Have you ever heard of the books Flat Stanley? Well up until a couple months ago I hadn't. But, I saw them one day at the library and picked one up for my then 7 year old, and in the matter of a couple weeks he had read them ALL! He was in love, it was the first real series he got into!  His brother decided to read them as well, they both enjoyed them so much. Then I heard about how you could make flat adventurers of you, and send them around the world to other people. Sounded fun to us, so this begins our journey.................

April 29th, the kids and I made their flat adventurers today. They had so much fun making them, with their favorite colors for clothes, and we printed out pictures of their faces, and glued them on.. Then we laminated them. On the backs of each of them we put our address, the kids names, and their likes. This way if they get lost from their envelope they will hopefully make it back to us! 

May 6th, we found partners to swap adventurers with! So, the two on top left today to TN! :) They are going to a boy who is 10, and a girl who is 5... This should be super fun, it is both our first times swapping adventurers!   Our adventurer below is heading over seas to England!! This on is certain to be super exciting!  We cant wait to send her some things from the U.S.A, and get some fun things in return. :)  THEY ARE OFF, let the adventure begin. :D We are super excited to have our flat guests arrive too!

Our first flat adventurer arrived today, and it came all the way from England. How fun!!!  It arrived right as we were heading out the door to go clam digging, so it went with us! :D

At Penrose Point State Park..

Flat Illijana hanging out with our clams.. :D

Keep checking back, as the journey continues.. :)

I've always known I wanted to teach my kids to cook, and with homeschooling I knew that I would include it at some point. With our oldest girl being sick over the past few years, me going to school, and other things it just hasn't happened yet. The kids cook with me regularly, but not on their own! Well we finally are able to fit it in our schedule and our youngest boy made all the kids pizza tonight. They came out fabulous, and he made them from scratch pretty much all on his own! :)   First thing I did was make him custom directions, so they would make sense to a 8 year old boy. :D   I then set out all the ingredients and measuring spoons and cups he would need. Next, I called him in to begin. He looked through a cookbook the other day, and decided he wanted to make homemade pizza. Each of the children have chose a meal, made grocery lists, and will go and buy the items they need to prepare their meal. He was first because what he picked, I had all the ingredients to already! :)  Next time his will include shopping for the ingredients too!

He read the recipe, and measured out and mixed all of the ingredients all by himself. :)

After the dough raised for a while, he broke off pieces, floured his surface, and rolled out little mini pizzas for each kid.

He then put the rolled dough into the oven, for 5 minutes, took it out and put sauce and toppings on.

He also grated all the cheese, in the food processor (he says that was one of his favorite parts), and he chopped up mushrooms, and sliced the pepperoni into smaller pieces. He really enjoyed "designing" each pizza. He made them custom for each of the kids.

Proud chef with the first two pizzas!  Older brothers, and his oldest (younger) sisters. He was so excited to let them see them!

He led them in one by one, with their eyes closed, hahahhahaa, and showed them their pizzas.

They all gave him 2 thumbs up, and said it was some of the best pizza they had ever ate. They all cleaned their plates, so it was a success, and he was proud! :D

Now, hopefully he will continue to enjoy cooking. Hopefully they all will, I think its important  that everyone grows up with the ability to be self sufficient. I hope that when my kids head off to college they will take the time to cook decent meals, instead of always eating out or top ramen. haha!!!

Symmetry Cards
We used cardstock folded it in 1/2 and then painted 1/2 of a heart on one side of the card. We then folded it over and pressed gently - to make a symmetry heart. Super fun, and made adorable cards. Just write on the inside your little Valentine's note.

Picasso Hearts

With the Picasso hearts we outlined sections, with marker and then painted each section with vibrant colors. I chose to do mine with oil pastels instead of paints. They all came out so beautiful.

 
Our oldest girl is doing Pre-K this year, and she is having a lot of fun with it.  We do a letter of the week theme, and do a lot of projects around it. She really enjoys it, and its helping her get all her sounds down, because she really wants to learn to read.   Below I am going to put a few of my favorite items from each letter unit. :)

We did this fun project over the last two days. You could do it in one day, if you dryed them with a blow dryer or in an open oven, on the lowest setting possible.

First, you will want to either plan in your head or on a piece of paper what you want your monster to look like. Then, you can paint the background, once it is dry you will want to paint eyes, a face, teeth, mouth, body, etc. If you are layering up, like background, face, and then eyes you will need to dry it inbetween each of these steps. Once, you have yoru monster all painted and it is DRY, use a permanent marker to outline it all! This is fun even to do with small children because once you outline their drawings you wont notice any extra paint! :) They will all come up super cute.

While browsing on pinterest I saw a link to an art project by Deep Space Sparkle (love their ideas over there btw), for these pumpkins at night art project. After, browsing through the directions we decided to change them up a bit, and we used oil pastels rather then tempera paints. We've used paint a few times lately, and well that is enough paint for a few days! o_0  

The first thing we did, was use a black crayon to draw the outlnes of our pumpkins, and some of us chose to also draw the outlines of some leaves.

We then used oil pastels to color/shade in our pumpkins I used combination of oranges and yellows. And, then I colored my leaves green and brown tones. Then you can use a napkin or your finger to blend the colors. This is the GREAT thing about using pastels, vs crayons.

After all the pumpkins were colored we then cut them out and glued them to black paper, and added in the ground, vines, stars. And, the kids got a little excited and decided their pumpkins flew off into space so they added moons, earth, and some other things. :)  Fun Project!

Each day I have one of these papers for her, that I premade. Aa is for Apples was monday. She draws how many of the item I have mentioned then she practices her letter and number.  She LOVES these!

She will also be working on her shapes this school year; drawing them, and learning their names.  

This is how we do music class in this house! :D The kids love it!!! She is working on "We Wil Rock You" right now, and has the beat down pretty good, its pretty awesome.

We also spent a lot of time reading about Ants, the letter A, and books with words that start with the letter A, practicing writing her letters, numbers, counting, sounding out words, making things from playdough and participating in art, science, and geography projects her brothers do.  We also read a lot of books she picked out at the library like Fancy Nancy, and other princess books! :)  Next, week we continue on with the letter B, and she is still very excited about her school, which is awesome!

Then, we cut out our planets, and glued them on to our backgrounds.

This was a fun little project, but definetly not based on the actual planets of our solar system. :)  But, the kids really enjoyed it!