A Story from the Kids: Star Wars Fighters 1

Star Wars Fighters 1

     Anakin Skywalker leads Obi Wan Kanobi in the forest.

A skunk jumps down from the trees and Anakin slices it.

Obi Wan doesn't know where Anakin is.

                                                 R2-D2 is trying to find Anakin also.

Finally Obi Wan and Anakin find each other again.  They hear something in the woods.

What they hear is a bear!  A polar bear!

They creep up on the bear...

And they slice him!  It is hard to fight the polar bear!

They try and try and finally cut off its arm.

The polar bear dies and they have to make sure there are no more bears.  

There is only one more.

R2-D2 rolls over the last bear and hurts it until it stops fighting.

Master Yoda gives Anakin and Obi Wan a mission to protect the Republic.

Anakin and Obi Wan go to help the Republic.

On their way there, they see R2-D2 and one of the kids from the Republic. 

They are almost to the Republic and Anakin and Obi Wan protect R2 and the child well from some enemy droids along the way.

They get hungry and stop to catch some fish, to kill and eat.

After they eat an enemy droid kills Obi Wan!

Luckily Obi Wan comes back to life!

Then Anakin dies from an enemy droid!

The child is still happy!

Anakin comes back to life and turns into Darth Sidious (Darth Vader's master) and kills everyone (except the small, happy child and Yoda).

Then Darth Sidious turns into Darth Vader, who turns good and brings R2 and Obi Wan back to life with the force.

~THE END~

Bless Art!

We have had a SUPER fun week this week, thanks to some fun art time in the kitchen.  You'll notice all the kids look ecstatically happy in all the pictures! :)  It has just been so, so fun to see them enjoy creating and I never want to stop.

I put some flour in the cake pans and each of the 3 children drew pictures and practiced letters in the flour.  It reminded me of a Tao art thing I saw in a store before that erases your picture after a minute or so....we are practicing the art of not being attached to your art.   ;)  We are saving the flour in a Tupperware container so we can use the same flour next time.

Handprints

I got the next idea from a friend.  This was SO cool, and I highly recommend it!  You just need some kind of pan, whole milk, food coloring, tooth picks, small cups and dish soap.  We started out just with the milk and food coloring, stirring around the colors with toothpicks.  I guided them so their color combinations would not make brown.  That in itself was cool and made some beautiful designs.

After the kids played like that for a few minutes I put a few drops of dish soap in a dixie cup for each kid and they dipped their toothpicks in it.  It was SO cool to see how the colors and designs reacted.

I think this was the one "Spiderman" thought looked like a dragon.

This is "Robin's".

"Superman's" did end up a little muddy colored, but still cool.

Here the kids and I were dying some pasta with vinegar and food coloring.  We may need to have a year supply of food coloring if we keep this up!  Here they are each filling their own bags of pasta.

                            Adding a couple Tbsp of vinegar to each bag, that the kids would then squeeze around to distribute onto all the pasta.

Super Baby was happy just playing with the box and watching his brothers.

We'll probably use the Rigatoni pastas for stringing on jewelry and practicing patterns.  So much better than a worksheet on patterns right!?

      We added some food coloring to each bag and squished it around again to distribute.

They crack me up.

I decided that some of the pasta was a little soggy from a touch too much vinegar, so we'd better put them out on paper towels or they would never dry.  It worked out pretty good, but I think I'll look for a different method, like letting them dye over night or something next time to get more vibrant colors.  Also it was hard to cover the curly noodles.  I do think the curly ones could make some fun noodle art faces and hair though. ;)

Who wouldn't want to be around these little happy faces all week!?

Bless art, my husband for working so I can be a stay at home mama, and the choice we have made to homeschool!

Summer Child Led Unschooling

This is my first summer after my first year of being serious about homeschool.  I love educating myself and my children and I can't just stop because its summer!  Through the summer we are doing our best to read aloud consistently and also have my 5 year old read to me.  We are currently reading 2 chapter books, one of which is Peter Pan. SO fun to read! 

The other book I am reading (only to my 5 year old) is about a brother and sister that live in tornado country.  My husband is into watching a show called Storm Chasers, and the kids have seen parts of many episodes, AND my sister and her family just moved to Oklahoma City, so we decided to learn about tornadoes.  We picked out a bunch of tornado books at the library and I plan to do a tornado with them in a 2 liter bottle probably next week for a little nature based science.  Lucky enough, one of my friends has been in a tornado and wanted to be a storm chaser, so she told them about her experience at lunch.  So cool!

The kids and I were at a friend's house the other day and we saw them doing math with jelly beans as manipulatives.  The only way they get candy at their house is if they do some math.  The kids ran up to their Mom, while playing with friends, and said, "Mom!  Can we do some math!?"  Well that excitement convinced me; we are copying them.  Today I bought some gummy bears and some jelly beans that will only come out for math.  I would LOVE for Math to become an exciting word at my house like it is at theirs.

I love the free form of the summer and I love getting a taste of unschooling.  Yum!


P.S.  This next year my "Superman" will be starting his 1st grade curriculum, and "Spiderman" will be starting Kindergarten.  I like the organization of using a curriculum during the school year, although I'm not the most consistent person ever.  My plan for next year is to plan in a week break like every month and a half or so, so that I still feel FREE.  

R is for Rock

Well, I've been slow to update as usual.  Several weeks ago now we studied rocks.  It was SO much fun.  

Here are some of the fun things we did:

We went on a walk around pond in our backyard looking for cool rocks and talking about how they were different.  We kept our favorites for a rock collection.

We put those rocks in size and color categories the next day and compared the sizes of the different groups.

We learned the Christ is the rock of our faith, the one sure foundation.

We went to a local rock shop, Simple Elegance in Orem, Utah and learned a TON from the owner.  We got to see how rocks are cut and polished, and he gave them some polished rocks.  We also looked at crystals and talked about fossils.  Our favorite part was holding a fossilized sea turtle head!  It was awesome!   I HIGHLY recommend taking your kids here!  The owner said if the kids are 12 are older, he will let them cut a rock themselves!

We made a clay volcano, baked it, and watched it erupt (about 6 times) with baking soda and red colored vinegar.

Another super educational thing we did was buy (for $3 on amazon) The Magic School Bus, Journey to the Center of the Earth and read it.  I learned so much!  

Shortly after our rock section we went down to St George and saw great rocks on our hike.  I also took a beautiful motorcycle ride with my Dad through the gorge between Utah and Arizona and we marveled over the amazing things that happened to the earth in that area.

(Our walk was captured by my friend Wendy who is the author of bedheadmom.  To read the post click on the name of her site ;))