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!

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.

Long Weekend...

It's always nice to have a long weekend.  It gives me a chance to catch up on some school with the girls and just spend some time with them.  Well, time that is not in the car carting them here and there.  We had several movie nights (which the kids LOVED), lots of Wii, yard work, gardening AND some school!  YAY, school!!

This is how we do family nacho night in the Brown-David household!  Lots of nachos, one big tray and a blanket to protect the ugly blue carpet.  Notice who is focused where.

We also learned a bit about our tongues and taste buds.  First we made a few solutions (sweet, salty, sour, bitter and spicy just to see if spice made a difference)

Then they each got a sheet with a picture of a tongue and a key (which they colored whatever colors they wanted).

This is proof that we really DO let everyone work on the same projects.  Look how focused Zion is coloring her key.  The girls were blindfolded and drop of each solution was placed on various parts of their tongues.  Then they colored the area where they could taste each solution.

The little ladies doing some work

Just thought I'd share some pictures of the little girls doing some school work this morning.  Zion is really, REALLY good at coloring and loves coloring this same page of shapes almost everyday.  I'm really impressed with her ability to color neatly within the lines.

Bijou wanted to do some math this morning after her reading, so we pulled out the addition strip board and she worked on adding numbers to nine.

I will be back...I promise

It seems that I have been put into some sort of communication bubble. My communication with anyone outside of my immediate four walls has become nil. I will regain the ability to communicate with the outside world soon. It feels like my connections to the outside world have gotten shakier and shakier over the last year, until is has faded away to nothing. But I promise I will be back.

For now, a tiny update. We are half way through our 3rd and 4th grade school year (WOO HOO). Next year I hope to be working, so that was add an entirely new dynamic to the whole home schooling thing. Jena is participating in a dance workshop this week. She will spend 8 hours a day immersed in dance. She has also asked to play soccer this year. Team sports are a new addition to our household. Ashni has decided that she wants to take Taikwondo and will hopefully be taking part in a theater workshop. All the girls are taking swim lessons again this summer. Jena is the only official swimmer, though. On the "making stuff" front, I took the little kids' cardboard playhouse that I made last summer and cut it down so that it can be assembled and disassembled in their room (pictures to be posted at a later date).

A new year...

It's a new year and we started it off with a bang....well, not really a bang. Bijou's winter wonderland party went off without a hitch (pictures forthcoming). Unfortunately half of her friends were sick this weekend (she and her sisters were all sick last week) so there were only half of the expected guests, but it was fun all the same.

Today marks the first day of our 2011 school year. Technically the older girls started 3rd and 4th grade work a couple of months ago, but we still like to treat January like a fresh start to a new school year. Today was Bijou's first day of kindergarten though. She's been eager to become a part of our school day. I will figure out to how to handle three different grades as I go I guess (but if anyone has suggestions I'm open!!!). This year we are going to tackle some long term projects. This is what we have planned:

1. A monthly newsletter/newspaper - The girls will each write an article on a topic that they will research, an article on a current event, a creative writing piece (story, poem, joke, etc) and include any artwork or photos that they may have created over that month. We'll print our one for them to keep and maybe email it to family.

2. A quarterly biography - They will have three months to study and learn about a significant person of their choice. This person can be living, historical, a family member or whoever they want. Each quarter they will create a trifold display for their person of choice.

3. A monthly book report - We started having a book of the month to encourage the girls to read more books from our own personal library (which has hundreds of kids books). They read a lot from the library, but our personal library was being neglected. So they have to choose one of our books each month to read and write a very simple book report about.

4. A short animated movie - Jena has been very interested in making an animated movie, so we decided that she and Ashni should write a story and create some characters and we will work with my cousin to create a short animated movie. They are excited about this one.

So the rest of the school day is pretty much the same. I will juggle a few things to make time to work on the additional projects, but I think it will be good for the girls. I also think we will spend a little more time with science this year. The kids LOVE science but it always gets put on the back burner for math and reading and writing. So this year, MORE SCIENCE - more experiments, more machines, more nature and animals and biology and habitats. More of it all. We'll see how it goes, but right now, our schooling future looks bright! (Oh, yeah and my friend from Senegal who is a fabulous musician and fluent in several languages has offered to teach the girls french AND give them guitar lesson! YAY!)

Finally...

So finally, I can post pictures! PICTURES!!! Yay. Okay, be prepared for picture overload while I chart the last few weeks. It always looks like we've done so much when I look back over the pictures, but it never seems like we get anything done day to day.

