Happy Thanksgiving!

We really got Olivia into the Thanksgiving spirit this year. :)

Olivia's Thanksgiving Tree

We cut out a bunch of leaves and had Olivia tell us all the things she was thankful for this year. We wrote them down on the leaves and taped them to her "tree"

She was dying to eat these as they sat in front of her. :)

Olivia's Turkey ("No daddy, they're chickens!") Cookies

Olivia's Little People First Thanksgiving Set

Olivia's Little People Mayflower set

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Pumpkins and Other Pics

Right before Halloween, we took the kiddos to a pumpkin patch to play in the pumpkins and pick out a couple of little ones to take home.

The picks for the day

Gabe thought the big ones were a blast!

Olivia managed to find one that was very lumpy.



Once a month or so, Rebecca takes the young 'uns down to Waxhaw to visit Grandma and Grandpa. This most recent trip, Olivia got to ride a horse all by herself. She was scared at first, but she decided to try it and once she got on, she had a really good time.

And one random Gabe pic:

This is really how he sleeps most of the time. :)

Picking Apples and Other Fall Fun

Well, we've got a backlog of pictures to share with everyone, so we'll try to get caught up over the next couple of posts.

Back in October, we took a day trip to the Orchard at Altapass, a non-profit apple orchard right on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We got to take a hayride and hear some great stories about the history of the area. We also took the opportunity to pick our own apples, right from the tree! At first we thought it was odd that they charged more for pick-you-own than the bags the had in the shop, but after we ate 3 right from the tree, we realized it was probably just smart business. :)

The apples were delicious and Rebecca and Olivia got to make homemade applesauce and apple butter.


Sadly, the colors weren't very good in the mountains that weekend... It had rained just a day or two before and many of the leaves had been knocked to the ground already. Fortunately, when we got back into the neighborhood, we found the colors here to be absolutely spectacular!

Spider Lapbook

Much to my neverending chagrin, Olivia has become fascinated with spiders, while i cannot stand to be in the same room as one without an overwhelming desire to make it into shoe goo. Rebecca and Olivia have been reading Charlotte's Web and Olivia loves to look out our bathroom window, where a spider has set up shop and is dining happily on whatever victims come its way.

Another Celebrated Dancing Bear and O's Dance class

As part of the FIAR (Five in a Row) cirriculum that I have been incorporating into our homeschooling, Olivia and I read Another Celebrated Dancing Bear. I thought it would be good to incorporate with her own dance class. So we made a combination labbook for the book and also for her dance class. I thought it would be a good way to put down the memories of her dance class.

This is her drawing of Max and Boris. They are the two bears in the book. Max teaches Boris to dance.

We made a version of Russian tea.

This is the inside of the lapbook. We looked on the map and talked about Russia. We also worked on some vocabulary and drama words from the book. Olivia was very excited about the Matryoshka dolls. I am now on the lookout for wooden nesting dolls for her. I introduced the clock to her a little bit.

Also, we talked a lot about hospitality. Here is our verse.

The other side of the lapbook is another lapbook.

The story of David in the Bible dancing before the Lord. We talked about why we dance. It is not primarily for performance, although that is fun, but it is for God first. This is true of everything we do.

We summarized the things she has learned in her dance class. The aims that her teachers have for her.

Here is the inside of the dance lapbook. It has tap, ballet, and gymnastics. We looked on the map for the country of orgin of each type of dance and gymnastics.

Below is a closer look at some of the things she has learned as we dance. And we have done many activities at home to reinforce this...

**Note: Sorry about the pictures. I had a really hard time with this post for some reason.**

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! :)