Time Flies...

My baby will be 5 on Monday!

First Build and Grow Clinic at Lowe's

Lowe's stores have FREE kids' clinics on 2nd and 4th Saturdays of every month. (You can sign up for the next one here.) Rickey took Gerrick to his first one this morning, and Gerrick had a great time building a race car. He was also given an apron, goggles, and a race car project patch. After completing projects from now on, he'll get a new patch to sew on his apron.

Another Blissfully Busy Day

...creation of a serious battle scene.
...a few phonics games.
...a few math games.


...assembled a T-Rex model.
...watched a hawk glide low behind our house.


...errands.
...local garden center--Gerrick decided to take pictures.


...the cat was his favorite subject.


...garden statuary came in a close second.




...train tracks were third.


...second model of the day.


...I painted too and made my first nature journal entry.


...headed to the woods, where we saw bird nests and heard woodpeckers.
...digging, digging, digging.


...orange mold?


...a lone bird wing.
...off to the creek to hunt for shells.
...leftovers heated for dinner. :)

Go Fish Master

Mummified Apple Results (1 week)

Here are the results of last week's experiment.

First of all, Gerrick was VERY surprised that the top of the salt/baking soda mixture had turned hard as rock! He couldn't even dig through it with a chopstick. I had to use a metal spoon to pry/crack it up. Underneath the top, the mixture wasn't rock hard, but fluffy--definitely different than the pourable mixture we put in the glass a week ago. We talked about how the top absorbed so much moisture from the air that it turned hard. The fluffy mixture was fluffy because it absorbed moisture from the apple--but not as much as the top absorbed from the air.

The apple that was in the desiccant definitely turned darker, just as we read mummies bodies turned darker after being in the natron. The apple that was left exposed to the air is drying and shriveling, but not molding; maybe our house is too dry. It is smaller than the mummified apple so it does seem to be decomposing faster, but is it really?...

We decided to re-bury the one apple and check the results again in another week or two.



UPDATE: You can see our 3-week results here.

Letter Review

We have completed 2/3 of Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read Pre-K. Gerrick can quickly identify all upper and lowercase letters now except for the ones shown above. These are his "tough letters."

He's starting to get really bored with the HOP Pre-K computer games and complains when I suggest them. He loved them at first, but the problem is that they use only a few games over and over and over--just with the new letter each time. We're just beginning to go over letter sounds (many he already knows though), and I've decided to not make him play the HOP Pre-K sound computer games. We're going to play a few more review card games, play the Starfall ABC games here, then move on to HOP Learn to Read Kindergarten edition. It has letter/sound review in the beginning as well, but maybe with a little different format that will reignite his interest. Plus he's dying to move on to the "Kindergarten" box and get out of what he calls "Imposter Kindergarten." :)

Today he started putting letter cards together on his own and making words and reading them (bat, cat, hat, rat, pat...; bot, cot, hot, rot, pot...), so I don't feel like I'm pushing him too hard by skipping the last part of the PreK box.

Visiting with Friends

Good friends of ours who moved away about two years ago were in town for the weekend. We were able to visit with them three of the last four days! :) I was so excited to see them that I completely forgot about my camera until they were getting ready to leave today--so the kids were subjected to the forced, posed shot. :)


Silas (2 1/2), Gerrick (almost 5), Norah (almost 4)


Norah asked for a picture with just Gerrick. :)

Dot-to-Dot

Yesterday, Gerrick did an entire alphabet dot-to-dot book. Amazon sells this particular book for $1.40, so the next time I need a filler to reach $25 for free shipping, I'll definitely look into getting more like this. He wanted me to put a picture of this page (his favorite) on the blog, so here it is. :) This is another example of how I'm learning I can't plan anything ahead. I thought he'd do 1 or 2 pages everyday 'til complete, but as usual--he altered the course. It was good practice for him though because (1) he obviously enjoyed it and (2) he messed up on several of the puzzles around the L M N O P parts and was very receptive to me erasing and helping him redo those sections.

