Backyard Outdoor Challenge : Finding the Ordinary to be Extraordinary

We have decided to participate in the Outdoor Challenge and to start it off, we will be studying five ordinary things from our backyard and learning more about each of them.

We will use the Handbook of Nature Study, the internet, and the few books we have in our house to help us find information on the following critters that live in our backyard:

Here is our list:

1. top photo: spider


2. in the group photo, top left corner: grasshopper


3. top right corner: leaf bug


4. bottom left corner: toad


5. bottom right corner: praying mantis

You can click on the Outdoor Challenge button above to read more about this backyard exploration. I will report in a few days with our findings..

Roald Dahl Fun

What a fun day we had! We started our Roald Dahl author study this morning. I thought we could keep at one day, but I realized I was so wrong to think that way. We need at least a week, if not more, to really enjoy his work. I had picked a few of the activities from the Roald Dahl Day website and the first assignment the kids tried was called "Sweet Inspiration". They had to imagine that they were going to invent a candy for Willy Wonka. It could be any type of candy, and they had to choose the ingredients, make up the recipe, and the advertisement for their new product. Andre created Dragon Fire Gum, which is the spiciest gum in the world that will also last forever. It has interesting ingredients such as sand block (I am told by him that dragons use those to sharpen their claws or was it their teeth?), exploding candy bombs, and cinnamon. The gum needs to cook at very high temperature for 2 days...I loved seeing his imagination at work! Adrienne also came up with a great idea. Fairy Paste is her creation, a new candy that cleans teeth and taste like sour apple-watermelon! Her ingredients included fairy dust, cavity-filling caramels, and sour watemelon nerds. I am told I can reveal any more of their secret recipes...We read the Revolting Rhymes and lauged so hard! What a great twist on some of those fairy tales...The last activity for today was based on George's Marvellous Medicine. We had read the book at the beginning of this summer and all loved it. Today I asked the kids to make up their own recipe for a marvellous medicine. It was not to be tested of course, so anything went! Adrienne came up with most of the ingredients in the recipe. She had 24 different items, most coming from the bathroom and the kitchen!You can see the photos from that activity above. Great fun! We also read part of the D is for Dahl book, which is helping us learn more about this creative author.

Road Trip!

We will soon be leaving for a long road trip. We are driving from our home in Ontario to Florida. It takes about 20 hours one way. Whenever we go on vacation, we usually drive, so our children are used to the long distances. And I usually bring a few things to keep them occupied in the car. This time, this is what I am planning:

~ I reserved a couple of Harry Potter books on cds from the library to listen to in the car. Last road trip, we all enjoyed listening to Inkheart and the Narnia series.

~ I am bringing a few small notebooks to journal or doodle in, for myself and the kids. Little notebooks will be a good size for the kids with pencils, colouring pencils, and markers. For myself, I started a new art journal, after finishing the Wreck this Journal project, so I will be bringing that one along with a few micro pigment ink pens.

~ We have 2 felt books with many felt pieces that the girls love playing with, and we will be bringing our Guess Who travel game too.

~ We found a couple of fun sticker books (from Usborne) that will keep all 3 kids busy with their hands too :)

~ Another fun find was the Holiday Doodles cards (also from Usborne) that has many different write on/wipe off activity cards like mazes, finishing the doodles, decorating things...

We are starting to pack for our trip, part of it will be spent in Florida on the Atlantic coast, the other part of our vacation will be spent on the Disney Cruise and we had to choose a few of our "dressier" clothes...a difficult task somewhat because we don't usually dress up! But we managed! We will be packing the rest of our suitcases next week. The pink suitcase is Adrienne's, a wonderful and useful gift from her Nana.

We are all getting very excited and counting down the days!!!

Our glue-chalk pastels cacti

We decided to give this project a try after reading about it at the Art Projects for Kids blog. Kathy does a wonderful job of explaining exactly what to do so we just followed her instructions and voila! ... our chalk pastels cacti! We had never done an art project that involved glue and chalk pastels, but we loved it and will try more in the future.

Adrienne's Cactus

Andre's Cactus (at noon, sun above..so no shadding!)

My cactus (at night!)

Sketch Tuesday ~ Underground