Ahhhh, summer.

Tomorrow is the first day of summer!  Yay!  So, I figured I'd share some things that we've done over the past couple of weeks (as well as some cute outfits).

We took a group field trip to a small local farm and look at the sweet little farm girl that I found there!  The girls had a great time.  They picked and ate blueberries, fed sheep and horses, milked goats and fed the babies.  Zion gathered eggs and diligently (and carefully) carried them in the little basket for the rest of the trip.  She was excited to bring these eggs home and have them for dinner.

Summer has provided us with much more time to spend with our friends.  There's nothing better than sweet friends, sprinklers, Popsicles and backyard picnics!

Then there's this.  This girl is the sweetest little human being.  And this frilly, sheer floral top (Guess - $.99 at Goodwill) is one that she LOVES!  Look at that face...

Ashni is discovering her love of accessories.  This fedora gets worn a lot.  She looks so grown up when she accessorizes.

My girls are plagued (ha) with long legs and super thin waists and my husband is plagued with his disdain for them showing too much skin.  This makes buying shorts difficult.  Bijou, on the other hand, is just the right size for her shorts to fit in the waist, but not be too short.  Yay!

pink shoes - Keds ($2.99 at Goodwill)

shorts - not sure of the brand ($1.49 at Goodwill)

tank top - Land's End (free, hand me down)

Total outfit - approx $4.50

Our annual Father's Day spread.  Every year on Father's Day, I make my husband a spinach, portobello and Gruyere quiche.  It only happens once a year and it is a huge hit every time.  This year, we also had roasted potatoes, cherries with fresh whipped cream (thanks Jena) and the girls squeezed two dozen oranges for juice

School, of course, continues over the summer.  Bijou has been working on adding two digit numbers with carrying and Zion is still working on her letter sounds.  She really wants to learn to read.

It's always fun to find pictures like this on my phone.  This is what happens when kids sneak and use your phone while you are getting dressed.  (Notice the stockpile of Girl Scout cookies in the background.)

The playground is a good (free) way to kill time between afternoon activities.  We spent a little time there this afternoon.  I love this lucha libre shirt (Boo Homes - $1.49 at Goodwill) that Bijou is wearing.  LOVE IT!

Zion at the monkey bars

desert boots - Crew Cuts ($2.99 at Goodwill)

trousers - Old Navy ($.99 at Goodwill)

popsicle tank - Gap ($.99 at Goodwill)

Total outfit - approx $5

This is what big sisters are for - to wear little sisters like hats! 

pink sneakers - Vans (previously featured)

shorts - Judith March ($2.49 at Goodwill)

t-shirt - Cherokee (free hand me down)

Total outfit (without shoes) - approx $2.50

We leave in two weeks to take Ashni to fence in the Summer National Championship in Ohio.  Jena leaves for France two days after.  We will go to St. Louis at the end of July to pick up my mother for a visit.  There will be field trips and play days and workshops to fill up all the rest of our long summer days. I'm looking forward to having a great and productive summer!

Keeping the wee one busy

We officially have a 6th grader, a 5th grader, a 1st/2nd grader and a preschooler in our house.  That means four different abilities, four different learning styles and four different personalities.  Zion is just getting to the stage where she wants to "work" like her older sisters.  I've made sure to provide lots of things that she can work on independently.  This way, she can keep busy while I give lessons to her older sisters.  She has been working with Cuisenaire rods for a while now.  She loves just playing with them and building towers.  She know that they represent certain numbers, but for the most part, she just enjoys playing with them.  For the past few days, we have been working on making numbers with the rods.  I write a couple of number on a piece of paper and she makes them.  We have been working on the teens.  She uses the pink ten rod and then adds the ones to make her number.  Once she had made all of the numbers with tens and ones, we replace the ones with the rod with the matching value (four ones cubes for a four rod, six cubes for a six rod, etc.).  She really enjoyed measuring the various rods with the little one cubes.

She also has been exploring tangrams.  Mainly, she has been making her own shapes and creations, but today she discovered that she can use to book and copy the shapes in the book.  This kept her busy for a good 30 minutes once she figured it out.  We have several sets of tangrams, so of course she had to make each puzzle with every color that we had.

And, apparently, pants are frowned upon in our house...

What's My Kid Wearing Today (and a Summer School Update)

Ah, I just completed my first full week back home with the kids.  I think it was a productive week.  We did some school work and decided on a summer school schedule that everyone is happy with.  We will do math and writing everyday and the rest of our subjects will be:
Monday - Science
Tuesday - Grammar/Essay Writing
Wednesday - Geography
Thursday - History
Friday - Art
This way, they have time to really get immersed in what they are working on without having to be concerned with the 4 other subjects that they need to get done before the end of the day. We also got the house somewhat organized (color coded our school library...again).  And my husband has been able to get more than four hours of sleep each day (working nights and homeschooling days is tough).  So, I think everyone is happy.
Yesterday, we were invited over to a friends house for a crawfish boil and general smorgasbord.  Bijou, Ashni and Jena even tried raw oysters for the first time.  They oysters received mixed reviews.  They gorged themselves on fruit, crawfish, cheese and crackers, veggies and popsicles.  SO many popsicles. And I'm pretty sure that several hula hoop contests occurred.  Anyway, this is what they wore.

