Pumpkins!!

Katy and Darsie harvested their pumpkins a week ago when we noticed that the vines were dying. They have been so excited about these pumpkins ever since they planted them in May. It has been fun to watch their progress, from just flowers to little baby pumpkins to nice sized ones for picking. We have had them on display on our table, but they were starting to smell really pumpkinny, which I took to mean that they would not last much longer. So, today we learned about pumpkins, observing the outside and drawing it, observing the insides and drawing them, and then carving the faces they requested into each pumpkin.
Here are the before and after shots.


And here are the after shots, with the girls modeling their best pumpkin faces as well. :)


We harvested some seeds to dry and save for next year and the rest are toasting as I type (Darsie has been particularly excited about this step). You should have seen Katy's face when she tried to get seeds out of the bowl and touched the stringy pulp. Classic Katy. :)

Our Budding Musician

Katy has been working on figuring out this song for weeks now. I think she must have heard the clocks at various houses where we stayed on vacation and wanted to copy the song. So, she has figured it out all by herself! Lately, she has added the left hand because she notices that we play with both hands when we play piano. Our plan with the kids musically is to wait until they are about 7 to start formal lessons, so it is really neat to see her trying to figure stuff out on her own! Matt showed her how to locate C on the keyboard, and she is so proud of her new skills. (Of course, being the music majors that we are, we think it is one of the coolest things in the world that our 5 year old can locate C!)

Computer Skills

Katy is so proud of herself that she has figured out how to maneuver the cursor on the laptop. Here, she is watching her friend Joel ride his bike without training wheels (on his mom's blog). She probably watched it at least 10-15 times, smiling and laughing and talking to him throughout to offer encouragement ("Oh, Joel!" "I just can't stop watching this!",.....) She thought it was pretty cool to be able to click to start it on her own, to click on pictures to see them up close and scroll through them, and to scroll down to also watch the cool video of cicada killers (also on Joel's mom's blog). All in all, a very satisfying Friday afternoon. :)

Playgroup Nature Hike

We headed to the Newlin Grist Mill with our playgroup this week. I have heard about this place and wanted to visit and have just never gotten around to it, so, thanks to some organizing by my friend Gina, we finally got to explore it this week! It was a wonderful fallish morning, so nice to enjoy wearing long pants and sneakers! We hiked along the mill run, then crossed several streams, stepping on rock trails (this was both girls' favorite part!). Come on up and we'll take you there!

Our hikers, minus Liam and Tabitha (on moms' backs), Sam (happily clinging to Michelle) and Rachael (cushy in the stroller)

One of the crossing points. I had my jogging stroller, which fortunately forded two of the three streams very well. Dawn's, however, had to be carried across. I am sure we looked quite interesting, with 6 moms, 8 walking kids, four babies, and two strollers all trying to cross the streams. :)

Liam's vantage point on my back. The new back wrap I learned in Atlanta finally worked for us!
There were fish with large black spots on their sides down in the water, and Ellia and Katy watched them for quite a long time.

Early Transportation

That's what we learned about this week, so we built coracles from pipe cleaners and plastic bags. The girls thought we should test them out, so we outfitted several princesses and sent them on their way. To the girls' delight, they floated quite well (for quite a while, until someone inadvertently splashed a little too enthusiastically and sank them). I think it added to the girls' enjoyment to be able to visualize a little better what Reepicheep found and kept in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which they are reading with Matt in the evenings.

Our Latest Project

Today we finally put together the situpons that we bought materials for a few weeks ago. We are planning on doing quite a bit of outdoor nature study for school this year,and, remembering the situpons we made in girls scouts, I thought we should have something to sit upon while we draw in our nature notebooks. We took some vinyl tablecloths from Big Lots, newspapers, string, my new leather punch (very spiffy toy!) and twist ties (handy "needles"!) and created beautiful new seats for ourselves. I am very proud of the girls - they stitched up theirs all by themselves! Katy got frustrated a lot at first because it wan't coming out perfect with every stitch. She kept asking for help, and for a while I showed her why it was knotting and helped her undo it. After a while, though, I told her that she had the tools she needed amd that she needed to try to figure it out for herself. She got really frustrated, so I advised taking a break, to which she responded that she wanted to get it done. So, after a brief internal struggle, she applied herself, figured out how to fix some knots herself (very proudly!) and sewed up the entire thing (very proudly!)! I am so proud of her - this is the thing we are struggling with in her handwriting somewhat (perfectionism versus cold hard reality), and so it was a great advance thast she stuck with it and completed the task! Darsie did great, too. She stopped for a while, tired of it and wanting to play. When Katy wouldn't come play with her because she wanted to finish hers, Darsie came back to the table on her own and picked it up and finished hers! She did great sewing, especially considering that she has never really done it at all before!
Now we are ready to venture out next week with out nature journals and pencils in hand!

Kickoff!

The Home Depot project for this morning was a paper football goalpost. Remember those paper footballs (triangles folded over and over again) from elementary school? Well, they're back just in time for kickoff. The girls had a good time, especially using the screwdriver (their first time with one!). Then, when Matt got home for lunch, he showed them how to flick ("kick") the football through the goalposts. It took quite a lot of practice for them, but they thought it was great! Here are pictures of them concentrating as they try to master this new skill.

(Matt had fun, too, I think. He also taught us "basketball" using a quarter and another persons hands as the net. Reliving the old glory days, I guess. I remember watching all the elementary school boys and just putting it down to them being boys.)

Maps

This week we learned a bit about map-making. We read a story from a Richard Scarry book, and then each girl made her own map showing all of the places the farmer went during his day (and learned about what a tailor and blacksmith do in the meantime). They enjoyed arranging the buildings and then drawing roads on their papers (not exactly a lesson in efficiency yet, but a good start!). We then took our maps into the living room, pulled out the blocks, and built their towns using their maps as blueprints. It was a difficult concept for them to grasp, but they began to get it a little bit, as you can see from these pictures. They thought it was great fun to build towns and had even more fun filling their buildings with people afterwards!