Homemade Skirts

Joella is a member of the Daring Girls Club with a local homeschooling co-op. This is a club that does books and activities from The Daring Book for Girls. One of their first activities was making a skirt out of a pillowcase. Even though this club is really for 6 years and up, my two other little girls didn't want to be left out! Here you may see the final results of that activity. It was so simple to do! All one needed was a pillowcase, some ribbon, any decorative things you wanted to add to your skirt, scissors, and washable fabric glue! And an iron is useful....

Not Your Traditional Pumpkin Carving

To celebrate Halloween this year, I decided the kids could decorate the pie pumpkins. No carving for me! The kids had a lot of fun painting their pumpkins. After Halloween, I will prepare the pumpkins to use for making pies, and we'll roast the seeds to eat. Yummy!

Getting ready for Halloween....

Liesl and Therese have ballet class tonight and they're supposed to wear costumes. We scavenged through their dress up box and this is what we came up with. Liesl is going as Fancy Nancy and Therese is going as a black cat. The first picture was mistakenly recorded as video instead of as a picture. You may as well enjoy it.

Pretty in Purple

Taken one fine Sunday afternoon at Church.

Colum's Artwork

Colum is taking a bible art class at the homeschool co-op, HomeschoolPlus, in Norfolk. He really enjoys it. I've included two pictures that the students in the class have completed thus far. I really like the Ten Commandments picture. Colum told me that he doesn't really like the other one because he realized after he was done that he misunderstood the teacher's direction. The teacher had said 'Don't leave empty spaces' and he mistook that to mean that he needed to fill up the paper with lots of things. It wasn't until he sat back and thought about it that he realized she meant to make sure that you draw your subjects to size, big enough that you don't waste any space on your paper. Colum's a smart guy. For the next school year, Colum asked me if he could keep taking bible art, and add a drawing class to his schedule. I'm all for it.

Fun at Brookdale Farm

This past Friday, we headed off for a visit to Brookdale Farm with a local homeschooling group. At the farm, the kids learned about cows and got to see how butter is homemade and even to taste some just fresh out of the cow butter on some crackers. They also learned about sheep. An interesting fact we learned is that donkeys make some of the best 'watchdogs' for farms. They have a keen sense of hearing and can alert one to the presence of predators up to 5 miles away. I never knew that. Anyway, the kids also got to pick some cotton and to go on a hayride. While on the hayride, we stopped at a field of pie pumpkins to pick some and take home. For those of you that don't know, pie pumpkins are simply small pumpkins and the smaller size make them better tasting for baking/cooking purposes than jack o'lantern pumpkins. I plan to use these pie pumpkins to make, (what else?), pumpkin pies!!

Park day

Every Friday, we join other homeschoolers in Virginia Beach at a park. The kids get to play with their friends for 3 hours. I am usually either chatting with the other moms, or following Noni around the park if she is feeling very active. Last Friday was nice because Noni was very content to stay in one place for a long while and check out the dirt, pine cones, rocks, or the sandy pit. This enabled me to actually talk with the other moms for more than 5 minutes at a time!! We all look forward to park day every week!

The Bounce House

The last sunday of September, the FRG for VFA-15 threw a free bounce house party for all the kids while the moms had a meeting about stuff. Needless to say, the kids had a blast! I had to drag them away and only succeeded by being able to prove that we were being thrown out of the Bounce House along with everyone else! The Bounce House in Virginia Beach is basically a warehouse full of bouncy things. They have 3 bounce things and a giant slide. They also had a toddler room, which was nice, as Noni spent most of her time playing there (as did Joella!). I dare you to guess from looking at the pictures where Therese spent most of her time at the Bounce House.

The Fashion Show

So, on Friday night, the kids insisted on putting a fashion show on and I had play the part of fashion photographer. Colum was the designer and show production. The girls were models, obviously!
Enjoy....

Firefighter Field Trip

Last Wednesday, the kids went to a local firehouse and got to have a look at a fire truck, and then attend a fire safety presentation. The fire safety presentation was a lot of fun for the kids. What amused me the most was how they took popular songs and changed the lyrics. For example, the Banana Boat song became "Smoke-o, smoke-o, smoke-o, and me wanna go low". There were three 'clowns' who did the majority of the presentation and they were funny. The most useful part of the show was where they took one of the firemen in the clothes he normally wears to the firehouse and had him put on one piece of firefighting equipment at a time and explain the reason for each. Started of with his boots & pants and worked his way up to the helmet over the gas mask. Told the kids how to make noise if they couldn't do it the normal way because of smoke. All in all, a fun field trip.