Scholastic Website Thanksgiving Webcast and Activities

Last year, we took part in the Scholastic Thanksgiving Webcast as part of our November activities.  We were able to watch a live production of an interview with "Pilgrims," see various buildings and tools that were used during the Pilgrim era, and learn a little about their way of life.

Last week, I received an email announcing that the Thanksgiving activities were available again this year.  One example of an upcoming activity takes place on November 9th at 1 p.m. ET. There is a  "Tour the Wampanoag Homesite" that will be available for viewing online.  The website offers many other interesting activities and is really a fun way of learning a little about the past. For those of you interested in signing up, follow the link here.  This will take you to the sign-up page.

We received our first Pilgrim email today.  It is a letter from a Pilgrim child telling about the journey on the ship to the New World.  This letter has links to a Thanksgiving unit and other audio versions of "letters from Pilgrims." We look forward to following the site a few days at a time up until our Thanksgiving break.  It will be a chance to see what we remember from last year's unit and what new things we can discover.

Annual Trip to the Pear Trees

This morning started out with a round of beautiful fall weather.  The temperature was perfect.  Of course, our Oklahoma fall wind was coming in strong, but it was at least not cold.  We decided to take a nature hike and head to the pear trees.  We had not checked on the pears this year and were wondering just what we would find.  

Last year the pear were abundant (here is the post). However, this year...there was not a single pear to be had.  Out of the 3 trees in the grove, there were no pears in sight.  Now, we have the quest to try and solve the mystery of why.  Could it be the extreme drought? Maybe it was just a "sleeper" year for the trees. I am leaning more toward the drought because there was so much vegetation that was destroyed.  Our area was really hit hard.  

Anyway, we still have some pears from last year in the freezer so we just have to wait until next year to see if the pears return.

Great Website

Some time back I stumbled upon a home school blog called Practical Pages.  It is a great site to find ideas for art ideas, notebooks, lap books, etc.  If you click on the above link, it will take you to the "Sketch Tuesday" for this week. I signed up for her newsletter and the "Sketch Tuesday" posts are my favorite.  She sends out ideas that sparks a creativity to help bolster up our weekly (or at least we are trying to do it weekly) art lesson.

The following pictures are of the Sketch Tuesday ideas that we have completed so far.  For each idea, we first made a list on the board of various items.  Then we started drawing.  We have completed a brown page, a blue page and a green page.

JJ's brown

Brown by Savannah
Notice the "brown" Oklahoma.  This stems from the extreme drought we have been having.

Savannah's green
Now if you notice Missouri is green.  She always said that Missouri was taking all the rain and wouldn't share!

JJ's green

Savannah's Blue Jay

Fun and Games Website

Both of my kids enjoy working on the computer.  When I find games that pique their interest and are educational all at the same time, I jump on it.  Today, thanks to Dianne Flynn Keith at www.Clickschooling.com, I found this great educational games website: schooltimegames.com.  The first game that I found and tried myself was "Pharoah's Tomb."  Now, I have to admit that I did not even make it through the first 3 rooms before I died (that was on the easy!).  Also, I am not really sure what educational advancement this game will lead to, but it was fun and would go great with a unit on Egypt!

The math section of the website has some great games, too.  There are many games to choose from like logic games, multiplication, a "tetris" style game, and others. The "Incredibots" game under the science section is a great thinking game to use with alesson on machines and how/why they work!  While I haven't explored the entire site yet, I have already found plenty of great games that we can use to incorporate into our curriculum.  Thanks Clickschooling!

Garage Sale Find!

Our family really enjoys going to garage sales.  It is fun to see who can find the best deal!  This past weekend, the kids and I enjoyed our time visiting the Perkins, Oklahoma city-wide garages sales.  It is an annual "event" in a small town about 15 miles south of Stillwater.  This was the first year that we had heard of it, so we decided to check it out.

We spent 4 hours traveling around this tiny town.  the second garage sale that we visited supplied what we thought was our find of the day.  I bought a clothes basket full of odds and ends such as C-clamps, steel cutting blades, an old telephone amplifier, plastic sheeting, a rolling pin, a small saucepan, and a few other items all for $2.  Actually the only reason I purchased the basket was for the C-clamps because I knew we needed them and knew they were worth well over the $2!  At this same sale, Savannah found a basket full of arts and craft paints and supplies, and I bought 3 salad size Corell plates (since I have a tendency to break my "unbreakable" Corell Ware).

The only other real find was a metal box of organizing drawers full of bolts, screws, and other odds and ends.  I actually paid $5 for it and later thought....why did I even buy that!  It was even missing a drawer, but I was just thinking about how many bolts, screws, washers, etc. that we have purchased over the last few months for various jobs that Jason has been working on, and the cost really adds up!  I brought it home to Jason and could see that he thought I did alright but not the greatest.  I took out each drawer and began digging through it.  In one drawer there was $1.03 worth of odd change so that brought down the cost to $3.97.  A little better! He did eventually say that I did alright because there were definitely things that he would use so I felt a tad better about my purchase.

However, as we continued our digging, I found a coin collectors plastic case with 2 coins in it.  
One was a 1876 dime and the other was a 1858 quarter.  After a little research online, the total worth is about $25-30 for both of the coins (Ebay here we come!).  The quarter is actually the most valuable of the 2.  We also thought it was really neat to think that we were holding coins that were 153 and 135 years old.

This crazy nuts and bolts find ended up being the best buy of the day!

Some of you may remember a post that I had back in June (here's the link) about our crawdad getting out of its tank and actually biting our daughter while she was camped out on the bedroom floor.  Well, I wanted to just give a quick update on "Sebastian" (the crawdad).

