Thankful Thursday: Friends

I am thankful for friends. Today we listened to a great talk by Hank Smith called "I love my friends" and it just got me to thinking how much friends can really be great. Alex is making a t-shirt for his best friend for our upcoming camping trip with her and her family. He was so excited to make a shirt for her. So, I'm thankful for friends.

One More Story (A REVIEW)

Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew

 

 

We have had the opportunity to read some great, well-known classic children's picture books through this online reading program, One More Story. We didn't have to go searching the house or go to the library to get some of our favorites, and there were plenty of new titles that we hadn't heard before too. All we needed was the laptop or a device for a quick storytime session. For this review we received a one year subscription to One More Story.

One More Story Homepage
We received a one year subscription to One More Story with access to many great children's picture books.

What is this program and how does it work? This program is a three month, six month, or a one year subscription to access a growing library of 87 books. The kids have the option to have the book read to them or they can read it themselves, and the book is open as if the real book were sitting in front of you. When the child chooses the book to be read aloud to them it is accompanied by music and sound effects, and the words are highlighted as the narrator reads them. This is our favorite way to read books with One More Story. The child can also choose to read by themselves with the option to click the button to hear the words read aloud if they need help. At the end of each book there is an option to go over vocabulary from the book.

First, The child chooses a book from the "shelf" as if they are choosing the real book as it looks in real life.

My kiddo (age 10) who is in 4th grade enjoyed having these books read to him even though he can read them all very well. It is fun to hear the music and the sound with each story. We enjoyed sitting together on the couch listening to books at bedtime. 

Once the child has picked a book from the shelf they have the option to choose "I can read," or go straight to vocabulary. Clicking the green arrow starts the story.

I also love that this program helps the child to slow down in his or her reading. My child tends to read really fast, often skipping words. As these books are being read aloud the child is forced to go slower because the narrator and music move at a much slower pace allowing the child to really absorb the story. My boy got impatient at times during the story, but I feel like it was so good for him to slow down.

An example of a page in the story Sidney Won't Swim. The words are highlighted as they are read.

Overall, this is a really neat program. I wish I had had something like this for my older kids when they were first reading. I think it's a great way to have easy access to books for kids who are just starting to read. I think it's great even for older ones that still enjoy picture books, like I said my youngest is in 4th grade and he still enjoyed it. Everyone loves to listen to a story!

If you'd like to see what others have to say about One More Story you can click on the banner below.

LEGO ABCs: H is for Harry Potter

It's time for the Letter H this week! I'm excited to share what we built this week, but first lets talk about last week's posts. If you haven't yet, you should visit the link-up to see all of the Letter G posts from last week, they are all good reads. I keep saying it every week, but I'm learning a lot! I'm learning more about the American civil war, composers, homeschooling tips and advice, and so much more. Here are a few of the posts just to give a glimpse.

Featured posts from last week's Letter G:

• Geography from Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses
• Homeschool Tips - Leter G from Ellen @ Homeschooling Highway
• Going to the movies (American Civil War movies) from Kristen @ A Mom's Quest to Teach

This week I chose for the Letter H LEGO build, Harry Potter. This was an easy decision as we have many Harry fans in this house, and many old sets to choose from. We also have so many minifig characters. I just love minifigs and their personalities, and the ones from HP are just so fun.

Just a note: I know there are some who do not like the Harry Potter books or anything to do with magic, and I completely understand that. And I understand if you choose not to read this post. Please come back next week though!

To kick off our Harry Potter LEGO week we pulled out one of our old LEGO games, Harry Potter Hogwarts. It's one we've had for years. I think April got it for a Christmas or birthday present probably about a decade ago. Surprisingly we haven't played it for many years. It was like a new game to us, and it was pretty fun. It took some time to prepare though as there were several missing pieces. Thankfully they were pieces that I was able to salvage from our LEGO bins. Once it was together we played! It was just me and the 2 younger boys, but lots of laughter and silliness ensued as with any game.

Harry Potter game collage

There were a lot of unique little game pieces, and I just loved these little mini-minifigures. I think that's what they're called? They're not a normal size minifgure. Just tiny little things.

Building the game was fun, but I also wanted to pull out one of our old Harry Potter sets and rebuild it. I decided on Hagrid's Hut: Buckbeak's Rescue since most of the pieces were already mostly in a bin. I only had to chase after a few lost pieces. Thankfully I found them all, even the lost minifigs.

I dug out the instructions from our bin of old instruction manuals

I pretty rebuilt this on my own. I kept asking the boys if they wanted to build it, but they were just not interested. Although they enjoyed watching me build it. And, Aric (whose set this was) was helpful when I had questions about where pieces might be. Sometimes I enjoy the solitude of just building on my own. I can turn on some of my own YouTube, or listen to books. It's a great way to have some time to myself.

