A Fairy & A Princess

Ally with her friend Karis.









"Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised." Proverbs 31:30

Camden Funnies

If you are on facebook then you have probably already heard these....but I thought I would post here too as I know many of you are not on facebook.

A few weeks ago I made the comment to Camden that he probably needed to try to go potty because it had been a while since he had gone. So he goes in and sits on the toilet and after a few minutes I hear him yell out "Abracadabra! Make me pee!" We all rolled with laughter.

This past week I was explaining to Camden that this coming weekend he could help me plant some seeds in the ground and that from those seeds food would grow for us to eat. His response was, "but we not supposed to eat food off of the ground momma". LOL!


"A merry heart does good, like medicine..." Proverbs 17:22

Sidewalk Chalk Fun

Beautiful Photographer!

"This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24

Arrabella- Part 3

During our rowing of Arrabella the kids learned about different types of ships along with the parts of a ship. Their are some great books out their on ships/boats. Here's a few we used.






The kids designed their own sailboats one afternoon.














Notice on Houstons sail that he cut holes in it. He said that was from the cannons that the pirate ship shot at him. ;-)







"He brings the wind out of His treasures." Psalm 135:17

Arrabella - Part 2

Continuing with our rowing of Arrabella. One of the kids lessons was to imagine what life on an island would be like and make a list of pro's and cons for living on one. To help them brainstorm we read a few books about living on an island.







Here are their lists of pro's and con's for living on an island.







In case the papers are hard to read here are some that they mentioned.

Disadvantages
1) No hospitals or medical help- have to go mainland if your hurt or sick.
2) Have to stock up on food- no grocery stores.
3) Not a lot of people- lonely
4) No tv
5) No dvd's
6) lots of bugs
7) Storms- hurricanes


Advantages
1) Very pretty
2) Lots of birds and wildlife
3) surrounded by the ocean (can play in it)
4) you can go fishing anytime you want
5) it would be an adventure
6) wild berries to pick
7) Quiet
8) be alone (Houston liked the idea of not many people being on the island but he also listed lonliness as a disadvantage)
9) You could go treasure hunting
10) Seashells to collect


The author of our fiar story Arrabella is Wendy Orr. She has written another book that I am sure you are all familiar with...Nim's Island. We read it as a go-along during our rowing.


Typically the kids read a book before they see the movie but in this case they had already seen the movie Nim's Island before reading the book. They loved that the book was a bit different than the movie. They really enjoyed reading through this! Me too. Of course, after reading the book we watched the movie again.

For another lesson I gave each of them a piece of paper with outlines of islands on them and they had to search our world map, globe, and atlas to figure out what islands were on their paper.


Emmy said this lesson was really fun. In the process of looking for their islands they began to realize just how MANY islands exist in our world. They discovered quit a few small islands around the world that they had never noticed before on our maps.



We love our atlas!! I found it this past year for only a dollar at BookCloseouts during one of their sales. It comes in so handy in our geography lessons.




Here's one of the pages the kids used to locate their islands.

"God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves." Genesis 1:21

Arrabella

Our latest five in a row story that we rowed was Arabella by Wendy Orr. A story about a young boy that visits his Grandfather on the island that he lives on for the summer.



With this story we had lessons on Islands Around the World, Sea Lore, Living on an Island, language art lessons on the joy of words, Alliteration and Similes, A review for Italicizing Names of Ships, Writing a good story- The Use of Suspense and Climax, Descriptive Sentences, Complete Sentences.... Art lessons on model ship building, art lesson on dots, lines, and curves....a science lesson on blood cells, a math lesson on parts to a whole using the seasons, a science lesson on tying ropes and knots, and a history lesson on sailing ships. It was a fun row!

In our story there were two types of model ships and one was a ship in a bottle. We had watched a Reading Rainbow video on lighthouses a few years back and it showed how ships in a bottle are made. The older kids made the comment that it looked hard but like fun too. Since one of our lessons with this story was on model ships we surprised them with a bottle and the pieces to make a ship in it.


The kids started by putting some blue sticky clay on a stick and spreading it onto the bottom of their bottle.




Next they spread some clay on their "boat". Then came the tricky part.....putting the ship in the bottle and getting it into place using only the sticks.






This is the base of their ship all situated in the bottle.






Next step was to cut out sails and glue them onto sticks.




Then came the really tricky part- getting those sails into the bottle and standing up on the boat. This step took the longest.


And here it is, the kids ship in a bottle!! It was their idea to get some of the seashells we collected on the beach in Florida three years ago and put them into the bottle too.


This project took a lot of patience. It was fun watching them make it- I am so proud of them. They all made the comment that it was just as hard as they thought it would be, but really fun too!

Current Reads

Emmy has really enjoyed reading through the Childhood of Famous American Series this year. I have been letting her chose which books she wants to read every month as she goes along and she has mainly chosen the books on Famous American Women so far. Her latest one has been on Martha Washington.



As she reads through each of the books she often comes up with questions that we research together. For instance while reading about Betsy Ross, Emmy wanted to know more about The Quackers. We ended up spending a week researching The Quackers and what their lives were like.


Another series that she really enjoys reading are the Dear America books. She is currently finishing up the following one.


She has learned quit a bit more about The Dust Bowl through this story. I love these books too!!

I think I have mentioned this before but the election this past fall triggered an interest in the older kids to learn more about past Presidents. We have spent the year reading through various books on Presidents. In February for Presidents Day we read through The Childhood of Famous Americans bios on Lincoln and Washington. Houston expressed an interest in learning more about Lincolns Assassination so his current reads are,






And as our current family read aloud we are all enjoying,