Homeschool share has a great new theme unit that fits right in with the month of July being ice cream month!

You can go HERE to see this unit. 

It looks like a bunch of fun with some great ice cream activities.   Mmmmmm do I LOVE ice cream.  There is even a recipe to make ice cream in a Ziploc baggie!    You know what the best part is???  It is totally FREE.  Yes, you heard me right…FREE.  They have a bunch of great lapbooks and so many great activities to go along with many, many books.  Go check it out.

We will be doing this one for sure.

Other than going to the nature center(see post below) we hung out, went swimming, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.  It was a fun time!

We went camping last weekend with my BIL his wife and their three kids.  We camped with them last year and it is always a bunch of fun!  The lake we went to had a really neat nature museum with various local items.  It was in a stone castle.  The history behind this castle is that a previous Mayor built this for a summer home and never completed it.  The city then bought it much later and is making it into a local nature museum.

Walking up to castle

Daddy and Reagan

View from first level

Our new found friend

Climbing to the second level

Looking down to the grande room

This very narrow winding staircase leads to the tower

These pictures were taken looking down from the tower (taken by my husband as I am laying down clinging to the ground)

More on the camping trip tomorrow.

I came across a really great Little House study made just for the younger crowd.  It is made to be used with the picture books and covers every letter of the alphabet.  Below is the authors description of this curriculum:

The My Little Primer provides a fun lesson for each letter of the alphabet. Learning about a character in the Little House books, or a place the Ingalls’ traveled to. Lessons added will sometime be for … Math, Science, History, Language Arts, Art and Bible. This study guide is geared for children ages 2 ~ 8 (but I find a lot of older girls doing it as well). With the First book being “Making a Friend” there is a Rag Doll that is made with this study to accompany your student along the journey. This Study Guide consists of teaching the child to read, recognize and write their alphabet, while learning of all the people Laura Ingalls wrote about in her books. Starting with the plain body of a Rag Doll as we do the alphabet your student will name and dress the doll, learn how to cook for her/him and much much more!!!
I currently have two forms of the curriculum available. I have a BINDER READY copy that is just punched and ready for a three ring binder that you provide yourself. This copy is $15.00.
Then there is the LAMINATED COMB BOUND copy that has a laminated colored cover and is comb bound for easy use. This copy is $20.00. I do have pre-made Doll bodies for an easy start and they are $10.00 each. The pattern for the doll comes with the curriculum as well as a 20″ X 20″ map of the US so that you can follow where the Ingalls traveled.
I accept Paypal at brownstead@embarqmail.com or check or money order sent to …
High Hopes Academy
attn Cindy Brown
2265 Porterfield Rd
Woodlawn, Va. 24381
please make all checks and money orders out to Cindy Brown.

I included all of her information just in case anyone is interested.  I have already ordered it to do with my daughter (6) this summer.  I will post as I am going through this study.

For some reason everyone that has my lasagna seems to really love it!  It is really pretty frugal since there is no meat or veggies in it.  I think what makes it is the sauce, it is a sweet tomatoes sauce.

4 small cans tomato paste

6 cups water

1 clove garlic

1 tablespoon Italian seasoning

1 tablespoon basil

2/3 cup sugar

1 package lasagna noodles

6-8 cups shredded mozz. cheese

Mix together water, tomato paste, garlic and Italian seasoning in sauce pan.  Cook over medium heat 3 hours.  Then add sugar and basil and cook an additional 1 hour.  Cook noodles as directed on box.  Put small amount of sauce on bottom of 9 x 13 pan and tip pan around to spread sauce evenly along bottom of pan.  Place noodles next to each other in one layer to cover sauce( this is usually 3 noodles when I cook it) cover with layer of cheese and then layer of sauce.  Repeat until all ingredients are used.  When I make it, usually there are 3-4 layers.  End up with last layer on top being cheese.  Place in 350 degree preheated oven and cook for approx. 30 minutes.  Serve.

Sometimes I will double the sauce and then freeze half of it for another occasion or to use as spaghetti sauce or pizza sauce.  It freezes very nicely.

I decided a while back to try increase our nature studies.  I had one bird feeder up and I changed it from wild bird seed to the black oil sunflower seeds, I then added an additional bird feeder with the wild bird seed in it.  Within a few days we started seeing cardinal couples, blue jays and a few colorful birds that we have yet to identify.  Today I added a bird bath :)  I am really excited as this is our first bird bath.  I felt really sorry for my little sparrows this morning as they stood on the side of the dogs water bowl taking a drink.  I am really hoping that we will get to see them taking a bath and splashing around real soon!

Thanks to Holly for this yummy recipe! My kids just love the sprinkles in them!

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE SPRINKLE COOKIES

2 c butter
2 c sugar
2 c brown sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 c oats
4 c flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 c chocolate chips
2 c walnuts (chopped)
1.5 c sprinkles

Cream butter & sugars. Add eggs, vanilla. Blend oats in processor until fine & add into bowl. Add all the dry stuff. Stir in the chocolate chips, walnuts & sprinkles. (you can add in less than the called for amounts, too or use different nuts). Roll into balls, place on cookie sheet & flatten w/ glass. Bake at 350 for about 12 mins.
This makes a LOT of cookies- about 4 gallon ziplock bags full after some are eaten off the cooling rack.

I took a break from blogging because I was so overwhelmed with life in general.  It wasn’t a planned break, it just happened.  I would get on to type an entry and just couldn’t do it.  I felt like I had nothing useful or positive to say.  I have been overwhelmed with a messy house and trying to get my life, family and house in order.  I noticed just yesterday that I feel a little better, a little more “normal” if that is possible and actually felt like posting!

On a more cheerful note, I have added MFW to Reagans school.  Reagan is my “schooly” child and loves to “do school” so we are going to do MFW K and fill in from time to time with FIAR as we still love the books.

My in-laws gave us their above ground pool this week and my husband has been putting it up this weekend while I am at work.  Reagan, Britt and Dyl are all looking forward to splashing around in the pool.  I think that we are going to cook out some hot dogs and let the kids splash around while we sit in the back yard and relax.

With my daughters 6th birthday here we decided to do an “All About Me” lapbook.  I got a bunch of my ideas from here.  She was such a sweetie to even communicate with me via email when I had a question.  Some of my forms came from Enchanted Learning.  And some are just forms I made myself on Word.  We had a bunch of fun with this and Reagan loved looking back at all of the things about her when she was a baby!

This is the cover of the lapbook

This is the left flap and center section.  We traced her handprints and then we made a page for each title as follows (Things that make Reagan wonder, Things that make Reagan sad, Things that make Reagan Happy).  We took a picture of her to fit each title and glued it to the page.  Below are the other pages mentioned above:

This is a family tree we made.  The leaves have the names of all of our family members, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc.

There were a couple of pages like this.  There was a spot for her to draw and then write it out.  We got these off of enchantedlearning. com.

We then made a page with her baby picture and all the info from her birth annoncement and then her hair and eye color.

Then behind it was a picture of her now and her current age, weight, height, eye and hair color.

This was her most favorite part.  We took a copy of her birth feet prints and put them at the top and then painted her feet and footprinted her now.  She liked it sooo much that we had to take a picture of her blue feet.

Hee Hee

After this I just turned her loose with a bunch of stickers and she finished off the lapbook putting stickers wherever she wanted them.  She did a really great job!!

Princess Reagan at 6 years old!!!!

Happy Birthday baby, we love you!