Sebastian came to us early last summer.  He was the "pet" that my son decided to keep.  He was scouting around in our back watering hole in the field and found the little guy...and I mean little at the time - about 1 1/2 inches.  JJ kept him in an old dish pan with water, rocks, and a couple of other smaller crawdads.  Unfortunately, the other crawdads disappeared (I think they became lunch for Sebastian!).

We eventually bought an aquarium at a garage sale (around May 1st) so that Sebastian could have a more permanent home. At the time, we really did not think the crawdad would survive.  We bought some meal worms for his dinner.  Since then, we have also discovered that her prefers bologna, but he will also eat the meal worms.  (It is really interesting to watch him eat.) He has shed his exoskeleton several times, and he eats the skeleton when he is done.  We have placed snails in the tank and a couple of more baby crawdads...he eats those, too!

So...after all that food, he has grown quite big.  His body is probably about 4 to 4 1/2 inches long (I do not plan on picking him up to measure!), and his pincher's are about the size  he was when we first found him.

Here he is:

Sebastian the Crawdad

Sebastian eating his old skin
The picture is a little blurry!

A little closer

Bathroom Complete!

For some time now, our bathroom has needed to have the wall repaired.  Our landlord had told us a while back what we just needed to give him a call, and he would come over and work with Jason to get it done.  We just never took the time to call.  With winter coming quickly, we knew that it was time.

With our house being older, there was a window in the tub area.  The house was built before there were showers.  However, the water from the shower was leaking around the window, running down in behind the wall, and washing it out.  The decision was made that the best situation was to completely remove the window and rebuild the wall.  Jason told the owner that he would do the job and just take the cost off the rent.

Here is the bathroom before the remodel.

Here you can see the corner where the wall
was washing through.

During the remodel:

When he tore into the wall, much of it was rotted.  He put in new studs and sheet rock, replaced the tub-around and ceiling trim work, and repainted the walls.
Pictures of completed remodel:

Notice the trim on the top left is not yet up.
It is now.

 I will mention that we purchased the Dutch Boy mildew resistant paint from Wal-Mart (I think it was $19). First off, I would not recommend that paint.  It was supposed to be a one coat paint.  However, it was very thin and required 2 coats and probably needs another coat in some areas.  Our walls were previously very light blue, and I was using the brilliant white (which by the way is really white - notice our white tub-around looks a little grey compared to it!).  The paint was so thin that it just did not cover it up.  If you do not want to have to paint multiple layers, buy the Valspar premium paint from Lowe's.  For $10 more, you have a much better paint that takes less time and is truly a one coat paint!

Country Life!

On the rarest of rare occasions, I think to myself...man, I wish we lived in town. Sometimes it would be nice to just take a walk down the sidewalk or ride a bike on a smooth surface and not have to eat  the dust from the gravel road....or maybe be able to run down the street to the grocery store instead of having to plan ahead and make a list for the next "trip to town."  But as I said, those "wanting to live in town moments" are very rare moments indeed.

Today was a reminder of why we love the country so much.  It is quiet and peaceful in the cool evenings sitting outside by our campfire.  We can let the kids take off to play in the field or run up the hill to go fishing in the pond.  We can even fish with them without having to worry about buying a license.    Also, we can buy the kids BB guns, and they have tons of space to shoot them in!

With the cooler weather recently, Jason got the BB gun out and took the kids for some target shooting.  JJ is finally old enough and big enough now that he can balance the gun on his shoulder without a problem.  Well, having to share 1 BB gun amongst 3-4 people calls for a lot of wait time.  So, Jason decided that JJ needed to get his own gun, and while we were there, he decided that Savannah would want one, too.

Surprise!  Red Ryder BB Guns!

JJ opened his first.

Then, it was Savannah's turn. We, of course, had to put them in different boxes so that they would not think they were getting the same things.

 I wasn't sure about her being too excited with the gun, but boy was I wrong.  She opened her package and her eyes lit up with the biggest "WOW!" expression.  We even gave her the option of returning her gun and getting something else if she wanted too, but she said, "No."

 Fully equipted with safety glasses!

We really had a fun day!  Glad to be in the country!

Fall Fun Day!

These last couple of days have been really busy around the Holman House.  We try to set aside a day each year to just have fun and do some sort of fall activities. This year, October 1st marked the "beginning of fall" for our family.  Of course, I know that fall really began in September (still too hot for us then!), but we celebrated on the 1st.  The temperatures are really starting to cool off, especially in the evenings and are much more like fall/sweatshirt wearing weather.  

We started our fun activities by creating a splatter/finger painting poster for the kids bedrooms.  We recently began redecorating their bedroom, and I decided it would be fun to let them create their own art work for their room.

JJ painting his hand for the picture

JJ's artwork

Savannah's Hand Painting

Lot of fun making a mess

Savannah's Art Work

Next, we moved on to the popcorn ball making fun.

Stirring the popcorn ball syrup...great little cook and helper!

Followed by more painting!  I have an aloe vera plant that is busting out of its current planter.  They painted a couple of pots for me to split my plant and spread it around my kitchen.

We ended our day with a campfire and a night of tent camping.  I have to confess...I slept in the house.  I knew it would be too cold for me, and that seemed like a good excuse because I really don't like sleeping on the ground unless I have too!.  We are dropping into the upper 40's and low 50's at night, and that is just too cold for me!

Hamburgers and French Fries

JJ waiting for his special dinner

JJ's special dinner on the right

Ready!  

This is some of the fish that we caught in the pond on the land surround our house.  One of JJ's favorite foods is fish.  We went fishing and caught several.  He wanted to try to roast them at our campfire.  We put some butter, salt, and pepper on them and let them slow cook over the fire.  They were actually pretty good.  He really enjoyed having his own fish!

Savannah dipping out hot spiced apple cider

Lucy even got to enjoy her own special dinner

Mmm...good!

We really enjoyed our fall fun day!