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.