One night I built by myself in the LEGO room (aka the boys' room), and the next night I brought it out to the living room and built while we watch a Star Wars together.

The end result! I love all the details. Especially the pumpkin patch.

Hagrid's Hut: Buckbeak's Rescue

The minifigs...

Harry, Ron, and Hermione

Hagrid and Buckbeak

The executioner and the Minister of Magic

The inside of the hut

The details inside the hut are fun. There's a spider, a desk, a treasure chest (which has a chocolate frog I believe), and window and a door.

On the other side there's all kinds of tools hanging up on the ceiling, a large comfy chair to sit in, and a table with a tea kettle.

But my most favorite detail in this set is the light up fireplace with Hagrid's dragon egg by it. To light up the fireplace a button up top has to be pushed. It's pretty cool to look at, especially when it's darker.

One last thing to share for this week is our Wii time. I pulled out an old Harry Potter LEGO game for our Wii. I even had to dust off the Wii! It hasn't been used for a while because we have newer game consoles. I had fun playing this with Alex (age 10). He was thrilled that I wanted to play with him. Little does he know how much I used to play my old Nintendo when I was his age! 

Wii Harry Potter game Years 5-7

We had fun watching the characters and seeing where the game took us. We were also surprised at how the graphics look to us now compared to when we first got it. These aren't as crisp as some of the games we play now! And we used to think this was really good.

Sometimes I like to put one of these YouTube videos on in the background while I'm doing stuff. It's fun to watch these huge sets being built. They are speed builds, and they are set to fun music. This is a set that we can only dream about getting, the Hogwart's castle.

That's about it for the letter H! Thanks for reading/looking at all of our builds this week.

Now it's your turn to share! Please join co-host Chareen and me as we blog through the alphabet and link-up below:

• Desiree @ Our Homeschool Notebook: All of my current ABC posts

• Chareen @ Every Bed of Roses: H is for Homeschool Bloggers 

**Rules for linking up:

1. Your post must be family-friendly. We have the right to remove any posts that are inappropriate. 
2. When linking up you agree to give us permission to share your post or a photo in any future blog posts and social media shares. 
3. Please link back to the host or co-hosts blog, and use the image if you want. 
4. If you can, check out a few other posts in the link-up and leave some comment love. 
5. Please, make sure your posts relate to the alphabet or blogging through the alphabet in some way. Evergreen content (past posts that relate) is also welcome. 
6. The link-up will be available for one week for each letter. 
7. Last of all, have fun. If you can’t join for one week, don’t stress. Just join next time, and enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday: First time pitching

 

I am linking this up to Life on Chickadee Lane: Wordless Wednesday.

Painting April's Room

 *This actually happened over spring break back in March*

Posting about this has been overlooked for a few months now! Back in March April asked if she could paint her room. I said sure! The whole house pretty much needs a repaint anyway, and this is one of the rooms that hadn't been painted since we moved in almost 16 years ago. She also wanted to do a fun design, and we let her do that too.

April made plans and picked colors (with okay/input from us). We went to Bi-mart and a really nice lady mixed all these colors for us. She didn't even get annoyed that we had so many to mix. Actually, she wanted us to come back and show her a picture of the results. I still need to do that!

See the old color on the wall in the picture below. It's a tannish/grayish color. Our whole house interior was painted in this color when we bought the house. She opted for a very light green color as the base coat. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it's so much more cheery.

It felt so good to cover up those old dirty tannish walls! And, it turned out so cool. 

This is not her original room (it's technically our computer room). Since she had moved out for college, but ended up coming back at Christmas time and staying home because it was all online, she was wanting to freshen up the walls. All her pictures and wall hangings are still in her room at Grandma's (where she'll head back to in the fall), so she was so glad to have something fun on her walls again! She did an excellent job. I only helped with the base color, she did all the lines. Now she has more pictures and decorations up too.

Oh, and while she was at it she painted a few pots for her plants with the same color scheme. 

Painting is a lot of fun and a lot of work!

My Weekly Notebook: Testing, KiwiCo crates, and baseball reading

Life this week...

Our weeks have gotten a little quieter now that co-op has ended. It was just a pretty regular week around here with one extra day to be home and not have to go anywhere. It was nice. 

Homeschool this week...

Monday and Tuesday were Maps testing days. This is just a test to gauge where they are at in relation to their peers. Our charter requires this test if we choose not to submit work samples. We are given the choice for each quarter to submit work samples or do Maps testing. Two of the quarters this school year I submitted work samples, and 2 of the quarters I just had the boys do the testing. So glad to have that done and out of the way! I'm also thankful that we can do this testing from home. The book that is open is my reading while I sit with them during the testing sessions.

