Weekend and ECC Week 12 Day 1-2 Norway (Europe)

--Book basket books for Week 12-13 NORWAY

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend. The weather was fabulous! Saturday night after dinner, we took the girls over to Lake Z by our house for a nice evening walk. And then on Sunday we went downtown to walk across the Bob Kerry bridge which connects Nebraska to Iowa. We have never been there before and the girls thought it was so neat. AND we were lucky enough to have the Ferry go under the bridge while we were on it!

The girls wanted me to get a picture of them with the ferry in the background. If you turn around 3 times, squint and tilt your head to the right you can probably JUST see in there in the background. Oh well, I tried!

Standing in 2 states at once-they got a hoot out of that =)

Standing in front of the 'Big Muddy'. I didnt know the Missouri River was the longest river in the US, so that was cool to learn. And see that guy on the right. Yep-marathoner. TOTALLY forgot that Omaha 1/2 and full marathon were taking place that same morning and the route went right under the bridge, so we got to see some finishers coming in-so neat.

SCHOOL

ECC Week 12 Day 1-2 Norway (Europe)

We are in Europe! I have always wanted to visit Europe. =)

I have realized going thru this curriculum that there is SO much I didn't know about this great big world of ours. Not only about animals, biomes, zones etc, but the countries! I could probably tell you where about 10 countries were before starting this curriculum, now I know all the countries in North, Central, AND South America (as do my older 3 girls) and we have already learned where 9 countries in Europe are! I feel so well traveled.

=)


Passports....

Labeling the countries in Europe (we're not learning all of them, I think they only have us learning 22 or so, but we may learn more on our own)....

Putting the flag stickers on the correct countries...

Their illustrated pages that goes along with the Living World Encyclopedia-this time, in color!

I printed out a picture of a moose (since they can be found in Norway!) and the girls colored these while I read 'Kingdom Tales' (so exciting to see the path Hero is taking!)

Day 2- illustrated page that goes with the Living World Encyclopedia....

Art Project this week: Rosemaling

Savannah was going to draw an image and then paint it.....

But then she scratched that idea and painted her whole box white (as did girl #2 and #3). They want to finish them tomorrow (which mean I gotta go thru the whole paint mess AGAIN tomorrow)....

Yep, THIS mess....

For some reason she found this SO funny.

=)

*singing*~~~~ 'One of these things is not like the other'~~~~

She marches to the beat of a different drummer =)

Non-school related:

Runs have been great this week. My run today was for 3 miles but I stretched it out to 3.1 just to see what I might expect for my race on Sunday (Race for the Cure). My Ted E Bear Hallow 5K race was run in 32:19, this morning I ran it in 30:40!!!!!! I am SO excited.

However.

The Race for the Cure is expecting around 20,000 people *gulp* and a good number of those will be walkers and a fair number will probably have strollers. I am hoping I can get up towards the front of the line so I'm not weaving around to get past the walkers and therefore KILLING my time. I have also heard this is a hilly course-major downhill at the beginnning, major downhill at the end, so i'm curious to see what that will do to my time.

Knowing that, I think I am going to shoot for running it in 33:00. My last 5K race was pretty much all flat.

My last run this week was suppose to be Fri or Sat, but I am going to do it on Thursday (5 miles) and then rest on Fri and Sat so I will have nice, fresh legs for the race.

As long as I don't fall on my face, I think I'll be fine! =)

ECC Week 11 Day 5 End of Brazil

Ok, Blogger is acting goofy and not letting me add the first few pictures of this set. You're not missing much, just pictures of some polenta simmering away and the girls peeling oranges. Picturing it in your head? Ok, were good then =)

This was called 'Orange Salad'. It was orange slices with salt and sugar sprinkled on them. It called for pepper too, but that was a little too out there for me. They were funny tasting to say the least...

