Fair day

So today was the day we actually went to the county fair. We had so much fun! I will let the pictures do most of the talking but in review, both kids couldn't get enough of the rides, Lilli loved the cows, jaiden thought the vegetables were cool, Anna got her cotton candy and I got my funnel cake. Alyssa went with us which made our day even better and we saw lots of friends there too. The hit of the day however, was the bumper cars. On a homeschooling note, it was great to pull everything together for jaiden. We've been talking about it for 2weeks now so I think he understood the history and meaning a little better. well, here are a bunch of pictures to enjoy.
In love and light,
Stephanie

In case you are wondering, that is Lilli and Alyssa riding the dino ride. Can you tell who is having more fun? Next is jaiden on a ride then is a picture of Lilli petting a baby chick in the petting zoo. The rest are pretty self explanatory. I loved to cows because it looked like they were sharing secrets and the last one is jaiden and Martina on the bumper cars again. :)

County fair part 2

Today was "school" day and we were having so much fun I totally forgot to take pictures. We continued on our county fair theme and focused on math today. We talked about what rides are at the fair and how many tickets it would cost to ride each ride. Then we gave each kids some coins so they could really buy their tickets. After they bought the tickets, they glued them on a chart to show which rides they rode. It was great to see how each kids handled it differently.
After that we read a great John deer book about the fair. D (one of our moms) printed out mini book so the kids could color pictures of what is at the fair. We will put these in a lapbooks at some point. Then finally, they got to play while us moms talked.
This evening jaiden and I did a little more talking about tickets and money and we even did some skip counting. I did manage to take a picture of his finished chart as well as his completed leaf collage from yesterday. I'm sorry to the grands that there are no smiling faces but they wouldn't sit still long enough. :)
Tomorrow we will actually go to the real fair so that should be fun. Can you say funnel cake?
In love and light,
Stephanie

Our homeschooling adventure for the day

So I've decided to pose here again. It's not that I stopped but I just ran out of time. Anyways, in case you can't tell by the title, we are homeschooling. We have been for a while but since j is "starting first grade" I thought I could share what we do in the hopes of helping another homeschooling family. I'm in a small (and wonderful) hs group and we meet every thursday morning. We have decided to do monthly themes and this month is "the county fair". I taught today and decided to talk about quilts. I have to admit that I wasn't too excited about it bus as usually, the more I get into it, the more I really get into it. There is so much you can talk about with the fair. We started with talking about the history a bit then we read a WOnderful book called "the elephant quilt". The story is about a family making their way from Missouri to la in a covered wagon. As they go, they record their history in a quilt.
After that, I had each of the kids make their own quilt square out of precut paper. I just had them tape or glue the pieces down but the kids did awesome!!! After we were all done, we tape it together to form a big "quilt". Below is a picture. I'm actually really excited about next weeks lesson. I'm not "teaching" so we will just have to see what d and r have planned. :)
In love and light,
S