Bear Hollow

So our first “field trip” was to Bear Hollow Zoo.  It was a free little zoo about a 40 minutes away.  It is at a park so after walking around and seeing the animals we were able to eat lunch and play on the playground. There were bears, alligators, owls, turkeys, deer, eagles, turtles, etc.  Jenna and  Westley were great.  They enjoyed watching the animals and reading about them and what they eat.  Jenna drew pictures of her favorite animals in her notebook.  Charlotte on the other hand was… well she had to take a special walk with Ben and we could hear them the whole time.  Yep, she has my personality for sure. Jenna and Westley looking at the turkey and deer. In front of the bald eagle.  Sorry, I should have edited the pictures to make them clear, but I am too lazy right now. Cute kids enjoying the zoo.  This is after Charlotte had calmed down. Here is the big bear.  This is what helped calm down our crazy girl. I guess a big bear gets your attention. Here the kids are looking at the baby bears.  They had a few ramps and platforms to climb and our kids kept waiting to see if they would slide down them. Yeah, the zoo is fun.

Family Room

We decorated one of the rooms in our house!  Ben worked REALLY hard and laid the entire floor in one day.  Then we added a basic window treatment, a rug and ta da! we had a finished room.

Archeological Dig and Ants

During the first couple weeks of school we learned about archeology and how we know about the past.  For a hands on experiment we had an archeological dig.  We found broken pieces of a ceramics and decided that it was once a pot.  As you can see we did the dig in a box of sand.  We wanted to do it in the dirt in the yard but it kept raining!     For science we spent some time learning about ants and one day we made some ants out of clay.  Jenna did a great job making her ant with all the appropriate parts: 3 body parts, 6 legs, and 2 antennae.  Westley did good too, but he was not required to know anything.  And against my instinct I did not kill an ants’ nest out by our mail box, I let it be so that the kids could observe it. 

Char, Char, Char, Char, Char

What am I to do with the girl? She is the cutest, funnest, craziest, climbiest, out of control little person. (Yes, I am pretty sure I just made up a few words).

Now I know I thought Westley was difficult at this age and I had a love-hate relationship with him, but he was different. I loved him because he was so cute (well actually quite gross, but cute at the same time) and cuddly. And I had problems with him because he was FRUSTRATING! Though mostly do to his hearing and speech problems.

Charlotte, on the other hand, I love because she is SOOOOO CUTE! Really I do not think she could be any cuter. She is also super fun. Unlike the other two children, she loves to get tossed around, tickled, jump in the pool with no regard for her own safety (wait that’s a bad thing too), try new things, go outside, make silly faces, and just have TONS of personality. With that comes the stubborn little tantrum thrower who climbs on top of everything in our house (at least she is not scared, right? we have had a couple of those already).

What makes her so CRAZY? Well, we cannot take her anywhere without a tantrum. Well she actually has tantrums all the time, but it is just embarrassing in public. At home you just hope no on is walking by and can hear! Really I have even been asked to leave the library because of her. Apparently her screaming and yelling “play” was disturbing people. She has recently learned that to get out of time out she needs to be happy. So as soon as we put her in time out she started say “happy, happy” in-between screams.

Really, all in all I love her and love spending my days with her (except when she is screaming when we are trying to do school work). So here are some good things about her. She is a little Linus (the Charlie Brown character who carries his blanket around) and carries her yellow blanket around with her everywhere (see pic above). I think it is cute, neither of my other were very attached to something, I just wish she has chosen the cute white blanket with pink and brown flowers on it.

Above you see that she likes to climb, and when she sits up there she pats the wall next to her and says loudly “sit down, sit down.” I wonder where she gets that from.

She is also beginning to talk quite a bit and will repeat just about anything. My favorite thing she says “I wuve you.” She enjoys singing and dancing too. Her favorite song is “Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam” where she yells “BEAM” a beat too late every time. She also enjoys “The Wheels on the Bus” since it has fun actions. She likes when the baby is “crying” and sometime starts to really cry, but she turns off the tears instantly when we move on the “sh” for the Mom.

She has recently started nursery at church and is doing AWESOME. The first time she walked right in without a problem and has done great since. I think she is the best “going to nursery kid” ever! Actually all of my kids went quite well. The other two only cried a few times. I believe it is because I do not try to push my kids away from me at too young an age.

Finally her and Westley have become huge Dora fans lately. She loves the songs and she yells “play, play, play” as soon as I put the DVD in. (no cable TV here, at least the library has lots of Dora videos, not that I feel comfortable going in there anymore). Also, Ben believes she thinks she IS Dora and calls herself Dora. I think she is saying “that one.” But her siblings do put a Dora backpack on her and call her Dora, so who knows.

Side note: In the picture above Jenna had strapped on the doggie backpack with the leash attached and played with her for a while. Then when she wanted to do something else Jenna put the loop on the leash under the chair leg so Charlotte could not get a way. Funny!

Also for those who did not see on Facebook Charlotte and Westley were playing in the toilet one day. Never happened before…so I blame Char! And she did it again a few days later.

School

So we are homeschooling and so far we are having a blast.  The hardest thing is cleaning up the room at the end of the day.  It usually looks like a hurricane (usually named Charlotte) came through.  Here are the pictures from our first day of school.

 

Here is Jenna

Westley, he participates in school when we do art or anything else he finds interesting.  Otherwise, he plays computer games or playdough.  He is in front of the letters because he LOVES letters and that is where he wanted his picture taken.

The first day of school also happened to be art, so here they are painting with paints we made from chalk and eggs.

The school room after the first day.  It was actually worse, but I cleaned up the wet, red playdough that was mashed into the carpet before I took this picture.