Monday, April 29, 2013

Checking off the Bucket List

Friday, O went to bed as usual.
20 minutes later we heard her rustling,
fighting the door, and a sound that made
us cringe.  She couldn't get the door open
in time, and we were greeted with a
very upset little girl and vomit all over
the floor, the door, and the laundry basket.

The cleaning ladies are not so fond of us anymore.

She continued to get sick most of the night.
She woke up Saturday morning, 
and claimed she was feeling better.
This was her convincing me.

We hesitantly, got around and decided on a
mellow day of mostly driving.
Why on earth would we go out with a sick kid?!
1.  Mama had major cabin fever and had to get out!
2.  We have quite the Bucket List of things to do
while we are here, and we pretty much have to
do something every weekend to complete it.
3.  We are crazy.

Off to Jamestown we went (you know? 
it's the place British first settled.  yes, that one.
Where they all starved.).



On the road.


We took a ferry to cross the river.  


As you can see, O was not very interested.

F played on his phone while we were
waiting to get on the ferry.

And I went crazy with the camera.

While we were on the ferry, we could get
out of our van and walk around.  

This is where you can tell the tourists from the 
local commuters.  
Seagulls followed the ferry.
We followed the seagulls.
And photographed them.

Here, F is asking if I was getting any good photos
of the seagulls.

I think I did pretty well.

On the little island, there were lots of artifacts.
By the way, I kind of love learning about history,
so the next few photos may not be of any 
interest to you.

There were lots of plaques with info on them as we 
walked along.  I read just about all of them.
Out loud.
O willingly listened, as long as I carried her.

We took a short walk to get to the heart 
of Jamestown where all the interesting stuff
was happening.

Yes, people were dressed up,
and talked like they were from
the 1600s.  AND they gave tours,
so I dragged my family to one of the tours.


As you can tell, they were terribly interested.
O was snuggly the whole day, and patiently 
waited for the guy in the weird outfit to 
stop talking.

This is a replica of what the church would
have looked like.  The actual building did
not hold up, but the foundation was there.
It actually is still there, under a layer of
cement to protect it.


This was in the church.

We could see the recreated foundations
 of several of the homes that would have been
there.  They were row houses (all attached, and
well, in a row). 
Historians have all the deeds and
paperwork so they could see who owned
what property and such.  Fascinating, right?


Statue of John Smith.

There was a little cafe in the area,
where we ate lunch and yummy 
Ginger Ale.

A fancy grave marker (most were made of wood).

Oh, and who is this a statue of?

Pocahontas.
Now,  O has a new favorite pretend game.
Any guesses who she wants to be all the time?

Wore out from a long day.

Onto the next item on our Bucket List!


Saturday, April 27, 2013

42

The sun has come out!
And it has stayed around (for the most part).
We have been here 42 days.
We have 81 days left.
Today it seems like it is going by fast,
but if you asked me that on week 2, I would
have said it is the slowest time of my life.
We have found our groove.
We know where the good playgrounds are.
We know people.
We know where to do our shopping, and where to do
our walking and our exercising.



We have a bible study,
and a mom's group,
and we are having fun.


I can say without a doubt we will
miss this place when we go.

Friday, April 26, 2013

School Work Highlights

I am super organized (borderline too organized).
I have all of O's lessons mapped out, and
I meticulously check them off as I go.

My lessons only take up a small portion of the day though.
We actually do a lot more school than I record.

These are some of the extras we did this week... 
Puzzles--by the way I am learning every day how
OCD I am.  For some reason I think puzzles should
be put together starting with the edge, and then
filling in the middle.  My daughter completely disagrees.
She wants to see the picture, and the edge is not as
important.  It drives me crazy.  I have issues.

Pinterest is fantastic, but some of the stuff on there is
ridiculously untrue.  I found something that said
"mix soap and cornstarch to get bubble dough"

We mixed.

We failed.

O still played in it, but it was not quite
what I was hoping for.



O did 3 part nomenclature cards for transportation.



Then she sorted them by what is used on Land, Air and Water.

We practiced counting and patterns and skip counting.

We played a game with dice.

We rolled the dice (got a 5), and colored in the number.
Then the rest of the rolls we added the number to our previous roll.
(The next number we rolled was 2.  5+2=7, so we filled in 7).
We went all the way to 100.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Montessori Beads

I love all things Montessori.  If you let me,
I will probably talk your ear off, discussing
 how amazing I think it is.  

The only problem I have with Montessori
is it is so, so expensive.

O is at an age where she is really into
counting and numbers.  I wanted her to
be able to do math using Montessori methods,
however the hubs and I were not ready to
part with hundreds of dollars for beads.

Hello, Pinterest.

I found an idea at Montessori Messy
and I sort of expanded on it.


Perler beads = cheap + variety of colors + not as labor intensive as stringing my own beads


This is what a true Montessori Bead set looks like.




 These are my perler bead version.
Yes, yes, yes.  I know, 
it is not an exact replica.
But those beads above cost way more than my version.
I also had plenty of beads to make the squares, too.

I am not going to lie, this was tedious business.
It took a very long time to sort the beads, and
line them all up.  However, I think it was worth it.
O was with her grandparents, and I had hours
upon hours to do nothing but sit and watch tv and
make bead squares and rods :)






What is the big deal with these beads you ask?
If you care to read up on them, here are a few sites.







Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Lego Obsessed

To say we are enamored with Legos is
putting it lightly.  We have played with
Legos just about every day we have been here.
So, what does a homeschooling mama do?
Make a lesson out of it of course.

We are following directions to make numbers
and dinosaurs (did you know you can find these
online--for free?!)

I found a few copyright free images, so we can
create our own Mini-Figure, color and the sort
the Mini-figs by size, and draw facial expressions.

I also made a graph, maze, some items to measure, 
fun facts, and activities I want O to do with the Legos.
Some of the activities include 
::Create a pyramid
::Create a boat that will float
::Make letters/names with the Legos
::Build a Denmark flag (where Legos were created)  and 
::Make a bridge that can hold up a book.

After all that hard work and research, I discovered I
basically just reinvented the wheel.
1plus1plus1equals1.net already created a great
 Lego themed packet.  So I printed it off too.
My school work contained more creating, and hers 
had more numbers and reading.  Win-Win.

 O was super excited when she got back from
her trip with the grandparents and discovered
school work would include her favorite toy.
We have done a few days now, and we are loving it!
School is so much easier when everyone is enjoying it.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Learning time

Here are a few photos of what we have been doing for school work.
::  Number Lines
::  I write two numbers (ie 22 __  24)
and O fills in the blank

::   Pictures with the hundreds board

::  Money--matching, identifying, labeling

::  Hundreds board using pennies

::  Matching the word to the photo (CVC words)

::  More Matching with the Montessori 
Pink Box words