Busy with school

It's been over a month since my last post and I swear we're all alive and well over here. We're even doing lots of fun stuff, but we've been so busy focusing on school this year I haven't been getting online much. Last school year kind of fizzled out around the time we moved in may, so we decided to hunker down and get caught up and just skip ahead in some subjects. This year we have a 5th grader, 3rd and 1st graders and Elizabeth is doing pre-pre-K (i.e educational playtime). 

I planned a back to school party and a first day of fall party for the kids, but neither of those came to fruition. We've been doing some fun projects and been working on some really exciting new endeavors for our family.I hate to tease (actually, no... I love it), but I can't divulge that information at this time. I'll let you know later. And NO! We are not pregnant, it's something else. ;-) 

Hopefully now that we're getting into our routine for the school year, I'll be able to get on here more and get more posts up. Oh, and just a note... I've deleted the couponing blog I've been doing. I'm not able to do all the deals others were getting in the larger metropolitan areas, so I just decided to quit the blog.

Friday Funnies

In order to reduce distraction amongst my students here at the Price Academy, I have decided to instill a strict dress code requiring a specific school uniform. I find this will lead to more pride, loyalty, and equality among the student population.


Tell me what you think?


Boys Option



Girls Option

 HaHa, obviously I'm joking and poking fun at the stereo-types of homeschoolers, but honestly this is our school uniform most days. When all your bookwork is done before lunch time, why not just wait to get ready for the day. ;-D

Enjoy your weekend everyone! Hopefully we get some sunshine!

Pacific Science Center

Space Needle on a beautiful Seattle day

On Monday March 7th we took a little field trip down to Seattle for Pacific Science Center's  Free Freddy's Monday event. The first 1000 people get in totally free thanks to a donation from the Fred Meyer Fund. We packed a sack lunch, so the only thing we had to pay for all day was parking and some souvenirs for the kids. Because of that we opted to park in the onsite garage, $10 for 3 hours. There is cheaper parking in downtown Seattle, but we went for convenience since it was the only expense of the day.

Butterfly on Josh

My favorite exhibit was the butterfly house. It was so neat to see all the different kinds of butterflies and I even had one hanging out on my shoulder for a while. Then the one in the pic above decided he liked Josh's orange shirt and rode around with him for a bit. If you'd like to see more pics, check out my mom's album on Facebook.

Naked Mole Rats

The boys' favorite part of the whole day was spraying the water cannons outside, but their favorite indoors exhibits were the dinosaurs and insects. There were lots of live insects in terrariums. We were hoping to see the bee colony they have, but I guess that wasn't on display since bees are dormant this time of year. The dinosaurs were all animatronic replicas as well as some skeletal bone displays and other fossil replicas.

Oh no! A dinosaur!

Elizabeth really liked the Butterflies and the toddler play area. There were a lot of moms with infants there on this particular day, so she didn't get to play in the toddler area as much as she wanted to since the babies were crawling all over and she just wanted to run.

There is one more free day the first Monday of April and you should check it out. Our kids have never been to the Science Center before and it's been about 10 years since Josh and I went and it's definitely a family favorite now. We're thinking about going back when this exhibit comes to Seattle!

NW Trek

All the kiddos with their stuffed animal souvenirs

We took our first field trip of the season, back on February 19th. The week before I found out that NW Trek was having their annual Kids & Kritters event on Presidents' Day weekend, where kids are free with a paid adult! So I quickly arranged to go with my mom, sister and her girls. 

Mr Billy Goat Gruff

The kids had a great time seeing all the animals in their exhibits and going on the tram ride through the area where the animals roam amongst each other. The favorites were the river otters, cougars and the fisher.  

Buffalo

 Tomorrow is our next field trip to Pacific Science Center! Post forthcoming!!

Fall Celebrations

So, last Thursday was the first day of Fall and I thought it would be fun to do a little celebration like we've done for Spring and Summer. One problem! Our Spring/Summer celebrations usually involve picnics and lots of outdoor activities. What do we do to celebrate this season without being out in the pouring rain that likes to sporadically grace us here in the PNW? Here is what I came up with (with some help from my facebook friends).... P.S this would have been posted sooner, but I was having the most difficult time with the new picture uploader. Anyone else, that uses blogger, have that problem?

We started our festivities at lunch, Tomato Soup with pumpkin and leaf shaped cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches. I really needed to go to the store, but challenged myself to use what I had on hand and I'm really pleased with the results.

While the boys cleaned up from school and lunch I whipped up these yummy pumpkin muffins. Find the recipe over here. Super easy recipe that used mostly Bisquick and a can of pumpkin.

The rain had cleared up a bit, so we headed out on a scavenger hunt walk around the neighborhood. I have them a list of things to find like, pretty flowers (in the pic above), different colored leaves, an apple tree, an animal and a few other things. Surprise, surprise our animals we found were our resident deer. Eating up all the fallen apples off a neighbors tree.

