B is for Boxes, Bubbles and a Beaver hunt...

 

 

So this week started with a very bizarre September day- SNOW?!  All I can say is that it's just not fair on us!  This day last year we were still wearing shorts and were too hot at night!

 With the ridiculous chill in the air, we kept busy inside for the first few days.  I had been saving some big boxes from the patio furniture we bought this summer and the kids had a great time decorating it. They even slept in their big box one night.

Although they went a bit crazy with the markers and a spray bottle (??) which made for some colourful puddles on the carpet (yikes!) thankfully it washed out with a little elbow grease. Renting a house with little kids + carpet that doesn't actually belong to you can be very scary!

The boxes also turned out to provide great entertainment for the little boys, keeping them out of trouble (for the most part...) I think I may have figured out the magical component for keeping the boys busy! You just let them do something that normally they should be getting in trouble for and voila- hours of fun!  They busily sawed and thumped at their box with all the kitchen utensils they could get their hands on. You could tell Gabriel viewed these normally illicit utensils as deadly weapons because he kept coming over to me and holding them up- quite amazed and rather proud that I was letting him use them!

 

 When we were brainstorming for the letter B, it started to look like there were too many fun B words than we could fit into a week so we tried to do as many as we could. I'll just go over a few of our highlights from the week...

 

B is for Birthday... This week happened to have a real reason for birthday cake- September 8th is the day that Catholics traditionally celebrate Mary's birthday, so we had a special dinner and Alex whipped up a birthday cake too...

 

B is for Books... We borrowed a bunch of  'B' books from the library. The kids really enjoyed the pictures in 'The Bear Under the Stairs' and 'Boy + Bot' was a cute little story,

  I enjoyed the variety too. I don't know, something in me just dies when I'm asked to read a storybook of a children's movie! I'm not sure how it happened, but through the years we have collected a number of Disney books... and every time one of those books makes it to my lap with a 'can you read this one- please?'  I feel like pleading back, 'But we know what is going to happen! Please! Don't make me tediously read 'Monsters Inc' to you- as much as I enjoyed the movie- don't torture me with the book!'  I usually just tried to persuade them towards another title using the power of enthusiasm, ''But oh my!  Look at this other book! I love this book and we haven't read it in ages!''  Usually works like a charm with little ones... and I have slowly slipped the 'movie books' into the give away bags.  For this reason going to the library has probably been as much of a treat for me as for the kids.  When the reader isn't bored out of their tree it is always a plus!  

 

  We also read the book 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today?' By Carol McCloud and I just thought it was such a special little book!  I loved the way it turned an abstract concept into something very practical and visual for children.  It talked about how each person carries around an invisible bucket and explained how we can be bucket-fillers or bucket-dippers by the way we treat people.

  

So we all decorated our own 'Buckets' and said we would try to fill each other's buckets this week by dropping in a few beans each time we did something nice for someone.  After we got past the initial fighting over who has more beans and who is helping themselves to unjustified beans, I think they got the idea of the activity and tried their best to be 'Bucket-fillers'. 



 

B of course is also for the Best Book of all -the Bible... so we had each of the children tell their favourite Bible story... and without prompting Maiwen gave the story of the Blind man Bartimaeus ;)     

 

B is for Beginning...  On Tuesday Jaci began her first day of Kindergarten!  I decided that I would still send Jaci to Kindergarten (and probably all the children to just kindergarten) because it is such a fun year for the kids, at a wonderful Catholic school, and most of all it is only two days a week.  Here she is all ready to go in her Hello Kitty get up...

  She had a very good first day. She loved her teacher and when we asked her if she made any special friends she told us, ''Well, I thought my favourite friend would be a girl- but instead it was a Boy! His name is Louie, and he always tickles me!'' 



B is for Best Bubble Bath ever!
The girls were excited for this idea so we poured in almost a full bottle of dollar store bubble bath and filled the tub to the top... and of course the 'best bubble bath ever' needs ponies...

The boys didn't want to be left out either so they had their own ''Batman Bubble Bath''...

 

 

 

 

B is for Bouncing contests at recess...
 Thankfully the snow didn't last, so we were able to go back outside by the middle of the week.  I know- we are Canadians now- a dusting of snow shouldn't stop us... but I still haven't done the whole switch over from summer to winter clothes- I'm just not ready for this yet!!!

And our favourite- B is for Beavers...
 
We learned all about beavers this week - they are actually such sweet little animals when you learn more about them!  Did you know that beavers have little rooms in their lodges with a nursery and bedrooms and a living room, and that over the winter they let other animals live inside with them?  The BBC documentary that we watched showed that the beavers provided a pair of homeless muskrats with their own bedroom and even shared their winter food supply... I guess a kind of  "Beaver Bed & Breakfast!"... The kids figured that Beavers were definitely good bucket-fillers ;)


So, on Wednesday afternoon we decided to go on a little 'B' excursion, doing everything we possibly could starting with the letter B while we went... on a beaver hunt!  We have some lakes and ponds only a short drive from where we live so we all got dressed up in blue, with braids and bows in our hair, put on our boots and went to look for some beavers!

On our way we found some Bulrushes... while I grew up calling these Cattails, my husband from Ireland rather appropriately calls them Bulrushes (not C week yet!)... we picked up some bottles to leave the place 'better than before'... and the girls picked a bunch of Bláthanna (Irish word for flowers)

 
















The kids ran through the trees and Jaci made sure that her baby brother wasn't left behind..

They went backwards down the blue slide, found wild berries, and took a breather on a bench...

The kids also helped to pack a  little picnic for our excursion.  They wanted to bring their blue basket with all the B food they could find- we ended up with bananas, blueberries, and biscuits (handily what the Irish call cookies) for our snack...