Capital Letter Stories Lapbook

About a month ago I found the book Capital Letter Stories on clearance at Wal-Mart for $1.50. Gerrick doesn't write much because he thinks he can't (since his letters don't look perfect). He's never wanted me to show him how to write "properly" though, and I thought that this little book might be just the imaginative touch he needed to be willing to listen. Fortunately, I was right and he's gained a lot of confidence after just the first few letters. He also wanted to cut up the sheets after practicing writing the letters and make stick puppets from the characters...no surprise, he makes stick puppets out of EVERYTHING. :) Instead of just tossing his new puppets in the drawer with all his others, I thought it might be fun to have a lapbook just for them. Gerrick agreed, so we are working on it as we go. I figured how many pages we would need, and made the book from file folders and folding directions found here.


Here's the first set of letters. I printed the pockets from here on white card stock.


Here's the second set of letters, which we are still working on. I didn't worry that part of the picture was too big, I just turned it into a kind of lift-a-flap picture. There are several throughout the book.




The back of the workbook has a certificate onto which these "success patches" can be glued. We don't really see the point of certificates, so he's using the patches to decorate the back of the lapbook as he completes each set.


Here's tomorrow's letter. :)

Hard at Work...

Making a Mummy

To make our mummy we followed the steps shown in Egypt In Spectacular Cross-Section.
1. delivery
2. de-braining
3. gutting
4. washing and stuffing
5. drying
6. cleaning and packing
7. oiling
8. wrapping
9. protecting
10. securing
11. finishing
Any step we couldn't actually do (like #2), we pretended to do.





Here Gerrick is measuring the body for its coffin (part of #1). We will be making it later.




Since we really couldn't perform #5 (drying) on Barbie and it is such an important part of the process, we are also mummifying a piece of apple to demonstrate this step. We found instructions for this here, and will be checking our results of this experiment in one week. (This week's Unplugged Project theme is wrinkle. We suspect both of our apples will be wrinkled in one week, but while the one left uncovered will be rotting, the one in the desiccant should be preserved.)




Part of #7 (oiling) involves applying a final coat of resin. We used a 1 part white glue/2 parts water solution to represent the resin.




Egypt in Spectacular Cross-Section states that in the wrapping stage (#8), they began with the limbs. We chose to follow the above shown steps from Egyptian Mummies. This book states that during the New Kingdom mummies were wrapped beginning with the head.

We began wrapping cut strips of bandages and applying "resin" to secure them.





About here is when Gerrick decided this was too hard for him to handle.





So...I continued the wrapping while he took pictures.





Step #9 (protecting)--Amulets were placed within the bandages to ward off evil spirits. When we were shopping for "the corpse" at Goodwill, we also found this little snake--the perfect amulet for our mummy.





We stopped after step 9; he didn't want to wrap the mummy in a shroud because he liked it like this.

Update:
You can see our 1-week mummified apple results here ,
our 3-week results here ,
and a complete list of Ancient Egypt resources here.

Spin Art Hearts

I've been wanting to try spin art for a while, and after seeing it on another blog here this morning, I decided today was the day to pull out the salad spinner. It's a super easy activity, and Gerrick really enjoyed it. We used hearts cut from card stock and washable tempera paints. Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

Exploring a Nearby Creek

Two streets over, on the edge of our subdivision, there is a creek. We've lived here 4 1/2 months, but today is the first time we've explored the creek area...what took me so long?!!! We had a great adventure!


I had to set a rule for Gerrick: Try to stay out of the water. He would gladly have waded in to his knees had I not stopped him. He's going to love it down here in the summer! We didn't get a picture, but we brought his reed boats and watched the current whisk them away. :)


We found a lot of interesting tracks.


This seed pod was super fuzzy and fascinating. We spotted lots of them still hanging high up in a nearby tree.


Climbing over rocks is always fun!


He wondered if his reed boats had made it this far down the creek and crashed over the little waterfall.


Going under this dark bridge was an adventure in and of itself. Gerrick was shocked, and then mad, to see graffiti painted on its walls.


This is the peaceful scene found beyond the bridge.


Gerrick was surprised and thrilled to find mussel shells here.


We also saw schools of small fish in the water.


While Gerrick hunted for more shells...



...and was immersed in digging bliss,...


I tried my had at stone stacking. It was so peaceful and relaxing. Even though we were right under the highway, the sound of the nearby waterfall washed over most of the traffic noise. It felt like we were miles away from anywhere. I think we'll be spending a lot of time here. :)


We stopped at the neighborhood playground on the way home. After climbing around and sliding a few times, Gerrick emptied his field bag on the sidewalk to sort through his finds.