Beach Days, School Days, and Mother's Day

 Over the weekend of Valentines day we headed down to Chris' parent's house to celebrate! It was a great family gathering because Chris' youngest brother and his wife were able to be there as well and we had missed seeing them at Christmas time. 

 We took a day trip down to this wet and cold stony beach to explore!

 The girls- me with my mother in law, Anne and sister in law, Myrra

 I love this picture! She is such a fun girl!

 The Arthur and the Sea

 R is for rainbows!

 Thank goodness for Skittles and the letter S!

 We played a fun counting game where these socks labelled one through ten were hanging on the line. Stella would close her eyes and a big gust of 'wind' would blow a few random socks off the line and hide them around the room. When she opened her eyes she had to identify which numbers were missing and then find them and replace them!

 We did this paper plate sea horse craft.

 Stella's summer picture. This is actually quite a bit of drawing for Stella!

 Seahorse kisses!

 A fun letter week!

 For our T week we talked about our teeth and how to keep them healthy. We did this activity where Stella sorted through some pictures of food items cut out of adds and decided which ones were good for our teeth- those went on the happy tooth, and which ones were bad for our teeth- on the sad tooth. 

Sadly to say, she was not very receptive to this idea! She refused to believe that ice cream was not good for teeth and just generally wanted to put everything except soda on the happy tooth. What can I say, she loves her food! 

 A cavity counting activity.

 We made a tent for letter T.

 This is a fun craft that we did when Arthur was in Preschool. I cut out Styrofoam 'shell' shapes and the kids used toothpicks to make a turtle shell design in their foam piece. Then we brushed them with green paint and stamped them down on paper to make a turtle shell!

 Stella did two so that they could be friends and added heads, legs, and a tail with a green marker.

 Some Stella trees.

 Arthur's very cool multicoloured turtle. 

 We loved T!

 The letter U week had us doing lots of umbrella activities! 

 Getting ready to enjoy my Mother's Day dinner. Made for me by my loving husband while I napped!

 This dessert was delicious!

 This was our last science lab of the school year! It was called 'Greater Crater' and had us exploring why some craters are big and some are small.

 We used a large marble and dropped it from different heights onto the surface of our 'moon' and measured each crater it made. 

 The kids had a blast with this! I wish I could have captured their faces right after the first marble drop- they were thrilled!!

 The cocoa powder made it easier to see the sunburst pattern of the dust that sprayed out around each crater.

 From shoulder height.

 We discovered that the further away the marble was dropped from the faster it was going when it hit the 'moon' and therefore the bigger the crater it could make. 

Speed was everything! 

A very cool experiment that inspired the kids for the rest of the day. After we finished filling in the lab sheet Arthur asked, "I wonder what would happen if I stood on the stool and dropped it!" Many marble drops later we solidly concluded that craters are cool!

I am so glad when we do an experiment that inspires the kids to ask more questions. I had a hard time at first when they wanted to take the experiment in their own direction wondering what would happen if....

I am one that wants to stick to the game plan, so I found that I was being very rigid in our science labs. The experiment could only work the way it said in the book- we had to follow the directions exactly. Which on the one hand meant that all of them worked, but on the other hand Arthur was not always excited about the process. I learned that if we could just get through the lab sheet and do the experiment once the 'right' way then I would step away and leave them to explore and experiment with the materials in whatever new and usually messy way they wanted. This was always the most exciting part and really brought back a love of science in Arthur. Sometimes in home schooling it is hard to balance my desire for structure with my kids need for messy and self guided exploration. It's still a work in progress!