Heres the table! The 2 pots in the middle hold Feijoada (Meat Stew) which apparently is a very common dish down there. The pot next to it is Peppered Rice, but I left out the chili pepper, it was actually a little bland for our taste. Flanking the pots is fried polenta on the left (some ate it w/ honey on it, some had it with just a little salt). The two plates at the top hold sliced avacado (which grows in the rainforest) and next to that is Corn Cake (which didnt cook all the way thru so I had to scrape out the good parts, they all loved it though! )
The bottom 2 plates are brownies (they DO have cocoa bean trees down there, so I had to represent that somehow!) and then the white things are Cocadas which is basically just sugar, water and shredded coconut. I do NOT like shredded coconut so I didnt even try these. The girls didnt seem to care for them very much either.
Recipes came from HERE and HERE.
*CLICK PICTURE TO ENLARGE


Here are a few of the books they read this last week and some pictures they colored

These were their vocab cards for this week: Swamp and Marsh.

After we cleaned up after lunch (I think I did 3 loads of dishes!!), we went for a walk over to the pond. We got to feed the 8 geese who were loitering around. We ACTUALLY took bread over there to see if we could feed the fish (sometimes they are near the surface and will eat, othertimes not), and saw these geese. I was a little leary so we started to throw bread in the water about 30 feet away from them (they were on land, not in the water) and they immediately started heading towards us. So I had the girls stay behind me while we fed them just incase one of them decided to go bully on us.

One goose keeping nipping the behind of another when he would try to get a piece of bread-poor thing! So I was sure to throw THAT goose (the poor outcast) the bigger and best pieces. I LOATHE bullies.

=)

See you all in Europe next week!

ECC Week 11 Day 3-4 Brazil (South America)

Non-school related:
It's been a great week so far! As most of you know, I have been running the last few months (ok, so its probably more like jogging, but humor me). And it has been going so well!
This was cutback week which has actually been a bit tough on me, only running 2 miles at a pop seems so, I don't know, pointless! I know that's not true and that my body NEEDS to cutback in order to build up, but I LOVE running the higher mileage.
However, my run yesterday was really a morale booster. I beat my previous 2 mile time by 30 seconds. My previous 2 mile PB (personal best) was 19:25 and I ran it yesterday in 18:55!! I felt like a rockstar.
Tomorrow is my last run for the week (all 3 runs this week were 2 milers), and I will be doing hill work. Thankfully I have lots of hills a few minutes walk away, so I don't have to drive anywhere. I'll be going up one hill, over to the next street and down that hill, and then over to the next street and UP that hill and so on, until I have covered 2 miles. I actually LOVE going uphill, but I need to work on my downhill form as you can really hurt your knees if you don't do it right (don't ask me how I know.)
Next week my runs will be 4, 3 and 5 miles. I cant wait!!

ECC WEEK 11 DAY 3-4

What a blast this last 3 weeks has been. Every country we have studied we have enjoyed more than the last. We cant wait to go to Norway next week!

During school yesterday, the girls all colored pictures of macaws while I read aloud to them...
*CLICK ANY PICTURE TO ENLARGE*

Today they colored pictures of Blue Morpho Butterflies, which live in the Amazon, while I read some facts about them. Oh, and my 6yr old wanted to color a picture of a jaguar as well =)

While we were reading about hunters in the Amazon in the Living World Encyclopedia my 8yr old made a playdoh jaguar =)

Then they each choose one thing out of the reading that interested them. They illustrated it and wrote something about it. For some reason my older 2 decided to leave theirs 'natural'. The 6yr old choose a bat because she loves bats right now, and my 5yr old drew a tarantula. I have NO CLUE why she wrote the word 'jar' above it.

Then we were to make some paper 'MAF' airplanes in keeping with our reading of Nate Saint. We finished the book today and LOVE LOVE LOVED it. Very suspenseful towards the end. But its also a little brutal. I would read a chapter ahead before you read it aloud to your kids so you will know if there would be some parts you would need to re-word or water down for your more sensitive kiddos.

So we turned these....

Into these!

The girls thought it would be neat to put our Lincoln Log indians around the planes like they are the Auca warriors....
Then we put some of the army men around it to represent the Ecuadorian soldiers....

My 8yr old decided she wanted to make a tree out of this rolled up cardboard (from the inside of some wrapping paper)....

So she did! She plans to add fruit that you would find in the Amazon to it, later today, and then she wants to use it as a prop tomorrow for our Brazilian party. Creative cookie, that one.

3 great websites for ECC Weeks 9-11 Brazil

Stumbled on these GREAT websites today and thought I would share
Amazon Rainforest
Journey in Amazonia
Brazilian food/recipes
Enjoy!