     

The rest of the homeschool week consisted of a lot of fun science! I ordered several KiwiCo kits for the boys to do over the summer, so they decided to do them all in one week! Aric got a box of 4 different chemistry kits and he just couldn't wait to dig in. And really, they didn't do all of them, I think there is one left. I think he enjoyed this Fire Lab the most.

These kits from KiwiCo come with everything you need, including safety gear. He really didn't need anything from me! The directions guide the student through every single step. It was fun to watch him. And, I loved that he read all the explanations too. He told me that he really liked the explanations because it helped him to understand what he was doing.

Going through the beginning steps to get used to the fire and process. There were some real chemicals in this one, so he's got his gloves and goggles on.

Getting the real fire ready for the fun part, the chemicals that make the different colored flames.

I love how organized this kid is when it comes to these kits. He does this with the building crates too.

Reviews we are working on...

We just started today with a review that involves us making a timeline. I'm pretty excited about this one because I've been wanting to have the boys start filling in their timeline books.

Places we're going and people we're seeing...

Alex had an extra session of parkour this week, a 2-hour nerf battle. He loved it.

 

Things I'm working on...

I am preparing for camping this week. We'll spend most of the week packing. I'm also working on a few Harry Potter LEGO things for our next blogging through the alphabet post. 

Random things the kids worked on...

We picked up a new set of sidewalk chalk for the summer with so many color choices...

 

So, April made her first sidewalk chalk art for all to enjoy on our front patio. It has lasted the whole week.

Something I accomplished...

I finally got around to fixing the tiny rip on a pocket of a hoodie jacket that belongs to Aric. I also fixed Alex's baseball pants that completely unraveled at the waist after the first wear and wash. It was nice to make the pile on my sewing desk smaller.

 

What we're reading...

Books about Baseball. It was pretty cool that both of these books related a story of baseball from world war 2. I didn't realize that when I put them on hold.

 

Movies we watched... 

I watched the 2nd to last Marvel movie, Avengers Infinity War, before I can finally watch Wanda Vision. I'm still kinda amazed that I've made it through all of the Marvel movies. A lot of things make so much more sense now!

Games we played...

It's not much, but we played ping pong on a really tiny table (aka our white board). It was pretty hard. We dream of having a ping pong table, but definitely don't have the space for one. So, for now, we play this way.

 

I'm cooking...

I know I cooked this week, but I sure can't remember what. I didn't cook it, but we had Panda's Express on Saturday night for Aaron's birthday dinner. It was so good!

I'm grateful for...

The beauty of nature outside and all around. 

 

That wraps up this week, and just in time for the new week! Hope yours was great!

Preparing for a family camping trip

It's that time of year for some camping! I've posted a lot about our camping trips after they happened, but I've never posted about the before. I thought it'd be fun to share some of the before happenings this season.

We are getting ready to go camping in a week so I've been starting to gather some fun things and making some preparations for the trip. I always like to bring along some fun surprises especially for our time at the camp. Things that we don't usually have or do on a regular basis.

Mini cereal boxes. I picked up a bunch of flavors of cereal for an easy breakfast. We'll even bring red Dixie cups to eat them in. This is a new one for us this year. I've always just brought one kind of cereal, or no cereal at all. I think the kids will enjoy this.

We'll be camping over the USA's Memorial holiday weekend, so I thought it'd be fun to have something patriotic to do. Alex and his friend will probably be the only ones to do this, so I'll have to get something fun for the older teens to do. I will probably also get some other crafts together.

A fun ball dart game to put up somewhere in the camp. We will also bring a few other card and board games. Usually I buy one new board game for the camping season too. I haven't decided if I'm going to do that this year or not as we have a lot of games. I'd love to get a giant Jenga game or some other big yard game, but they are pretty expensive right now.

I plan to do a tie-dye activity with the family to make red, white, and blue shirts before the camping trip to use all summer long for all our camping trips. I just need to get some more white shirts that are the right size!

Of course, I am going absolutely sure we have all the supplies needed for s'mores.

New beach towels. I decided to get a set of colored beach towels for camping so we can keep track everyone's towels. It gets so confusing when they are all hanging up and no one remembers which one is theirs. Each person will get a color and that will be their towel for the whole trip! 

That's all I have so far. I have lots more prep to go. I need to make lists of all the gear, get it out of storage, and start organizing and packing. 

I am linking this up with the Homeschool Review Crew's monthly challenge: