Horseback Riding

I'm so behind in posting.  There's so much I want to share, but can't ever seem to get myself to do it.  Well a while ago (like months and months ago...say, Novemberish), we were invited to a friend of a friend's horse ranch.  What a beautiful ranch and a really awesome girl who owns it.  She raises and trains horses.  I think she said she had 25 or so.  She invites kids over all the time to go riding.  Such a selfless human...she walks the horses with the kids on them for hours and hours and she even lets some of them ride them by themselves.  I was seriously so impressed by her!  A really cool lady!

Anyway, this was a life-changing event for Marvel.  He's wanted to be a "real" cowboy since, well, he could walk.  He got a pair of "real" cowboy boots when he was 5 and has been determined to own a cattle ranch ever since.  The only problem is other than the outfit, he has absolutely no experience in being a cowboy.  This was his jump start!

He started out meeting the mini-horse (I learned that there is a difference between a mini-horse and a pony, although I couldn't tell you what that difference is).  

Then he tried her out.  Easy peasy!

He quickly moved onto the big horse.  He was guided at first...

...and in no time, he was taking the reins and riding all by himself!!!  Marvel was SO proud of himself (and I've got to say I was a proud mama on the side!).

Next it was Captain America's turn.

Forget the mini-horse, Cap. was on to the big dog straight away!

One ride was good enough for him, though.

He decided checking out the babies was more up his alley.

Monkey wasn't so sure about the horses.  Up close was NOT for him!

This is a MUCH safer distance!

It was such a fun day.  We can't wait to go back again!

World Ag Expo (aka "the Farm Show")

Every year since I was pregnant with Marvel (that'd be 9 years running now), it has become a tradition of ours to attend the World Ag Expo in Tulare, CA.  Its huge.  Its fun.  Its educational.   We like it a lot.  Music Man helps out in my dad's booth and since his family lives not too far from the event, we make a week of fun out of it.  Rain or shine we're there (and it rains a good majority of the time, which surprisingly, but quite understandable, rain is really good for business!  Means the farmers aren't out working.)

What is there to do at the Farm Show, you say?  Lots and lots.  Its like 2nd best to Disneyland in my boys' eyes.  We usually try to get as many cousins to come with us as we can.  Both Music Man's sisters live in town, so this year  9 of the 10 kids between them joined us.  So sporting 13 kids, 3 moms, and 1 dad (we were asked several times if Music Man was the father of all 13 children...aka, are you sister-wives?  Uh, NO!)

First off there are LOTS of BIG HUGE tires to climb in...

...and lots and lots of tractors to "drive." Let's just say Monkey was in HEAVEN!!

We got to spend the day with Music Man aka Daddy.  He's always good to have around at things like this since he likes to climb up in the tractors just as much as the kids!  (And yes, Music Man has been sporting a groovy stache since about Thanksgiving and quite proud of it!)

Some tractors were small...some were REALLY big!  We tried them all.

Sorry girls, no, this is NOT Justin Bieber!  He's a  MUCH better catch!

Of course we HAVE to take the traditional cousin photo in front of a big tractor scoop!

These two are so cute together.  Monkey really should have been the one with the leash!

We got to meet a giant 2 legged cow.  Monkey was NOT happy to see him!

The farm show is 3-day event, but because of all the rain, we waited until the last day to go.  One of the highlights of the day was watching all of the tractors pulling out on their way home.  It was a first for us, but I think we just might have to go the last day from now on!

Amongst all of the playing and fun and games and good food and company, I love that my children get to see the tools used to grow the food we eat and the cotton we wear.  They really do learn so much each and every time we go.

Until next year...

There Was an Old Lady...

I've been going through my pictures and noticing all of the things I've missed posting about.  Its a bit off season to be thinking about Halloween right now (seeing as St. Patrick's Day is less than a week away), but I think this post could possibly relate to all seasons (if you have the right book).

My boys love these series of There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a... series.  We have a Swallowed a Bell for Christmas.  I think we have one for Thanksgiving too.  So for Halloween we read this one:

I printed out a big ol' lady (I can't remember where I found her from, so if its from you, let me know so I can give you credit where credit is due!), colored, and laminated her.  Then I found different pictures on google to go along with the "items" the old lady swallowed.

