Gabe's Birthday Surprise!

For Gabe's 9th birthday, we surprised them all by foregoing the usual birthday party for a night at the Great Wolf Lodge in Concord. We'd been to a GWL before in Williamsburg, but that was way back in 2012, when Emma was the only Little, though Irene was on her way. :) One of the nice things about the GWL is that you can get into the pool at 1pm on the day you check in and then can stay in the pool until they close on the day you check out. So even though we only stayed one night, they got a full day and a half in the pool. 

The kids were all super excited when we arrived because we didn't tell them ahead of time that we were doing this. We checked in and Rebecca took them all straight to the pool while I unloaded in the room and decorated it.

If you recall, Gabe had asked for a Minion birthday theme, so we obliged him further on this trip with balloons, a banner, confetti and a bunch of Minion themed snacks.

I even made a trail mix with blue and yellow M&Ms (yes, I had to pick them out of a huge bag!) Chex Mix, pretzel sticks and candy eyes.

While I was setting up the room, The kids were getting into action. The best part about the GWL is that the older 3 are all old enough to run off on their own and do whatever slides they want. I think there were only two slides that Gabe and Ezra were supposed to need an adult for, but we certainly didn't mind going with them. 

 The Littles weren't exactly hard to watch, tho. They loved the wave pool! It came on and off at 5 minute intervals, so they'd bang around in the waves for a few minutes and then when it stopped, they'd want to go over to the huge fort with two slides that they could ride on their own.

 They also liked the splash area around the fort, but they weren't big fans of the huge, 500-gallon bucket that dumped every 10 minutes or so.

We engaged in a few races on the track slides, which was fun. I went a couple of times and beat everyone else, but I think it's just because gravity pulls harder on me. ;) I didn't get a picture of him, but during the second day, Ezra and Gabe made a friend who spend most of that day riding the slides with us wherever we went.  

As a  treat on the second day, we got a massive bucket of ice cream that came with all manner of stuff in it like cookie bites, brownie chunks, whipped cream and chocolate syrup.

They made short work of it, tho. (Rebecca and I may have helped a little...)

At the end of the trip, we were all waterlogged and exhausted, but super happy that we had come. Of course, they all want to do it again as soon as possible and I certainly don't disagree!

Backyard Building

Sometimes, when you get done with your work, but no one else is done, there's nothing to do but built a fort. :)

First Day of EMMA Classes

It's a new school year at EMMA classes and this year, we're sending Emma along as well! 

 She'll be taking activities classes, art, PE and Music.

 The boys are taking classes in geography, science, art, PE and Music.

Olivia, is taking quite a course load with Spanish, General Science, Chemistry/Physics, PE and Music. She even landed a speaking part in the play! 

The kids have loved doing the EMMA classes and have made friends that they love to see every Friday. 

Happy Birthday Gabe!

Gabe turned 9! I know I probably say this at every kid's birthday, but it really is hard to believe how fast they grow up. For his birthday this year, he really wanted a Minion-themed party, but we had another plan already arranged, so we told him we couldn't do a party for him, but we did a bunch of things to make the day special for him. 

 Rebecca went and found what has to be the biggest Minion balloon I've ever seen. 

I tried to make each meal Minion themed, so for breakfast, they had bananas dressed as Minions and Minion cereal.  

 For lunch, I made them Minion mac and cheese.

For his cake, rather than my usual attempt at a "designer" cake, we had them do some decorating. I made some individual Twinkie-sized cakes and decorated them with blue and yellow frosting. Rebecca found some Minion eyes, mouths and hair candy pieces at a store and we let the kids put them on the cakes. 

There were also tattoos for each of them, which were a big hit...

though I think Olivia may have gone a little overboard with them. :) They actually took a couple of days to wear off, so she had to go to piano lessons and EMMA classes with them still on. 

The day was a lot of fun, but we were saving his big birthday surprise for the following week so more on that later!

Sea and Sky

Over the last 9 months, the boys have been doing a curriculum from WinterPromise called "Adventures in the Sea and Sky" that has been really cool.