With our leaves we made these pictures. It's one of rubbing/tracing kind. The boys loved doing this and I guess I hadn't shown them how to do this technique. Now they want to do a rub tracing of everything. It's quite cute!

To bring an end to our special outing we had our muffins with some hot cocoa or in my case a homemade Carmel Macchiatto. YUM! Do you do anything to celebrate the seasons with your family? Got any ideas or suggestions on how to celebrate the first day of Winter that's coming up? Please share!

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; ... "   Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

First Day of School

The Price Homeschooling Academy has opened for another year. I wanted to do something a little fun for our first day of school this year and judging by my tired kids, I think I succeeded.

Marshmallow Mateys and Hot Cocoa in their new Starbucks cups

We started our day off with a hearty breakfast of marshmallow mateys cereal and hot cocoa in their new starbucks mugs (I was going with a theme, I don't always serve up straight sugar for breakfast).

Next we did the fun little quiz I did with the kids last year again. I write out some grade appropriate math questions. Have them do some fill in the blank questions about themselves and then they draw a picture of themselves and write a story about it. Doesn't really mean anything, but as a parent it's fun to see the differences each year.

I set out all the books we will be working out of for this year and let the kids look through them. In addition to the basics, we will be doing some American History focusing on the Pioneer times and learning about animals only found in North America. So, look forward to posts on field trips to northwest trek, pioneer park, yellowstone and possibly Fort Langley. I'm sure we'll be playing lots of Oregon Trail and web rangers, too!

We took a break (recess!) and then after mommy was ready for the day, we headed off on our first field trip of the year! Has nothing to do with what we are studying, but it was still fun and educational. I packed our picnic lunch of what was supposed to be fish & chips (tuna buns and potato chips), but I was out of tuna! (Remember there was a theme going with the day) So...We had turkey sandwiches, chips and carrots on our picnic at the harbor. I had the kids try to guess where our field trip was to and said their food today was a clue. Only Joshua figured out where we were going. Everyone else guessed the aquarium in Seattle. LOL!

Zaccheaus in a bubble

At the Bellingham Harbor there is this fun little place called the marine life center. There are a few tanks of fish, crustaceans and other marine animals (the octopus tank was empty). A viewing pool of what one may find in the tide pools around Whatcom County and the touch tank which all the kids loved (pictured below).

The touch tank

All in all we had a great day. If you have any suggestion on fun activities or field trips we could do, please share! Plus... we have some other news to share, but that will be another post. And no, I'm not pregnant! It's something else! ;-)

Hi, Ho! Hi, Ho!

It's off to Zaccheaus' work we go! Tomorrow morning we will be up bright and early for our kids' workshop. I had to miss my do-it-herself class this week due to the busyness of life right now. The kids will be building their own "soccer game" and they are really excited about it! Pics will be posted soon, if I remember my camera this time ;-)

UPDATE

Well, I forgot the camera, of course! But, we still had a great time. Got to see Delilah and her Grandpa there and the instructor was someone I knew long ago. The project wasn't too complicated and everyone's turned out very nice. We followed up our workshop with some cupcakes at Icing on the Cake, downtown. So yummy! Here's one of the finished soccer games...

Shop Class

As a homeschooler I seize every opportunity to make learning fun and when I learned about the Kids' Workshops at Home Depot and Lowe's (i'll blog about lowes later) I knew I had to take the boys there.

The picture really speaks for itself and we had so much fun! It is really interesting to me seeing the different learning styles in each of my boys. One was full on into it with all his might and had quite a few bent nails to be fixed. The next boy was slow and steady. Took him forever, but his project was perfect. The last one made each and every blow of the hammer count and got his project done with only a few minor errors (and he was stinking cute in the process).

I mean look at him! So stinking cute!

Each kid receives an apron and earns a pin for each project.

This last week's project was this cute little planter for Mother's Day! Hurray for me!

And here is next month's project...

Want to join us? We'll be there bright and early probably. It's drop in style, so you can go anytime!

Brewing some Rootbeer

The boys have been studying the American Revolution this year and we picked up this really great book at the library.

We use this for our read aloud time and we have a few historical fiction and nonfiction books for them to read on their own. As well as some nice educational videos for when I just need some quiet time. :o)

Anyhoo, to get to the point of this post...The first activity we dove into is brewing rootbeer. Samuel Adams father was a brewer and this is probably similar to the rootbeer he would have made.

Here is all the supplies needed.

(note: the mixer isn't needed, just happened to be there on my counter)

Add yeast to the warm water

Stir it up really well

Pour the ingredients into the jug

Shake to mix and place in the widow for a few hours

Put in the fridge overnight and enjoy the next day.

I have to add that ours did not taste very good. The first glass was excellent, but each subsequent cup was to yeasty tasting. Most likely to the yeast I used (regular dry yeast I have for bread making). If I were to try this again I would definately get some brewers yeast or whatever is really used in homebrew rootbeer.