Fun Friday and Free Write~

Our Free Writes for today~

If you want to learn more about Friday FreeWrite please go HERE.

For us, this is set time where our kids write down whatever their heart and brain wants... with NO attention to grammar, spelling, or style.
It is just about getting thoughts out of our brain.
EK and SJ are independent writers, boys are inventing spelling, and little girls are voicing and I'm their scribe.
It is ALL writing... after all, writing is the thoughts released, not the actual pencil to paper~

We made CupCake brownies to celebrate a great week!!!~

Friday Free Write Frenzy

Today everyone grabbed their journals and I set the timer for 5 minutes~ 

They wrote the whole time and read to us when we finished~

EK wrote way past 5 and everyone added an illustration. 

I love Brave Writer's mantra of less is more!!!

Everyone left the table believing they were writers. 

Score!!! 

Fun Friday~

First up was Free Writing Frenzy~

Then we watched our Family Movie because we won't be home tonight.
A great Fun Friday!

Fun Friday: Praying Mantis

Yesterday EK found a praying mantis on our butterfly bush

And put it in a jar to observe~

She spent the afternoon researching 

And we let her teach us all she knew this morning. 

We also watched a drawing video and added a page to our nature journals~

We also worked on our geography maps for beautiful feet study.

We were done by 10 and at the pool for MORE fun~

Look at this pic of EK reading her Kindle by the pool...she's growing up!

And Popsicles are ALWAYS a hit!

A VERY Happy Fun Friday!

Fun Friday~ {Nature Prints}

Today we read from our BF Geography Study: Tree and the Trail and moved onto Nature Study. 

Our children's book choice was The Night Gardener. 

We learned that the trees growing or should I say dying on our front stoop are topiaries. 

This was a sweet story of one man's gift to a community and how he inspires a little boy to follow in his footsteps~

 

We enjoyed looking through this Nature Journal book. It gave us ideas of drawing wildflowers out in our yard. 

I challenged the kids to scout out and find a flower/leaf to use for a fun activity. They came back to find big index cards and a hammer~

 We placed the nature treasures between the index cards then pounded the color out of plants to the paper. They turned out beautiful so we laminated and added to our nature journals. Nothing fancy but I'm sure they won't ever forget!!! 

A great Fun Friday!!!

Fun Friday

Today we cleaned a little, read some vintage Golden books given to us by Aunt Jan and Uncle Ray~

And we enjoyed a few nature books then drew trees~

Slow and steady summer. Not too much and not too little. 

Fun Friday with Ben Curtis~

My phone dinged @ 5:45 with a text for Savannah saying her babysitter was sick

and could we come out and keep BC... YES!!!

We were dressed and in the truck @ 6:30 on the way for a very Fun Friday!

First up was a whole lot of playing~

EK was dying for another book in the series she is reading so I ran them to the library

and they begged to play at the park~

 BC was in good hands for sure~

It was the best morning!!! Went home for lunch and rest then Papa came as well as Nan/Josh.

We ended this awesome day with a Mexican dinner.

Definitely a FUN Friday for sure!!!

Fun Friday~ {The Sun, Earth, & Moon}

Today for Fun Friday, we decided to take a rabbit trail to learn about our solar system.
Payne is SO into space right now with his new rocket from Christmas and new book from Gotcha Day
so I thought it was the perfect Fun day.
I gathered our books, art materials, and science materials~

First we read about the sun, moon, and earth in the story of creation
then used household materials to act out how the earth revolves and rotates as well as the moon.
They were quite excited to help BE the sun, earth, and moon.

Payne wanted to bring his rocket and share all things he knew about space travel.
We also read lots of things in his new space book~

 Next was ART... we used a small paper plate to create the sun and covered with tissue paper.
The inside circle of a plate was cut for the earth and we painted it.
We punched circles for the moon phases and cut yellow to represent the light shining onto them~

 Lastly we labeled everything and headed to the kitchen for cooking~

 For our Cooking activity, we cut circles from bread
and painted it with blue and green milk paint making Earth Toast~

 While it baked, we opened four oreos and used knives to create the moon phases
then dropped yellow food coloring into milk to make Sun Milk~

 We enjoyed this delicious Solar System Snack before watching The Magic School Bus~

 I set up a space discovery area on the table for later fun and one by one,
I called each one over with their journals to ask what they knew about each thing~

They spoke and I wrote.

I was pretty impressed with what they all shared.