It started with the history of sailing ships, way back in Egypt and the first fishing ships and went era-by-era through history, up to today with our huge, satellite-guided supertankers. It went in to great detail and they had to learn about things like the names for each part of a sailing ship, sailing lingo, and how the steam engine changed ships forever.

One we finished with ships, it transitioned over to the "Sky" part and they started learning about air travel starting with balloons and going all the way to space travel, the moon landing and the International Space Station.

If there's one unifying theme to the entire curriculum, it would have to be "Exploration." The books and activities were all geared towards learning how the known world has expanded through each leap forward in sea and air technology. In the middle of all that was science about oceans, sea and air creatures, weather and weather forecasting.

Each boy had a "Captain's Log" that had various worksheets for them to do related to the readings. While Gabe can read and write, Ezra isn't quite there yet, so I had to help with that part. Truthfully, it frustrated them both a lot of the time because Ezra's not writing much yet and Gabe really doesn't like writing. They didn't mind doing some matching or coloring, but if they had to write more than a couple of words for an answer, they balked at it. Most of the time, I let it go because when I would ask them to narrate back to me what they heard me read, they could do it flawlessly. What was really cool about their narrations was how Ezra would get one thing from the readings while Gabe would get something else. If I let them do it together, they'd go back and forth and between them , I'd get the whole story back from them. 

As far as the readings, we used a TON of different books. The main ones that come with the set are produced by WinterPromise. The books "An Unfurling Sail," Sailors, Whalers, and Astronauts," and "Under the Sea and In the Air." They each have short sections that have activities or additional places to look for more information.

An Unfurling Sail primarily covered sea transportation from its roots in ancient times and the first sea-going vessels up to World War II and the advent of modern ships. It talked about the effect those advancements had on history and science.

Sailors, Whalers, and Astronauts generally had one or two pages each day that covered a specific area of life on a ship like the names for various parts of a ship, the games and activities sailors would use to pass the hours, and the various jobs of men on the ship. True to its name, it also covered whaling ships and how they worked before moving on to space travel. Those two things don't necessarily sound like they should go together, but they actually do when you consider the exploration aspects.

Under the Sea and In the Air was mainly science-based. It taught the boys about various sea and air creatures, the ocean and the atmosphere. To go along with this, we did Apologia's Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day. The two curricula dovetailed pretty nicely together and gave a really broad view of the huge variety of creatures in the seas and the sheer expanse of the ecosystem.

The Apologia science, like the other ones we've done comes with a journal of activities for them to do and in the book, there are various little experiments for them to try. 

 In this one, they made animals out of Play Doh. Ezra made a dolphin and Gabe made a seahorse.

 Here, they cut out puzzle pieces from their journals and put them all together. It wasn't as easy as I expected it to be.. There were a couple of them that could have gone on a different animal.

 This one showed them how different size vessels made different sounds when the wind blows across them.

Here, they had to figure out how much water it would take to make the Lego ice cube float exactly in the middle of the glass.

 It demonstrated the neutral buoyancy that fish have and how they use their air bladders to go up or down in the water.

The whole year was a very interesting journey, but there were a couple of big highlights that the boys particularly enjoyed.

They loved the story of Shackleton and his crew being stranded in the ice of Antarctica in 1914.What amazed them the most, after hearing about all the trials and tribulations they endured, was that not a single man died on the expedition.

They were also fascinated by the story of Captain James Cook and his 3-year journey when he "discovered" Australia, visited a ton of South Pacific islands, Hawaii, (where Cook died) along with the journey itself. Because the story is told from the perspective of a fictional young boy who stowed away on the ship with the help of a couple of crew members. Once the ship was out to sea too far to turn back, they took him out of hiding and presented him to the captain, who, after some punishment, made him a cabin boy. While they couldn't wait to hear the story each day, they weren't to keen on the idea of going off to sea. It sounded like too much hard work! ;)

All-in-all, this was such a great year of study. The boys loved it and it was a great journey of exploration for them!