Anyway, Jena tended her first garden this spring/summer. I do NOT have a green thumb (or even pinkie), so this was pretty much all Jena. This is her last tomato of the summer. She really didn't have a huge tomato harvest (maybe 10 tomatoes), but she was very proud of them and they were pretty tasty.

Bijou started ballet this fall. She's very excited to be involved in the same thing as her sisters. She just looks so grown up in this picture.

I had the grand idea to make finger paint for the little girls. They had a really good time and they both know that now that food coloring will stain your hands (and face and clothes and patio...)

We discussed crystal formation for science and decided to grow some of our crystals. So we made a super saturated salt solution and dropped a piece of yarn into it. This was the crystal growth after a couple of weeks. The girls thought this was the greatest thing ever. They both kept big chucks of salt crystal (and every now and then pull them out to observe.)

Regular old table salt on the left and super-ginormous amazing salt crystals on the right. Pretty cool, huh?

Oh yeah, I mentioned in my last post about the girls having a lemonade stand a while back. They really enjoyed it. They made fresh squeezed lemonade (yes, REAL lemons) and sold cups for $.25. They made almost $15, which is big money in kid terms. We'll probably let them do it again next summer.

Jena, my crafty child, spent a weekend making clothes for her doll (which is now Ashni's doll since the purchase of Jena's new one). This was the very first dress that she made.

Notice the fancy buttons down the back and the fabulous hairstyle!

I had to have a gratuitous potty picture. I'm pretty proud of my little monkey and her potty training success. Look how happy she is!

We're studying the middle ages in history, so the girls designed their own coat of arms. They had to choose colors and symbols based on their meanings. They also learned what some of the lines and divisions mean.

Jena was invited to her first drop off birthday party. It's hard to believe how big she has become and how mature she is. She was so excited to get to hang out with her friends and not have any little sisters tagging along. Her little sisters on the other hand where not so thrilled.

I've probably mentioned Jena's love of unnecessarily complicated puzzles. She'd been working on the Empire State Building for weeks. She's finally put it all together. Now what are we supposed to do with it?
Zion, as cute as she is, does not seem to grow hair anywhere but down the center and on the left side of her head. Now if anyone can pull of that hairstyle, it's Zion, but I really couldn't do anything with it. So I decided to cut it off. This is the very first "first haircut" picture I have ever taken. It is also the first first haircut. I have to say that I didn't think that she could get any cuter...I was WRONG!

We made egg tempera paint for art. Just crushed, colored chalk and egg yolk. The chalk crushing was an experience and I think we all have great upper body strength now.

On the crafty front, I found this little doll cradle at Goodwill for $4 (actually it was marked $8, but when the lady heard me say that that was too much, she marked it down to $4!). It was cute, but a little to "country" for my taste. So I decided it needed a little make over.

A can of lime green spray paint and some leftover fabric and we have a much more appealing cradle. It works in their room very well.

My sister gave the girls a very cute Cat in the Hat clock when we visited this summer and the girls were very happy to have a clock in their room. Unfortunately the background on the clock was mostly black and the hands were black. We could never see what time it was. So I took it apart and replace the Cat in the Hat with a little color block pattern that I made with paint chips from the hardware store. I stamped the 12, 3, 6 and nine with some stamps a had on hand and the little pink jewels are some scrapbook accessories that the kids had. I spray painted the frame with the same green as the doll cradle. Next time I will remember to use the spray paint made specifically for plastic, because it's scratched already. Fortunately it's high on the wall, so it's barely noticeable.

Zion has an obsession with cell phones. She will swipe them as soon as you look away. I figured she must need her own, but letting her have an old, dead phone of ours didn't seem like a good idea. So i whipped up this one in about 30 minutes. It's just a piece of scrap wood (from a defunct Home Depot kids project) painted black. I cut a small picture from a magazine for the screen and used a couple of grey paint chips for the buttons. The OK button is one of those clear, bubble stickers for scrapbook pages. I covered the entire thing in Mod Podge to protect it from drool. Thirty minutes of my time, zero dollars and she has endless fun with it.

I try to come up with Halloween costumes for the girls that will work together, so this year they were the four seasons. Ashni was spring, Jena was summer, Bijou was winter and Zion was fall. Gotta love the dollar store and all of it dollary goodness because our costumes are ALWAYS created from dollar materials!

This is An! The girls took about 40 pictures of him the day we got him. They stop by and talk to him every now and then and Zion can be heard saying "Hi Fish!" several times a day.

Blue marker + unsupervised toddler = this.

I bought this bag for a dollar at Salvation Army. It's a very "me" bag (grey and wool), but it needed a little something...

...so I made this drawing from the picture of Zion on the toilet. At some point soon I will post pictures of how these two came together. Their meeting is now my favorite bag ever!