Doug's 43rd birthday

It posted these out of order, but I am going to go with it. 

There was a lot of game playing. 

There was banana bread instead of cake.

the girls made cards for him and then a few days later he bought a new BBQ.

 

Annual Nutting Party

On the first day of fall we went to a nearby canyon to have our nutting party.

We always pack a picnic lunch (usually soup, but it wasn't cold enough yet!) and then we look for acorns and leave a bunch at the bottom of a tree for the squirrels. 

This year was missing the soup, but we had acorn shaped peanut butter sandwiches, donut hole acorns, and fun drinks. 

The colors had just started changing and it was beautiful!

 

Fall Poetry Tea Times

The girls wanted me to make a recipe from one of their American Girl cookbooks. So we paired that with water for one of our poetry teatimes. 

This poetry teatime had a fall theme with donut holes, Sprite, and candy corn.

This teatime had cucumber sandwiches, pasta salad, and M&M cookies. 

One of my favorites was our last one of the term:

I made the cranberry bread recipe from this book and we read it instead of poetry. We also had spiced apple cider with it. 

 

Terms 2 and 3 in school

Once we were settled into our new home we were finally able to do school in our new schoolroom. It felt like the first day all over again. 

I enjoyed having my white board again as I tend to enjoy going a little crazy on it during lessons. 

We finished up our history unit on William Wallace and my girls' ancestor Robert the Bruce.

I felt like the best way to teach about Dante's Inferno without reading the entire poem to them would be to draw the story on the white board. It was fun, but looks a bit crazy. 

We did a game when we learning about the Black Plague. Each bag had colored tiles in it and represented different towns. We played pilgrims going through each town. The color of tile we pulled out of the bag determined if we caught the plague or not and how many people we infected. 

Maddie's next project was Princess/ Prince and the Pauper. We read the Mickey and Barbie versions and then watched the Barbie movie. 

In science we switched to an energy unit. We read a book about Edison and kept track of things we learned about him. We also read a book about Tesla later in the unit to compare their stories. 

Maddie's next project was Hansel and Gretel. We read three different versions and then she made her own story as well as a candy house. 

We learned about a few different artists over the last few terms: Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Raphael. 

When we were learning about the Sistine Chapel I copied an idea I saw on the show Road to Avonlea and had the girls draw pictures under their desks. 

I loved reading this book about Joan of Arc during both terms. She was amazing. 

When we talked about the War of the Roses, they each took a side and used our castle blocks and this trebuchet they built with Doug (Da Vinci's design) to battle. 

We got out our bells again. 

Another few fun read alouds...

I made a mess of the board again when we were wrapping up our history unit. 

Then we had our end of term test. 

Maddie and I finished reading this book together that was part of her language arts. 

Last Friday they turned in their last work: Abi's unit 6 language arts and Maddie's Thanksgiving themed story and I graded their math... and then term 3 was done!

Now we will be on winter break until January! That's the fun of only taking half the summer off!