 We also peered through our binoculars to see if we could spy any beavers near their dam. The weekend before we had watched two beavers moving up and down the pond...

... unfortunately they didn't come out while we were there.
Even though we didn't spy any beavers on our 'beaver hunt' we still had fun.

   I think I am going a bit batty with all the B words at this point... but hopefully now they will remember their letter B :)







 





A is for Alligator, Ants and Apples...

The countdown to homeschool is over and the first week is now complete!  Maiwen Rose has officially started grade 2… here at home. And she is already like a brand new child!  The girl who used to come home from school grumpy and frazzled and needing some down time- is now singing, smiling, skipping and so excited from when I wake her up in the morning until I tuck her in at night.

All in all I would say that everyone really enjoyed our first week as 'homeschoolers' :) On our first day of school we had a special 'welcome to homeschool' breakfast,

 and I thought it might be fun to do a letter a week as a theme for our learning.  So this week- to start from the start- it was naturally letter A week. We went to the library and took out books starting with A's, learned about Ants and made ant puppets...

...we read about Mrs. Applebee from 'Along the Alphabet Path' and coloured the letter A fairies, we found all our Alligators and let them be our guests for the week,  we got new Aprons with chef hats (I always wanted one of those!) and baked an Apple pie...

 ...we talked about Attitudes when we do our work and learned about our guardian Angels, we had 'Adventure' recess...

 ...we had an Apple 'taste test' for snack one morning where we tried 5 different varieties of apples and picked the most Amazing, painted with apples for stamps... (avoiding disasters with more Aprons;)... 

.... and when Maiwen and I needed to get down to business with her grade two work, all the kids wanted to be doing school too, so I tried to keep them busy with their own activities...

...and more than once it was necessary to strap the youngest into a booster seat, just so he wouldn't be trying to climb up poor Maiwen and draw on her page.   Thankfully he was quite amused with his drawing skills and I kept him either munching or averted to another activity (as far away as possible) for most of the crucial times.

Maiwen got right into her work and we plugged away at her readers & math books... and every time I was ready to pack up a subject, she would be asking ‘So what’s next?!’

 

She didn’t seem to be pining for the whole ‘back to school’ buzz, which was one thing that I worried about with starting homeschool after going to regular school.  I just remember how much I LOVED back to school… the back to school clothes shopping spree and picking out your favourite outfit to wear on the first day… getting your picture taken as you waited for the bus- with the crisp smell of the morning air you could just tell that it was September… The feel of a new back pack filled to the brim with sharpened pencils and unmarked notebooks… and ‘oh my goodness imagine I am in Mrs.____ class this year! Will there be a new student?  Where will my locker be?’…  Walking into a different classroom for the first time, the walls covered in colourful bulletin boards and feeling so grown up that ‘this is MY classroom now!’... Grade Two was even my favourite year of elementary... 


 I felt sad in my heart that Maiwen would be missing out on this.
  But the first day nostalgia did not overcome me and I knew that I had to make it wonderful and memorable and REAL for Maiwen.  We weren’t going to just keep on with the path of everyday life, minus driving to school in the morning like the rest of the kids.  This was going to be the start of a whole new life for our family.  A schedule.  A routine. Time for prayer and learning about the saints.  Time for crafts and fun activities. Time for snuggling with books and books and more books!  This was going to be the start of living what I had always dreamed for us- but never knew where to begin. 
This is it... the start I was hoping for.
  Maiwen I promise it’s going to be even better than a first day of school- whose novelty wears off all too quickly.... I promise I'll try to make this a special Grade two year for you too!

7 Best Things About Camping With Kids

Taking care of little people may not always be strenuous, but what it is is constant. You are filling up the 6^th sippy-cup of the morning, searching for an Elmo bandaid instead of Big Bird for the crying child at your feet, breaking up a fight over a toy that no one has even looked at in a month, and mopping up a puddle of pee (while using one leg to fend off the baby who is trying his best to splash in it) all within the space of about 3 minutes.  Do we really need to mix in all the extra work and dirt of camping???
 But what I've come to see through our times away, is that there is something about camping that transforms the daily commotion of life with multiple children. When you are camping, somehow normal everyday things take on a sweet- ‘I am almost nostalgic of this moment right now!’ kind of feeling...

 The typical re-filling of bowls of Cheerios in the morning transforms into camping memories of eating breakfast outside with our green plastic spoons…

...a potty break becomes holding hands while walking to the bathrooms and hearing all about the fun games they were playing with their new friends…  

...snack time becomes a picnic break on the grass and I can’t help but swoon a little in my heart as I look down at the sunshine gleaming on a fuzzy little head…  

...supervising my trouble-makers turns into watching the boys playing the day away… seeing them just come into their element finding rocks and sticks (the ultimate and preferred toys of all time!)...

...digging in the dirt and climbing trees (if I was ever looking for Elijah, my best bet was to look up!)...

 

 

...having to tackle a sink of dirty dishes becomes a time to chat with the girls outside and talk about their favourite parts of the day…

 ...The evening bathtime routine means heating up water and bubbles for the marshmallow/dirt plastered baby...
  And is there anything cuter than a baby in a basin? 

(Gabriel absolutely loved his basin baths- especially trying to squirt me with his bath turtles and laughing till he’d almost fall out of the tub)

...The nightly battle to put the children to bed (and get them to stay there!) turns into simply scrubbing filthy black toes and tucking those tired little people three deep in the bed- full of fresh air and completely played out.

If it ever seems like too much work to go camping, I try to think about these things... and I remember that there is nothing quite like it :)