it was a super fun science exploration!

Desiree

Weekly wrap up--Bubble fun!

We are in summer mode here, which means fun but also a little learning too.  We have been spending the week signing up for reading programs at the library, swimming at the local pool, and planning some fun activities.

Our summer learning will consist of the basics math, reading, and science.  It really helps that the Wilsonville summer reading program has a science element to it. So, we jumped into some science explorations last week.

One of them included bubbles. We decided to paint with bubbles one day.  It turned out to be blowing in the straw experience, and my boys loved it.  I never let them blow into their straws, but I let them do this. They were thrilled.  I wish the pictures could capture the hummmm along with the blowing in these pictures.

The finished pictures.  Clearly this was not about the end product, but the process that we were after here.  I did cut out the bubbles and put them up on our pin board to put pictures of our summer fun on. Turned out pretty cute.

It made some fun designs though.

I like the effect of the bubbles it left on the edge here.

We made some bubble wands out of pipe cleaners one day.  Those things work awesome, even with store bought bubbles. 

We made some pretty big bubbles with those pipe cleaner wands.

And so much easier for little people to blow in.

blow after blow after blow...

What I worked on this week:

This is what I worked on this week.  I have so many areas that I need to learn and grow in too!  I created this nature study journal page.  I loved these tall purple flowers, and the picture I had of them was perfect for this nature journal with a photo journal page challenge.

I have also started liking the idea of learning how to do zentangle doodles.  I am clearly a beginner and this was all made up by me after looking at some samples that others had done. This is what I came up with since we have so many holidays involving flags right now. I wanted to make this into 4th of July cards, but I don't feel like it's card worthy. Also, notice that I changed a design in the stripes because I didn't like the first design I started with.

It was a good week. We also:

• Spent a day at "girl's camp" where April goes to girls camp. We swam, canoed, and did archery.
• Went to the local farmers market
• Looked at the stars and made constellations out of toothpicks and marshmallows
• Went swimming 5 days with our new swim pass.
• Dropped and picked up Daddy at the airport for his work trip to Germany.
• Went to IKEA and had fun.
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 How was your week?

Desiree

The carrot seed (B4FIAR)

Alex was 4 years and 5 months old

We read The Carrot seed all this week, and some of last.  It took about 2 weeks to row this book, and I have found that it takes us about that much time for most of our five in a row books.  We are taking it slow.  But, also I don't do a lot of planning. I just pick up the book, and see what activities I can put together during the week. I also see what interests my child has as we start to read, and that leads us in a lot of the activities I choose.

Alex really loved this book.  He even got to the point where he was reading it to me.  He almost had it memorized pretty good!

This was completely an impromptu activity, but we decided to go outside and water the carrots we have growing.  Afterward, the kids wanted to draw with chalk, so we drew some carrots while I read them the book.  It was a fun beginning to our B4FIAR week.

One day we listened to the story this radio program.  That was pretty fun to listen to that old program! Alex read the book to me quite a few times as well.

I made some orange playdoh, and he counted carrots one day.

Our carrots are not ready yet, so we had some snap peas to look at, eat, and count.  He decided to take the peas out and count them.

Line them up...

And apparently they make good phones too...

I printed off a few things for him to do.  A carrot triangle shape finder, and tracing triangle carrots.  You can find those at this blog.

He made a C is for carrot with orange foam carrots, and green colored tops.

April helped trace his triangles one day.

This was his absolute favorite activity, and one that I didn't really plan on him doing.  I was going to cut the carrots, and he sat down with me wanting to cut them himself.  I let him, but I sat with him the whole time.  He did pretty good, and handled the knife very carefully.  He cut all those carrots, and wanted more!

He made a carrot seed lapbook from Homeschool share.


It was a fun week. We never got around to growing beans and watching them grow.  We still may do that sometime this summer.  We also never harvested any of our own carrots.  Hoping they'll grow so he can see them come from the ground.

Desiree