Happy Thanksgiving

school this week

We are all really enjoying this new journey of homeschooling that we are on.  I thought I would give you just a quick glimpse of our week in pictures.  

David created his own motorcycle - dreamed up the project and figured out how to execute it.  This boy is always building and creating!

Celebrated our first snow with snowflake tortillas for breakfast - just cut, butter and sprinkle cinnamon sugar - these are the uncooked ones from costco so then we just cooked it up on the skillet.

And a snowball fight before it all melted away!

Another project of the week was building a playground in the living room.  

We did a Five in a Row unit study on the book Cranberry Thanksgiving.  We examined cranberries under our magnifying glass and made observations about them.  I let David dictate and I recorded all of our observations for our nature journal.  I think I have decided that instead of a chronological journal I want to get alphabet divider tabs and insert sheets into a binder alphabetically.  

Examining the holes that hold the seeds. 

We counted the seeds in three separate cranberries.  I thought the numbers of seeds would be more uniform but our three counts yielded 18, 19 and 22.

Baking pumpkin cranberry pecan chocolate chip bread.

Today we did homeschool with friends!  We had such a fun day doing Cranberry Thanksgiving all together.  In the book one of the main characters "judges a book by it's cover" in regards to judging character.  We learned the saying "Don't judge a book by it's cover" and had a little object lesson to reinforce the concept.  (idea here)

Each child got to choose if they wanted a colorful gift bag or a crumpled plastic shopping bag.  The colorful bags contained rotten banana peels and the shopping bags contained leftover Halloween candy!  

They also got the immense privilege of eating lunch WHILE watching a video!  Dirty Jobs Cranberry Bog edition!  

We had a cranberry relay where they tried different physical skills (tiptoes, hopping, etc.) while trying to transfer cranberries on a spoon to fill their cups!

There was some impromptu "ice skating".  

And here my photos have gotten a bit out of order.

Breakfast Bible reading

Brother/sister free play

Sorting Halloween candy

Nature walks

And back to the photos from our friends' house . . . we made a "cranberry bog" sensory bin that they LOVED.

Craisin, whole raw cranberry and stewed cranberry snack that we ate while describing the different ones on a thinking map. 

The boys figured out how to turn the syringes in the sensory bin into cranberry launchers using the pressure of the water to propel the cranberries!  

Also, homemade cranberry playdoh in the background!  

coloring the New England states on the map since that's where cranberries are grown and the story took place

listening to the story

It has been a great week!  

Kelly

Barcelona - day four

These loaded all out of order and there are too many of them for me to want to go through and re-order them with blogger's janky works.  So . . . here in a very random order, Barcelona day four!  

At the end of a long, full day we went to the 

Font Màgica de Montjuïc. 

It was really great and reminded me of the many times my parents took us to the Dancing Waters Show at the Disneyland Hotel growing up.  

This one was built in just one year by 3000 workers for the world exhibition in 1929!

View coming up out of the subway

Stunning!!!

So pretty and very fun to experience with the kids!  

Gorgeous!!  Can you see the little girl on the left with her arms raised in enjoyment??  So fun!! 

Me and my girlie enjoying the show!  Seems crazy now a month and a half later sitting in Colorado in long sleeves and a down vest to see us both in summer clothes!  

• Breakfast was truly a highlight today!! Traditional xoxolata & xurros!!! The proprietor was awesome with the kids' allergies and we ALL had churros and chocolate together thanks to the dairy free cocoa mix I brought from home and his generosity with hot water cooled down a touch for the kids! Really fun, especially yummy and so special!!

The stache is even popular in Barcelona! 

We had an enjoyable rest in this plaza.  The kids really enjoyed running around.  Do you see those crazy hot pink get ups in the background?  They were advertising some food service and it was appalling to me how only the girls were wearing the hot pink body suits that were extremely unflattering but someone probably thought would sell more of their service by exploiting women's bodies.  Don't get me started . . . 

Anyway, back to the kids and the relaxing time we had . . . 

Adrian snapped this photo of me . . . 

running, running, running

does he have my walk or what?

Spanish birthday party in the park!  So fun!

this girl learned early on how to get a ride when she wanted 

again with touching all the surfaces!  

boy with his stick 

churros for all!

I like the juxtaposition of old and new

sweet kids who let my kids play too!

and taking a break from all that running!

keeping snacks handy was always a good move when we were out and about

cutie!  

and there was also some of this . . . 

before heading up into Parc Guell we stopped at a green grocer and picked up plums

gorgeous view!

they both loved riding the escalators so much!