Sunday Morning in Seattle

On Sunday in Seattle we rose, dressed the kids, fed them a banana and headed out for a walk to church. It was so wonderful to be able to walk to Sunday Mass. The kids thought it was fun too. It was a nice church and not crowded at all. Our church is getting very crowded these days!

After walking back, we had a nice breakfast with Beth and Greg. Then Mia and Anna went roly-poly hunting. We get very few of these in dry Colorado. They had about twenty in a plastic tub which they brought to the park later.

(Mia has been on a bug catching craze lately, catching at least three or four moths, spiders, centipedes and other sorts every day! We have finally had to outlaw her bringing them in the house when we started hearing, "Have you seen the spider I caught? It got away!")

Mid-morning we went out one more time to the fabulous park across the street.

We have no parks with zip lines near us!

We said goodbye to Beth and Greg around noon and started our trek to Longview, Washington.

Alfred was exhausted after the girls left. Poor thing.

Larry Gets Lost in Seattle Part 2

On our second day in Seattle we hit the pavement to cover a whole bunch of Seattle sights! Fremont was our first stop. There are a lot of statues in this area and two of them are in the Larry book.

Waiting for the Interurban is a a statue of a group of people waiting at a bus stop. They are often dressed up by random people. The girls laughed at this one when they saw it in the book.

This next one wasn't in the book, but it was Mia's favorite so we had to get a pic.

The Troll Under the Bridge is a famous statue in the area. Family picture time! Mia was a little scared and refused to climb on it at all. Anna was fine. Go figure. They always surprise me when I think I know them!

After our little statue tour, all on foot, we were ready for our next sighting: Pike Place Market for a little fish throwing.

If you haven't heard of it, there is a store at the fish market where they throw a fish the customer purchasing it. The girls had pretty good seats above the crowd!

We also saw a little cheese making and some magic tricks.

Our next stop at the market was not in the book, but I've been wanting to see it. The Gum Wall. A disgusting place where people leave their gum on a wall. No kidding. It started when a few people plopped their gum down while waiting in line for the theater. A movement began! It was as gross as it sounds in person.

Our next stop was the Space Needle. We had hoped to go there for lunch but a huge festival was going on around the base of it and all reservations were taken. We decided that trying to find parking would be futile. So we did one more thing from the book, we rode the monorail!

The girls were happy we didn't have to walk as they were exhausted. Note to self: they need to walk more and build up some endurance.

We thought we might at least go up in the Space Needle but then we saw the line and no one wanted to wait in it. So we got the best picture we could and moved forward to lunch.

More walking. Not happy kids.

But after lunch we took them to the kid's place at the festival where they got to jump rope and play games. Ummm, suddenly not so tired.

We then walked back to the monorail and back to the car and the girls watched a movie, ate dinner and went to bed. Seattle touristy items checked off!

Larry Gets Lost in Seattle Part 1

We are back and had a terrific time in Washington State! We were in Seattle from Friday morning until noon on Sunday. Beth and Greg gave Mia a book called Larry Gets Lost in Seattle. It's a story about all the landmarks there. Before we left we read through it again and talked about all the things the girls wanted to do. The top of their list: ride our car onto a boat! Seriously, how much fun would that be!

So our first stop, while Beth and Greg were at work, was to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island. Some thought it was great.

Some...well...didn't even know we were in the car on a boat.

We had lunch on the island and then walked around a bit.

After a few hours it was time to head back. And yes, Anna was awake for the ferry back to Seattle!

After we got to Beth and Greg's house we went to the park across the street to meet Alfred, their dog. He is extremely afraid of children and so we thought it might be a good place for him to loosen up. He warmed up to them a teensy tiny bit before we went to the house for a barbecue. Roberta and Don joined us. I took no pictures. :( It was great to see them!

Jack and the Beanstalk

We are in Seattle! I will blog about our trip later, but for now let me tell you about a little performance we went to at the library on Thursday. It was a revised edition of...

It was a two person play. The giant is actually a very large puppet on a stick. The story has Jack borrowing books from the giant's collection without asking him. After getting caught, the giant decides to open a library!

It was a very intimate little excursion. And Arden joined us too!

Last Week and Other Stuff

We are still alive over here. Things have been really really busy. I went to Parent's Day at the girls' school last week.

