Beaver Dam

A beaver lives down the road from us.  The green, murky stuff to the left is water.  The beaver has built a dam under the road.  Daddy took us down there yesterday evening and held the kids over the side of the road so they could see.

Here's what they saw:

   

I held my camera over the side so they could see what the rest of the dam looks like:

   

Then we observed how the creek on the other side of the road is at a much lower level because of the dam. 

Beaver seekers:

Wise Ants

We used this ant farm (created from the ant pile in our yard)  in our Sunday School lesson on Proverbs 6:6, so at home we continued our study.

Whenever we get interested in something, we inevitably end up having to find a coloring page about our subject of interest.  Malachi has been working on this ant picture over the past few days.

Today we picked some of our favorite snacks to feed our growing ant pile.  We made guesses as to what they would like the best.

This proved very difficult with three cats continually trying to eat up our experiement. 

Here we are obsrving the ants.  Eventually we dumped the food directly on the ground which helped the ants get the food better. 

 Cheerios and potato chips seemed to be the favorites...

Even for the cats! 

After our observations, we learned some more about ants from our science book:

Roy G Biv

Success!

All it took was a different recipe that required more flour and water, less salt, a little cream of tarter and a little oil.  I made it last night while the kids were in bed, but they were very excited to see it when they woke up:

Since we finally had our playdough, we got to try this activity that I found at The Crafty Crow.

We started out with the primary colors:

Then we mixed the yellow with the blue, the blue with the red, and the red with the orange.  We ended up with the secondary colors: green, purple, and red.  Well, our purple wasn't exactly purple, but it was close enough. 

Then we mixed those colors with the colors on either side of them.  We ended up with the tertiary colors (though I didn't use that word with the kids) and a beuatiful color wheel.

Finally, we made "Rainbow Kebabs" with our pieces of dough and were reminded about ROY G BIV:

Then we thought it would be fun to mix all the pieces of playdough together and see what color they made.

It was the perfect color for tadpoles, and the kebab sticks were perfect for spearing the little tadpoles and catching them.

To close out our colorful morning, we read this eye-pleasing book that Mam-maw sent us:

It is a picture book with each page dedicated to a color.  Within each page we saw many different things from God's world that are different shades of one particular color.

What a beautiful masterpiece God has created!

Better Try It Again!

The outcome: playdough that is way too sticky to work with.  But it was a lot of fun for the kids and they got some good practice in measuring, following directions, and in patience. Oh wait, the lesson in patience was for me. 

(See picture below.)

  

You try making playdough with

 a very curious two-year-old!

Countdown!

 Though we have already been doing a little bit of school work here and there (in order to work out a schedule and to try out some different things), Septemebr 7th is our official start date.  On this day we will incorporate all our subjects, and follow a definate schedule.  Although school in our area starts at the end of August, we have a family trip scheduled for that time and we are very excited about Mam-Maw and Aunt Mel coming to visit us over Labor Day weekend! Due to these two exciting events and many other activities, AND the fact that mom still has some prep work to do for school,  we decided that Septemebr 7th would be a good kick-off date.  Malachi is excited about starting Kindergarten and Karis will be  in K-3.  We are planning a celebration in honor of our first day, and since the kids are sure to ask me EVERYDAY "When is it going to be here?", we will be counting down the days with our new countdown clock!

Oh! Just realized the clock is off.  Apparently this clock is on London time, which is 5 hours ahead!  So our countdown won't be exactly accurate, but for our purposes we are only concerned with the "days" anyway.

Yummy Watermelon!

While Karis was off having fun of her own, the boys got a little BIG treat!

Drawing a Pteranadon

Today Malachi wanted to draw a Pteranadon after watching a cartoon about dinosaurs.

He followed these directions in his 1,2,3, Draw book:

This book goes a bit beyond his ability, but he keeps wanting to try.  He told me that he was getting a little frustrated, but with a little bit of instruction from Mom, he remained calm and pressed on with lots of patience.  Here is how his pteranadon turned out:

We are looking forward to starting drawing lessons from our new book in the coming weeks.  I think it will give him the skills and confidence to draw all the things his imagination comes up with.

de Paola's Popcorn and Piles of Dirt

Today we had some playmates for the day! 

For snack time we ate popcorn...

 ...while reading this terrific book:

We learned about the three types of corn, ways popcorn used to be cooked, and other interesting facts.

After chowing down, it was on to some serious work that required all hands, and of course safety glasses.

The dirt was being transported to a spot under the trampoline that was to be the kitten's "dirt bed".

Notice that the kitten has disappeared from the scene. I guess she wasn't as excited as the workers were about this idea, or she is off eating all the popcorn we left on the ground.

Slow and Steady

Today Karis and Asher worked on some activities
 found in Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready.

Karis filled in holes:

Asher sorted and placed lids on the correct container:

Making a tower was more fun, though.

Meanwhile, Malachi worked hard on his handwriting and was able to add another box car to his Alphabet Express:

Then he decided it would be a great idea to put this train above his Alphapbet Express to see which one is longer....

 (This was the result of a cutting and pasting exercise from his Kumon workbook the other day)
We will have to wait until we finish the alphabet to find out the winner.

Elmer Elevator

We finished reading this book today...

And immediately picked up the sequel:

We just can't get enough of Elmer and his adventures.  These books have been a great hit with the kids and we HIGHLY reccommend them!  We will definitely be headed to the library to get the next in the series.