The cool thing about today was even though it was a repeat for EK/SJ,

they were excited to share their prior knowledge

helping the younger kids gain new information.

It was a win win and super fun in the process!!!

Fun Friday~ {Awesome Autumn Leaves}

Everyone ran out in the cold in their pjs to find one favorite leaf.

Our maple tree out back is most beautiful right now~

 We made observations while reading our Awesome Autumn book for the day.

I pulled out the laminator and that's always a fun thing to watch as their beautiful leaf came out~

 We also laminated a front and back for each person so we could record facts we listed on the white board~

We were most amazed of how God made plants able to make their own food

and also give us such beautiful color during Awesome Autumn!

Super Simple, Quick, and Fun Friday!!!

Cook-a-Book Friday: Dinosaurs~ {Science}

Everyone has loved our Dinosaur chapter in our Apologia Science Book: Land Animals on the Sixth Day.

Our Mystery of History was awesome explaining when Dinosaurs may have been on earth~

We watched Digging Up Dinosaurs Reading Rainbow 

which reminded us of a fabulous Dinosaur Museum we visited in Fuzhou

so we pulled out SJ's China videos

which was perfect because tomorrow is SJ Day (5 years!)~

Our book was one the boys love so we went through and labeled all the dinosaurs we have~

 We also did all the puzzles we own~

 For art we painted stegosauruses and decorated them~

 In the Reading Rainbow we learned all about fossils so for our Cooking project

we used sugar cookies, pressed dinosaurs into them, and painted with colored milk~

 It was a huge hit and the process was SO much better than the product~

Great thing is... doesn't matter if the cookies all baked into big blobs.

They tasted delicious and made our day SO FUN!!!

Looking forward to finishing up this chapter next week.

Fun Friday Turned Cook-a-Book Friday~

Do you know the Laura Numeroff books?

They are have a circular theme and are sequence oriented.

Earlier in the week I had begun thinking about a cooking activity for Friday

and came up with Cook-a-Book Friday.

Then as I was scrolling on IG I saw someone making homemade donuts for their child's birthday.

{I see my own circular story beginning!}...

I remembered making donuts with my kids when I was a teacher so I looked it up online.

Once I found the recipe, I looked for a book to go with it and found

If You Give a Dog a Donut...

(which we don't have)

and that took me to YouTube.

All this starting coming together since we had spent tons of time acclimating Macy into our school day~

She needed a celebration and we did wonder if she liked donuts so~

 We watched the book and gathered all the others we have.

I pulled up the recipe and EK read us the directions while SJ gathered the ingredients~

We used a playdough cone to make the holes and dropped them into the canola oil.

Once they were golden brown

we put one in Macy's bowl and she gobbled it down in a sec~

 For our donuts we drizzled chocolate icing and heaped on the sprinkles~

 I had everyone do one math sheet from their caddy

then we watched the story again and sequenced it on a circle.

This was super easy for EK and SJ but they helped the bitty girls keep up~

With reading, writing, and math done as well as cooking, we called it a FUN Friday

and decided Cook-a-Book is here to stay!!!

Can't wait to think up something for next Friday!

ROYGBIV~ {Fun Friday}

Our Science lesson this week taught us all about light and the color spectrum.

We spent our Fun Friday reading the story of Noah

and a sweet story about a chameleon~

 We learned about the color wheel and mixed colors~

 It would be a cute shirt for the cute ROY G BIV man~

 I found this cute idea on Pinterest and EC added her own style with curly hair~

It was a super colorful Fun Friday

and pretty sure they will always remember the color order

as well as the two new colors we learned: indigo and violet!

Fun Friday~ {Venice, Gondolas, & Monet}

Today was one of those rabbit trail days.

I had chosen a book called Zoe Sophia's Scrapbook: An Adventure in Venice~

and we learned the people travel by gondolas via canals of water.

We tried our hand at making our own but turned out more like canoes. :)

As we were researching gondolas and watching videos of them,

we discovered that a VERY famous artist Claude Monet had painted a gondola.

Thus the rabbit trail... we took some time to learn all about Monet's life

and lingered through many of his beautiful masterpieces.

We kept coming back to the Water Lilies and The Water Lily Pond~

 We found a wonderful art activity and I just happened to have all the supplies we needed:

paper, watercolors, green paper, and coffee filters.

We began with the background and built our masterpieces from there~

It was a beautiful Fun Friday full of Venice, Gondolas, & Monet!