This past week we were able to pull off our first themed unit study that Ashlyn and Weston were able to participate in together! I asked them the week before what they wanted to cover and Weston said planets and Ashlyn said birds. We settled on planets first and we had so much fun! I even caught Weston saying mid week that he, “loves this kind of school.” 😍

Monday, we started with an overview of the EIGHT planets. It’s still weird teaching that coming from the generation that was taught about the 9th planet, Pluto. We found balance on that topic by discussing why scientists changed their minds. We read books about the planets, watched an episode of “The Magic School Bus” where they visit all 9 planets. (Obviously that episode was a little dated.) Ashlyn worked on her ELS by identifying verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns from a paragraph about Jupiter while Weston did a color by number planets. Then both kids wrote a page about their favorite planet and created flip books with the picture that they colored themselves and names of the planets in order. Ashlyn picked Mars as her favorite and Weston picked Saturn.

Tuesday, we focused on the Earth and constellations. After a brief chat on the Earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun and some asteroid themed math, we crowded in the dark bathroom with a projector and recreated some famous constellations. Then the kids created their own! Weston made a goose and Ashlyn made a Pegasus.

Wednesday, we took advantage of a warm, sunny day and made a solar oven to capture the Sun’s light and heat to melt s’mores. The kids were patient enough for an hr and while the chocolate coating on the cookie was very melted, the marshmallow was minimally squished. We still called it a success.

Thursday, we wrapped the week up with discussing the moon and its viewable phases as it orbits the Earth. The kids were thrilled that we used Oreos to do this! This cute idea I found on Pinterest, had the kids scraping the icing off halved cookies to represent the appearance of the moon’s reflection of sunlight on Earth. Then, of course, they ate their moons.

I plan on doing these units week after week and year after year. When we repeat a unit theme, there’s going to be plenty of material to expand on each time. Right now, Archer floats in and out while we work, but next year, he could get more involved too.  It was super exciting to get to a point in our crazy move and holidays being over to pull a week like this off and all of us love it so much! Here’s to getting a good thing going!

-Lindsay

Spring is in the air and we are getting things done! For starters, we’ve got a new batch of baby chicks growing in a brooder in the mudroom! We picked up 8 pullets (females) at Atwoods in Tyler. Out of that bunch, we *should* have 2 leghorns, 2 gold sex links, and 4 black sex links. I’m awaiting 4 ameracaunas to hatch from a local gal. They lay blue/green colored eggs and the artist in me just couldn’t resist multicolored eggs on my counter. The 8 I currently have are about 2-4 weeks old already; so brooding everyone to together may be a challenge when I add the new 4, but I’m going to have to wait and see. When everyone has lost their fuzz and feathered out, they’ll move out to the new coop! In the meantime, having little peepers down the hall has been entertaining. Even Fluffy has seen appeal to coexisting! However, we often have to remove him from the top because he tends to block all of the light!

We have decided to ignore the dumb groundhog and move forward like Spring is here to stay. As a result, we have planted 2 varieties of asparagus, 2 varieties of strawberries, brussel sprouts, jalapeños, red bell pepper, tomato, zucchini by seed and edamame. The edamame was an impulse decision. We bought one plant and I have no idea how it will do. We also planted corn and broccoli by seed. 2 more crops that I’m not certain about the outcome. Broccoli should really be sown as plants in the spring and seeds in the fall, but I was having a hard time finding healthy plants. And apparently corn needs to be in multiple side by side rows for pollination annnndddd we did just one long row. I’m going to have to talk extra nice to the bees on those plants I guess. The kids sure did love planting it though! We have cantaloupe, watermelon and pole bean seeds left to sown along with some pollinator attractant flowers and we have our spring garden set!

We also have blooms on one of our orchard trees now! Which makes one of nine identified as crabapple! This really gets my hopes up that maybe the tree I thought was pear may actually be an already established apple tree. Crabapples, in addition to being ornate and edible, are widely used as a pollinator to other varieties of larger apple. But we will just have to wait and see as more blooms show. Isn’t the crabapple pretty?

And last but not least! Saving the best update for last…..we now have a functioning bathtub and shower in the mudroom!!! Nathan really pulled out the big guns this past weekend and tied all the loose ends together into a masterpiece of a finished product! The kids were so excited and enjoyed their first bath in the new house tonight. We have a fun, rustic idea to finish it out cosmetically, but I am so happy to have this plumbing project behind us now.

I can’t wait for this month’s guests to come share the fun with us!

-Lindsay