This is five minutes before they all turned into America's Next Top Model and the pictures got goofy.

Bijou

pink sneakers - Keds ($2.99 at Goodwill)

dress - Cakewalk (free from a hand me down bag)

Total Outfit - approx. $3

See the madness...

Zion

Grey sneakers - Converse (gift from my mom...pretty sure they were $3 at Goodwill in St. Louis)

leggings - Old Navy ($.99 at Goodwill)

denim skirt - Justice (previously featured)

Super Grover t-shirt - Old Navy ($.99 at Goodwill)

Total Outfit - approx. $5 

Jena (and her legs...)

shoes - ana ($6.99 at Goodwill)

tights - Target (maybe $2 on sale at Target.  She bought these herself, so I'm not sure)

patchwork skirt - Gap ($1.49 at Goodwill)

ruffle tank top - Crewcuts ($1.49 at Goodwill)

Total Outfit - approx $12

Ashni

fancy pink tank top - Old Navy (free from the hand me down bag)

black jean leggings - Gap ($8 from Gap)

yellow sneakers - Converse ($6.99 from Goodwill.  She bought these herself)

Total Outfit - approx. $15

We actually do get some work done...

We really do still homeschool the girls.  I swear.  We actually manage to get work done.  I know, crazy, right.  Yesterday, Bijou and I did some math with Cuisenaire rods and diagrammed some sentenced with the grammar symbols.

I am pretty sure that I have talked about these symbols in a past post, but I'm too lazy to look for it.  Each symbol represents a word function (noun, verb, etc.).  The big black triangles are nouns, the medium dark blue triangles are adjectives and the small blue ones are articles.  Together they form a kind of family.

Her sentence was - A green dog on a yellow tree.  See the pattern of the symbols (article, adjective, noun)

This is the first time that she got to use the green crescent.  The crescent is the symbol for prepositions.  So far she has learned nouns, adjectives, articles, verbs and prepositions.

I started to try and retouch this picture and digitally clean up all of the junk in the background, but, hey, there's learning happening here and sometimes it's messy in our house.  Anywho...we did some place value work with the rods and some triple digit addition.

This is my place value chart that I made on the fly.  We just worked up to the hundreds place.  We will start thousands next week.  Once she has mastered adding thousands without regrouping, I will introduce regrouping.

Update on the Lady Clan

I know, I know.  I shouldn't even consider myself a blog owner these days.  Life has certainly increased its pace here in the last couple of years.  Work takes up time, schooling takes up time, the kids are all in extracurricular activities (which take TONS of time), so there's very little time left for me to do anything except eat and sleep.  And I really don't do either of those very well anymore.  Anywho, life has been good, despite the level of business, so I thought I'd share a little update.

Three of my four girls are performing in the Nutcracker this year.  Jena will be Clara!  The show opened last night and was a success.  The entire weekend is old out.  I've finally gotten comfortable with doing the girls' makeup (thanks to a few years of crazy face painting for Halloween).  I still can't believe how much older they look now.  I mean, Ashni still has that childlike face, but Jena?  When did she start looking like an adult?  Fortunately, she is still a big goofball, so maturity is a long way off I think.

This is my classroom.  Generally it is full of busy little toddlers.  There's nothing in the room that is taller than 15 inches, lol.  Well, maybe a couple of things.

We've become part of a great little homeschool co-op.  Jena finally has girl friends her own age.  Not that she has ever complained about having boy friends, or friends that are younger, but I know that she is enjoying it.  We meet weekly for rotating lessons (nature study, geography, art, science, PE).  We also have field trips and social get togethers.  We went on a trip to a National Park here in Mississippi and hiked.  Zion  is showing off her mopey stance as we finish up the trail.

Ashni is still fencing and we are all very proud of her.  She just returned from Houston, TX competing in a youth circuit.  She won a bronze medal!  So far, she has medaled at every competition she has entered.  She loves it and we love seeing how proud she is of herself.  Her coaches envision great things for her fencing future.

Adn, although it doesn't seem like it, we still manage to get some school work done.  I printed this giant map ages ago (and pieced it together on the wall) for the girls to map the countries that they research for geography.  It is also been helpful with the younger girls learning the continents and oceans.  Bijou is labeling the seven continents while Zion names them.

I've also been painting quite a bit.  I've had some portrait work and currently have a show hanging!  So things are going well.

Bijou learns about nouns and verbs

Today, Bijou and I worked on the function of words.  Today's words were nouns and verbs.  I wrote various actions onto slips of paper and she got to act them out with her sisters.  I also wrote various nouns on slips of paper for her to bring to me (she thoroughly enjoyed nouns like kitchen and sister).  Then we used our grammar symbols to mark the nouns and verbs in various phrases typed on slips of paper.

Botany work on the fly

My husband brought home a huge, beautiful (albeit somewhat wilted) flower last night and although it looked lovely on the table, it made a really lovely learning tool as well.  Nothing like a little 9pm flower dissection.