They ate cookies and sang songs. It was so sweet. They have a nice group of children in their class.

The girls love it when Becky "wraps" them. She is big into baby wearing. Anna especially likes it. The problem with Anna is that if you wear her when she wants you to, around 5:00, she falls asleep and then she's up until 10:00!

I took the girls for a hair trim last week. Someone decided they don't like me brushing their hair. Honestly, with the natural shampoo we have to use for her, her hair gets to be one mass of snarls. So she agreed with the hairdresser that shorter hair might work.

How do you think she looks? And this was out of bed without having her hair brushed yet. We are loving it!!

The contraption you see is an apple peeler and corer. I remember my sister having one and boy does it make a difference when you are making applesauce! We normally peel and cut 20 apples. We were done here in about ten minutes! Love Amazon Prime!

Dan and I refinished our 18 year old kitchen table. We made it darker to go with the rest of the furniture. We got two quotes of $1200 to have it done. We thought that was crazy! It was easy to do it ourselves. Hope it lasts. * smile*

Mia is becoming more and more of a chapter book person. She loves her Rainbow Fairy books. Frankly, I think they are inane and I hate reading them to her. But...she loves them and...well, that's it. There are no other redeeming qualities to them that I can think of. I am reading Little House in the Big Woods to them in bed at night. I get to choose the bedtime books! She also likes to listen to Magic Tree House books on the Overdrive App from the library.

Tomorrow we leave for Washington State to visit Greg, Beth, Alfred, Donna and Mike! It's going to rain the whole time. *sniff*

Saturday

Yesterday was a fun day. In the morning we went to our friends' daughter's Confirmation. It was at our church so the kids were familiar with the routine. We brought coloring books and they handled the hour and a half Mass like champs. Afterwards we all enjoyed the party.

They live on five acres so the girls got to feed horses, play with dogs and ride scooters all over.

After the party we came home, ate dinner and then headed out to see Gabby star in her school's production of School House Rock.

She did a wonderful job and the whole thing was only 40 minutes, perfect for our tired out kiddos!

Next Year

We are four weeks away from the end of our homeschool year. Our last day will be June 12th. The next week is C3 at our church, the Catholic answer to vacation bible school. After that, we will have our summer break until we get back from Jamaica in August. Homeschool will start again August 18th.

Yes, I'm a planner. I love to plan. I love to revise plans. I love to organize. I think it is just part of my DNA. Beth loves to plan even more than I do and I never taught her. It just comes naturally to both of us.

I am already planning next year's curriculum. I'm excited to have a longer school day. We'll see how Mia feels about it! But she will officially be in kindergarten and I will need to start accounting for my time. Technically, I don't need to chart attendance until she is age 7, when education is compulsory in Colorado. But I will start next year.

We will be adding some new things to our reading, math and handwriting curriculum:

Dictation and copy work.

Five in a Row: literature based learning across subjects, but we will have to call it Four in a Row as Friday will be the Options program for Mia.

Character First: character building curriculum

Suzanne Tate's Nature Series books and activities: science

We will continue to do gymnastics, swimming, and park days for exercise. Mia will also have P.E. on Fridays at Options.

To get ready for next year I am reading an amazing book on classical home education called the Well Trained Mind. There is so much good information!

I especially like the following quote about socialization: Children need friends. Children do not need to be surrounded by large groups of peers who inevitably follow the strongest personality in the crowd. Amen. (I added the Amen.)

This book goes back to to the classical way children were taught in the past divided into three levels by grade:

K-4 : Memorization and accumulation of facts. This goes completely against what is thought to be important now. Quote
from the book: The immature mind is more suited to absorption than argument.

5-8 : Logical thinking, using the accumulation of data. Children are much better equipped to think logically when
they've accumulated large sums of data!

9-12: Expressive use of all this logic and accumulated facts.

This seems reasonable, right? I saw this in my own classroom. There were children who couldn't divide numbers because they hadn't memorized their multiplication facts, children who had poor reading comprehension because they just didn't have the vocabulary stores.

Once I'm finished with the book I'll make a decision as to which way to go. With Common Core, the nation is turning away from all this. Will I? I'm not sure but I can say it has to be a pretty engaging read for me to be up at 12:30 AM writing this post!