ECC Week 11 Day 1-2 Brazil (South America)

Not much to report, but I didn't want to leave ya'll hanging!
Here is a picture of our book basket books for this week, lots of good reading. We love our library!
We have had a blast delving deeper into South America, and we love reading about Nate Saint. We are on Chapter 12, where they have been making gift drops to the Auca tribe and getting ready to meet with them. One of my girls was heard to say 'That was the best Chapter yet!'
I am thinking of leaving the My Father's World recommendations for language arts...we just really arent feeling the Primary and Intermediate Language Lessons. So we may go back to what we were doing before-Learning Language Arts thru Literature, or just do PLL/ILL 1-2x a week and do LLATL the other days, undecided.

Non-school related:
Went out with my hubby this past Saturday to celebrate our 14 year anniversary, and being the awesome guy he is, it was a day devoted to whatever I wanted to do....so shopping it was! I needed some winter running gear, so we went to a few stores and got me a few t-shirts, long sleeve shirts and running tights-all for great prices. Gotta love a sale! Then we putzed around the mall for awhile and while there, I got a pair of sunglasses that are PERFECT for running and biking in (even if its a cloudy day, I have to wear shades while biking, or I take a bug or three to the eye-not pleasant!), AND the specs were only $5!
After shopping, we ate at Valentino's. I am a BIG buffet lover. Seriously, if you want to be my best bud, just take me out to eat at a buffet restaurant. Or just throw me a donut, I'm good either way.
Afterwards, we saw a movie before heading home to get the kids settled for night time. It was a GREAT day just to spend time with my sweetie without 5 chirping mouths!

ECC Week 10 Days 4-5 Brazil and other stuff

I cant believe we only have one more week left in South America! It'll be with sad faces that we pack our bags to move on to other lands. But if we must, we must!

I sheepishly admit that we have not been playing the geography game for South America that came w/ our curriculum. Instead, the girls have enjoyed testing their speed w/ labeling the South American countries at Sheppardsoftware.com. So far, Ariel holds the record-getting all the countries of South and Central America right in 33 seconds!

Yesterday the girls did their 'pretty verses' where they write out the memory verse for the week and then decorate the page. This week they decorated it with rainforest themed pictures
*CLICK ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE*

We also added a few more animals to our Amazon rainforest collage

Our vocab cards for the week:

DELTA

JUNGLE

Then, oh joy of joys, we went to the zoo! For school of course.

We have one of the best zoos on the whole planet with an AMAZING indoor jungle. So I took the girls to explore and made a little worksheet for them which I'll show you towards the end. I typed out a bunch of South American animals and they had to see if they could find that animal at the zoo and then write down its Latin name and any fun info about it if they wanted to...

Here is a picture of the rainforest from the top level. We had fun imagining ourselves in the rainforest and picturing the different levels. The girls determined in this picture that we were about at the understory level....

I'm not quite sure if these next two guys are from South America, but holy cuteness, Batman. HAD to get a picture of them.

Here begins our South American animals....

Note: these fish are one of the largest fresh water fish in the world. They look to be almost 6 feet long! We just got done watching our Jeff Corwin video on the Amazon, and he had these fish featured in his movie-the girls thought that was pretty neat.

Two-Towed Sloth: I dont think he's changed position in the last 4 years...though we DID learn on the Jeff Corwin video that they do come down to the bottom of the tree to, *ahem* 'do their business' and they only do that every 7-10 days!

These creatures aren't native to South America though sometimes I think they are DIRECT decendants of the howler monkeys...

Here is the worksheet I made for the older 2. The younger 2 just wrote down the animals name on a sheet of loose leaf paper if they wanted to

Once we got home, it was time to finish the rest of our school, which wasnt much given that Fridays are 'light days' with My Father's World (we LOVE that).

We really enjoyed watching the Jeff Corwin movie on the Amazon and would recommend it if your library has it. It's a Discovery School movie and its title is 'The Amazon: Aquatic Ecosystem'.

I finished up week 3 of my training plan this morning! 4 miles in 41minutes. WOO HOO! I discovered a site a few months back www.mapmyrun.com where you can map your run before or after to find your distance. I have been adding my workouts at www.dailymile.com It will be fun to look back after I have been tracking them for a few months to see the progress (hopefully!).

Way off subject, can you believe Christmas is just over 3 months away?!