homeschooling is cool: giving thanks

we have been studying thanksgiving as part of our history lesson since the beginning of november. we've read alot of books about thanksgiving, but our favorite by far is the thanksgiving story by alice dalgliesh. i was reminded of this book here and forgot that we owned a copy, so we searched our bookshelf and thankfully we found it. we shared part of this book at our thanksgiving feast we had with our home school group. some of our friends shared what they were thankful for, we sang the thanksgiving doxology:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Praise God all creatures here below.

Praise God above ye heavenly hosts.

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

and had a great time playing with friends and climbing trees. take a look...

one of our friends made a this sign to put on the table

two little girls set the table all by themselves

my girl decided to dress in her indian costume for the festivities

climbing trees with friends

the "indian queen" giving order to some of her warriors

our little tribe playing out in the field.

also, i wanted to share with you some of avery's copywork from this month. this month we did a thankful journal. all of her entries are super precious and i am thinking that we will do this every year in the same journal to have a special thanksgiving keepsake. take a look...

happy thanksgiving. i hope you enjoy your thanksgiving feast!

home schooling is cool: riley's apple orchard

a few weeks back our group traveled out to oak glen to visit riley's apple farm. every year they host a home schooling day and have lots of fun activities for the kiddo's. this year home schooling day was so popular they had to add on several more days to accommodate all the home schooler's who wanted to participate. (i love that this home schooling thing is catching on). it's about an hour and half drive for us to get out there, but it's a great drive and gets us out of our beach bubble. my girl loves this trip. she started asking back in july when we were going to go apple picking again and honestly, it couldn't come soon enough. here are a "few" photos from our day...

we sawed wood to use for the fire

the fire was used to boil water to make tea (see a few photos down)

we practiced writing with a quill pen and ink

pumped water

pounded and crushed leaves for tea

tasted it

she didn't like it. can you tell?

picked apples

washed them

threw them in the grinder

to make apple cider

that was put away in a cool refrigerator for us to enjoy at the end of our day

this sign was spotted by the mister

so, these two went walking

to look at this and buy some to take home. (yes, the mister strapped 2 pieces of cedar to the roof of our van)

we played in a creek

i love his chubby, bear paw feet

smudged our faces with dirt

panned for gold

recited our monthly poem

went on hay ride

ground some corn to make corn flour

and took a picture under an apple tree. just like the good ol' days.

home schooling is cool: LA natural history museum

home schooling is cool. have i told you that already? once a week we get together with an awesome group of kiddo's and mama's (sometimes the papa's too) and go on a really cool adventure. on this particular week we headed out to LA to visit the natural history museum. this was our first time there and it was a lot of fun. take a look...

we saw real (stuffed) buffalo, which was cool because we are studying about buffalo bill for history and this just made it more realistic for us.

this is just one of the giant dinosaurs we saw.

there was ample photo opps in this place. such a cool building inside and out.

a skeleton of a whale. (i forget what kind of whale). that's what happens when you are chasing a 2 year old around.

lunch time with friends. but, i really just included this picture because it made me laugh that my little germ-a-phobe daughter has her hand sanitizer front and center of her lunch. like mother, like daughter. (that could be good or bad).

this photo is a little blurry, but i was super in love with these gold doors.

like i said, ample photo opps.

then the most amazing room ever was this hands on exploration room. first of all the light was amazing in this room, with the bright white walls, and vaulted ceilings, it was gorgeous.

i'm really not a fan of dead animals, but this display just caught my eye.

i would probably never hang anything like this in my house unless it was something like this. but, like i said it was eye catching.

the stuffed polar bear was big. and he liked it. (see my next post)

another thing i loved was the dash of color they put in this all white room. again,

ample photo opps.

we definitely will be going back. there's so much more we could see and do. we didn't even explore outside and it looks like they are doing some upgrades or additions out there so, yes we will be going back.