Fun time at the Playground

Olivia's Archaelogical Dig

We started reading The Story Of The World with Olivia this weekend and part of the introduction talked about Archaeology. Rebecca had the great idea of doing a dig with her, so I set it up and did it with her on Saturday.

I put a 50lb bag of sand in a rubbermaid storage container and buried a bunch of items in the sand for her to find. I buried some coins, a couple of foam letters, a ball, a necklace, a fork, and a key. I also buried a toy soup can and an empty yogurt container. The point of the items was to give a cross-section of different things we use everyday; the things we eat, wear, play with, etc.

We divided the dig into 4 sections and labeled them.

Olivia then would dig out a shovelful of sand...

put it into a sifter and sift through it (into another container) to see if she found anything.

Every time she found something, we would stop and make a note of what we found and which section it was in.
When it was all done, she asked if we could do it every day. She had such a great time and it was a great introduction into the world of history and archaeology.

Gabe goes exploring and gets stuck! :)

Ten Commandments Lapbook

Olivia started Classical Conversations 2 weeks ago and they've been memorizing the Ten Commandments, so I thought it would be neat to do a lapbook about them.

Week one, she memorized:

Thou shalt...

1. have no other gods before me.

2. not make unto thee any graven image

3. not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

4. remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5. honor thy father and mother; that thy days may be long upon the land the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Week Two:

Thou shalt...

6. not kill.

7. not commit adultery.

8. not steal.

9. not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

10. not covet.

We sponge painted the front with gray acrylic paint.

This is a map of the region with Mt Sinai and a picture of the mountains.

These are verses that we read to talk about the purpose of the 10 commandments and what we should do with them. We are to obey God's laws and we should know them well so that is why we memorize them. These 10 commandments are from a loving God that desires to direct our steps on the right path. And His laws always remain true.

These are the 10 commandments.

God gave the 10 commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai.

Here is some fun we had with a maze and also a finger-play poem I found in a library book.

CC is amazing in the amount that kids this age can absorb! Some of the other things they've been learning are a history timeline (ancient to modern), geography and history, all related to the ancient world this year, biology and earth science, skip counting, some art, english and latin. She really enjoys all this memorization. And I am getting my education all over again too. :)

Gabe's 1st Birthday (part 2)

We went to Aunt B's house to celebrate Gabe's first b-day with Rebecca's side of the family. Gabe's Grandpa came to the rescue of our busy schedules and made him a great car cake. I think as you will see, he had a great time.

Gabe's new trick

Well, Gabe's learned to pull himself up on Olivia's toy table and get at the toys that he wants to play with. Kinda scary... before long, he's going to want to walk.

Happy Birthday Gabe!

It's hard to believe that about this time a year and a day ago we were in the back of my parents car, waiting for the EMTs to arrive after Gabe was born a little ahead of schedule. (See the September 2008 archive for all the details :)

We celebrated this morning with our church family by bringing cupcakes from home for everyone. We knew the boy would make a mess, so we just stripped him down to his diaper.

He knew right away what to do with the cupcake, but couldn't quite fit the whole thing in his mouth, no matter how wide he stretched.

After we broke it up for him, he was all smiles.

And the forseen result. It ultimately was well into his hair and all over the front of him.

Hiking on the Blue Ridge Parkway- Jumpinoff Rock

We had a fun family weekend of camping, family worship, and hiking. It was my last Saturday night off for a while (I am going back to the weekend option work schedule) so we headed up to the Blue Ridge Parkway near Boone, NC after I got off of work on Saturday morning. We spent the night at Price Park Lake. The kids did well camping. They each got their own tent. :) Somehow we forgot to take pictures of the campground. :( Gabe of course ate lots of dirt. Thats probably why no pictures got taken. We were always trying to coral him onto a blanket to play or cleaning the dirt off of him. :) We hiked around the lake there. The next morning after we packed up camp, we drove north on the parkway for a bit and stopped for lunch and family worship looking at the mountains on both sides of us. Then we took a short hike to a lookout. Those are the pictures below. Olivia saw lots of fun things on the hike, like red leaves, acorns, mushrooms of all colors, a monarch butterfly, the webs of tent catepillars, the roots of an uprooted tree, and the skeleton of a leaf. We had a great time.

Our New House Lapbook

So we have been working on this lapbook since early spring. We bought our house at the end of January. We spent a lot of time working on it before we ever moved in. I thought it would be a good opportunity to talk about several topics with Olivia. Olivia leraned our names and we have worked on her being able to carefully write her full name and spell it for others. We talked about where we live and have made some headway in memorizing her address and phone number. We also talked about our neighbors and how God wants us to love our neighbors. Now that we live in the house, we take walks most days and always say hello to our neighbors. She also loves to stop and spell/read the "Lindley Park" sign. We made cookies for the neighbors on either side of us so we could meet them and practice greetings. We read numerous books about how other people live and how their houses are similar or different from ours. We also talk about these things as we ride around our city. We talked about safety rules for our new house. Our bible verse was Matthew 7:24-28. We didn't memorize this one but we have talked long about applying it to our home. We want to have lots of family time in this home and recently we have started having family worship every day so that our house will be built upon THE ROCK. Enjoy the pictures...

Yes, Olivia drew Sarah standing upright but she does have a tail. So it's not just Sarah who thinks she is a human in this house. :-)

Sarah's come home!

We're so excited to finally have Sarah living with us again! While she may have enjoyed her time at Grandma and Grandpa's house, she's settled right back into her usual routines...jumping on the couch, stealing things from the laundry basket, rooting through the trash...ahhhhh, it's good to have her back. It took Gabe a couple of days to get used to having this large black thing snuffling around and licking him, but he warmed up to her when he realized he could drop cheerios to her from his high chair.

Camp 2009

We got to go up to Camp for the first time in 8 years and bring Olivia and Gabe for their first visits. For those of y'all who don't know, my (Jeremy's) mother's family owns a cabin on a lake in way upstate NY. If you want go somewhere remote, this is the place. No cell phones (except for Jeff's for some reason...), no TV, no internet. you have to take a boat to the house because there aren't any roads around the lake. Our power is primarily solar cells and car batteries. Heat (which is necessary in the summer sometimes) is a wood burning stove. I can't think of a more relaxing place to go on vacation. You just have to decide whether you want to fish, hike, nap, read a book, play cards or do a puzzle. There's really nothing else to do. For a satellite photo, click here.

Here are some pics of the trip.

Fenton's Camp

Foggy Morning

Aunt Joan Welch
my godmother and the matriarch of the Fenton clan

Daddy and Olivia spending some quality time fishing.

Climbing Owl's Head Mountain

The climb even tuckered out Gabe.

"Hmm... I know I put that lid around here somewhere..."

Gabe trying on hats.

Nana taking the girls out for a canoe ride.

Olivia and her cousin, Kira, feeding the ducks. By the end of the week we had learned that we were not supposed to be feeding them, as it could make them sick.

Gabe being his usual happy self. He wouldn't sit still for long on that toy. The kid has a wild urge to move all over.

Olivia doing her best Elvis impersonation. She was a dancing fool all over the boat.

Gabe seemed to spend most of the trip strapped to mommy. When he saw the Baby Bjorn, he went nuts.

It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Olivia contemplating the waves.