Rodeo Days

The boys have been mesmerized by our trips to the Dixie National Rodeo in Jackson and the Bull Bash in Liberty.  These first two pictures are from when they met the Rodeo Clown from Liberty, Rudy Burns.

For two, maybe three, weeks this has been the scene in our living room:

Bareback Bronc Riding...

and of course the wreck...

And "Bull" Riding, complete with flank strap and the cowboys own rope.

We had some video footage of our rides and wrecks, but I was unable to upload them here.  Maybe you were able to glimpse into our life this past week through these pictures.  Mom was packing up for our move to North Carolina, and was able to catch a break here and there watching her cowboys.

Thankful for God's grace!

Owls

One evening last week while we were having our family bible time, we heard an owl hoot right outside our window.  We were a very excited about that and decided to turn that excitement into some crafty fun.

Owl making and caretaking dominated our week.  This post will chronicle our (mainly Malachi's) adventures.

First, we made mommy owls with pine cones from Pap-paw and Mam-maw's house and feathers and googly- eyes from Wal-mart.

Then we made babies.  We had to wrap yarn around our fingers 100 times to make a pom-pom.

Then we glued the eyes, beak, and feet onto the puffs.

1 mommy, 2 babies

2 mommies, 2 babies, 2 happy kids

Malachi created this owl cage to take care of the owls.

Then he moved the cage to his room.  Don't even think about moving that green tractor you see there... because it, and the other toys you see, are the walls to the cage and not really toys at all.

And, as you can see, the 2 mommies were actually 1 mommy and 1 daddy, and the baby owls multiplied.

Here Malachi is demonstrating how to use the "air-pump" so the owls can get air.

By the end of the week, Malachi and Karis' room turned into a pet shop.  This meant that every container that held toys was emptied onto the floor and the empty containers were used for housing animals.  Here is an example:

Malachi, especially, had a great time with the owls and is still being a great little caretaker.  Now, if he will just help me clean up his room, I mean pet shop.

By God's grace, another week completed!

Coins and Continents

Our favorites in Math this past week were buying groceries with our pennies, complete with a conveyer belt,

and buying toys with dimes.

We spent a couple days on continents again.  We made a map of the eastern hemisphere by tracing the pieces from our world continents puzzle.  Maybe this week we will do the other side of the world.

We also tried to match our continent flash cards to the correct continent on our wall map by looking at the shape of the land in orange.  This was a little more difficult for them than I thought it would be, so we will be practicing this skill some more.

I introduce the -at blend to Malachi

and he practiced sounding out different words.

Handwriting has become a favorite for the two oldest Wilson kids...

And lastly, at his request, we have a chicken...

Although not shown in the picture, this was a role-play

activity complete with "corn" on the ground and the necessary pecking.

Only by God's grace, another week completed!

Goody, Goody, Gumballs

Golden letter G on green paper...

G gloves...

Writing the words for the G pictures that were on our gloves...

Gumball G's... Malachi made an ABB pattern on one of his letters, and Karis was as colorful as she usually is...

Malachi is writing the price tags on the items we bought during math this week.

Malachi is working on a number book.  First he did a sandpaper rubbing of the number, then he wrote it by hand, and finally he drew that number of items on the page.

In Math we also made a pictograph showing our favorite winter activities....

Karis enjoyed matching cookie cutters to the correct outline...

By God's Grace another week is completed!

Ladybugs

We have gotten into a good routine of doing our "letter books"

 first thing before actually starting school.  Here Karis isworking on hers...

 Malachi is concentrating very hard on his work. 

This day he was the most focused that he has ever been...

Here he is doing a "Smarty-Pants Dance" because

he did the whole page by himself, without help and more importantly, without whining!

More number recognition in math...

a little practice with a clock...

We used some dried black beans to put spots on our ladybugs...

Ordinal number practice...

Which cup is the ladybug under.. first, second, or third?

We made letter L lollipops using sugar cookie mix in a bag.

The dough proved to be quite difficult to handle, but we did our best...

Putting the sticks in...

Frosting and sprinkles, of course!

Yummy! Yummy!

Discovering things that start with the letter L...

We used our fingerprints to make the lowercase letter l.

Then we turned our fingerprints into ladybugs.

Karis did her own thing...

We also traced a large leaf pattern,

wrote the word leaf, and colored our leaves.

But, the best part of the week was our snow day!
Asher wasn't quite sure about walking in snow.

            We of course ate the snow..

          and threw snowballs.

Malachi "helped" Daddy make a snowman,

but his help lasted about one minute.

Daddy did a great job!

There's nothing like a beautiful calming snow to remind us of His grace that covers all things.

Only by that unending grace, have we made it through another week!