As I read the book, Marvel and Cap would take turns putting the items in the old lady's belly.

When we were all done, Marvel decided he wanted to be the old lady, so we retold the story as Marvel swallowed a...

Like I said before, if you have the other books, you can do this for the other seasons as well.  I made items for the Christmas book too (just forgot to take pictures).

Instrument Families

When I was in elementary school, we had one hour a week when our teacher would send us down to the music room to have a music lesson from the music teacher.  We sang songs, we learned to clap rhythms, play the recorder, read music, and all sorts of music stuff.  I consider myself blessed.

Now a days kids are lucky if they sing songs in their normal classroom with their normal teacher.  Period.  That is unacceptable to me!  So I've decided to make music class a part of our normal school week.  Every Monday we'll have a new music lesson.  For our first lesson I taught the boys about musical instrument families.  I made this pocket chart to go with the lesson:

I introduced each family by reading some facts on them.  I used the info from this site.  Then the boys would go through all of the pictures of instruments and find those that went with the family we were talking about.  It was a breeze!

When the chart was all filled up, we went through our little box of kid instruments.  The kids sorted them into families, then we discussed why each instrument belonged to that family.

Next week I think we're gonna go down to Music Man's studio and have the kids point out all of the instruments for each family!

Creation

Every morning as part of Group Time, we read scriptures as a family.  This year since we are studying Ancient history, we decided to start at the beginning and read from the Old Testament.  To be perfectly honest, I've never read straight through it.  I learned about it in early morning seminary at church during high school.  And I took a class in college on it.  But I never really read straight through.

Each morning during scripture time, we read from the Old Testament, then Marvel and Captain make a notebook page on what we read.  They start by telling me what they remember from our reading {sometimes this warrants some hints}, which I write down for them.  Under their explanation of the chapter(s) they draw a picture to illustrate it.  This all gets pretty interesting at times, especially the narrations!

The first week of school we started at the beginning with Genesis, so we covered the Creation.  I don't always do an activity for everything that we read, but I happened to have this pocket chart from last year {we did a science unit using the creation...we did a little mini unit on each day.  I.e. when God created the sky and seas, we learned about the Water Cycle and the weather}.

After we read about the Creation, I quized the boys by having them put the events in the right order.  I happily surprised to see that Marvel knew every single one!

I guess he learned something after all!

Even Monkey wanted to get in on the action!

Marvel was really into his drawings.

Cap wanted to make sure he drew the right thing for each one.

He kept leaning to Marvel and asking what he should draw next.

Here's Captain's 7 Days of Creation:

My favorite part of the day was when Cap excitedly showed Marvel his picture and Marvel pointed out all of his favorite things. :-) {Please ignore the fact that Captain America is posing as Captain Underpants in this picture}

While the big boys drew their pictures, Monkey quietly sat and read books.

He didn't even notice me taking is picture!

Ok, guess he did.

What a cute baby!

Cuneiform Writing

A couple weeks ago in history (at school), Marvel was learning about Cuneiform writing and the Sumerians.  If you don't know what cuneiform is, here's an example of a cuneiform tablet (aka a Sumerian pictograph):

(image from here)

Each of the kids got a piece of clay and made their own tablet.  Marvel was so excited about it.  He's all about secret codes and such.  It came time to take their tablets home, but Marvel's broke, so he said he had to throw it away.  He was pretty bummed about it, so the next day at homeschool, I whipped out the play dough (the only clayish stuff I had) and he made himself a new cuneiform tablet.

Here's what we used:

Play-doh, the end of a paint brush, and a chart Marvel brought home from school that had a chart of cuneiform writing

Yes, Marvel IS still in his p.j.'s...not a usual sight in our classroom (I'm a stickler),

but for some reason this day he never got dressed.

And here it is.  Marvel's very own cuneiform tablet.

In case you're wondering, he wrote his name.

**For any and all of you who are interested in doing this activity, you can download the Mesopetamian writing chart via the Oriental Institute Museum  here!

Archaeological Dig

Marvel attends a charter school 2 days a week, which teaches history, science, geography, art, music, and a little bit of all the other subjects {I then teach him math and language arts at home}.  "Technically" we don't have to do any History during his 3 days at home, but I'm really trying to link school at school & school at home together.  Plus they get to teach all of the FUN subjects and I want in on some of the fun too!  So I try incorporate history at least one of the three days Marvel is home.

This year in History the focus is on Ancient History.  We started out by discussing what history is, then talking about Archeology.  Of course both Marvel & Cap popped up and said.

"Indiana Jones is an Archaeologist!"

Then our conversation went something like this:

{Me} Yes, yes, that is true, but what is it that he does as an Archaeologist?

{Boys} Fights bad guys and finds buried treasure!

--Oh boy.--

{Me} Well that is kind of true.  Archaeologists don't usually fight bad guys, but they do look for buried treasure.  What kinds of treasures might they find?

{Boys} Gold...silver...fancy jewelry...crystals...

{Me} Yes, those are all treasures, but an archaeologists job is to find things from the past that tell us about that time period...about the people, their food, how they live, what they believed...


Then we proceeded to talk about the types of things archaeologists look for, how they look for them, where they look for them, and what those things tell us about the past.

I love teaching my kids history and science!  They love it so much, they perk right up and we actually have great discussions!

In my search for fun history activities, I came across this post at Satori Smiles {ironically they call their home school space their "Learning Loft" too....she has some great home school ideas!} and knew my boys would LOVE it!

Each of the boys started the dig off with their own dirt plot.

Then we used popsicle sticks and yarn {I could not for the life of me find any string!} to section each plot off.  We assigned each square a name/number {A1, A2, A3...B1, B2, B3...C1, C2, C3}.

And thus began the digging!

Marvel was the first to make a discovery...ahhh, a skeleton!

Each time a discovery was made, the boys would brush off their artifact with their paint brush...

...then record their findings on their Artifact Sheet.

{GREAT way to get Marvel to write by the way...the kid hates writing, but didn't even think twice about it, yay!}

Marvel found a treasure right away, but Captain took a while.  

He finally discovered a green jewel.

Captain had a good time just watching Marvel.

I love, love, love moments like this!

Cap finally got back to his digging and started discovering all sorts of things.

He was very meticulous.
He made sure every speck of dirt was off of his artifacts before he'd move on.

He even picked out every rock and wood chunk in his box {not purposely put there by the way} and put them aside as artifacts too.  Hmm, we may just have a future archaeologist on our hands.

When the boys had dug all that they could dig, they sifted the remaining sand to make sure they didn't forget anything.  Good thing we did, cause Cap found his last artifact!

Marvel's discoveries:

Captain America's discoveries:

When they were all done, the boys inspected each artifact and explained what they thought it was and what they thought it said about the period of time the artifact came from.

This was my FAVORITE part!

Marvel came to the conclusion that these were ancient people who found importance in their gods, wealth, soldiers, kings, queens, and dung beetles {not joking...one of his artifacts was a scarab}.

My favorite artifact explanation from him was about the skeleton.  In his words:

By his condition, he looks old.

I can tell by his skull he has a big dent.

He was probably in a war.

His feet are very thin, so he must have walked a lot.

Very observant Marvel!  At one point while Marvel was talking about his artifacts, Cap said, "Wow, how do you know SO much about Egyptians?"  Marvel's reply was "One day you'll be able to be as smart as me.  I just KNOW these things!"  Still makes me chuckle.

The captain CRACKED me up in his explanations.  Everything was about "Indians," although I'm positive he meant "Egyptians."  And he kept referring to why how the artifacts got in the sand.  Like when he was explaining where the piece of wood came from,

It was on a tree and an Indian {Egyptian} broke it off, then threw it in the sand and dug it in.  Then every Indian {Egyptian} got wood off a tree and threw it in the sand too.

About the King Tut mask he said,

It used to be a statue, but then the head fell off, so it cannot go back on the whole body.

or about the Sphinx:

It used to be in the sand, then it turned small so it could get way in the sand.  Then the Indians {Egyptians} dug and got it and made it big.

I love the mind of a little child!

Ok, last one, last one, I promise...one of my favorites was about the skeleton:

A person died, then turned into a skeleton.

Then he came alive again and fought all the good guys.

Cause all skeletons are bad and they fight the good guys.

And what of the whereabouts of Monkey this whole time?

Oh no, a tomb raider!! 

Does Indiana Jones do babysitting too? :-)