Valentine Brithday

Today was my daughter's 4th birthday. I couldn't believe that she was that old and I began to wonder where the time went.  But all those years so far were great and I won't trade them for the world.  

Today was a small but lively party for my little Wonder-Girl.  I think that the adults and teenagers out numbered the kids.  We keep things simple for the party.  The kids played Candy Land, Memory, a fishing game and other simple kids games.  They really did spend hours playing, not really quietly, those games and for the most of the time without fighting with each others.  At some point in the party a sword fight battle broke out.  Not to sure who won.  But they all had fun and no one got hurt.

The theme, if you can call it a theme, of the party was centered around those tiny Valentine heart candies.  Why? I know you're asking this question...and the answer is this:  my daughter came running up to me and told me, "I want a PINK heart cake for my birthday."  A pink heart cake is what she got. 

Since it was a heart and at the time of her telling this I was looking at those tiny heart candies, figured that it was the best thing for her.  You see normally over the last 4 years I've tried to stay away from the Valentines theme for her birthday.  Mostly cause its so easy to find all those things around and I didn't want her to get sick of theme.  Also its hard to plan a party around that time of the year cause most people don't come.  Usually cause its Valentine's Weekend and the kid's parents are doing something for that day.  

But today was different.  We had a great time with friends and kids.  My daughter enjoyed all the presents from her friends and my our family and so did the other kids.  As you can see my Hulk baby went round the party with fairy wings for a while before Daddy realized that he was wearing them.  Someone, okay mainly me, put them on him.  But he was so cute and he thought he was a bird when I put them on him that I couldn't help myself. 

Time Traveling to Anceint Greece with Dare Devil

We are have been catching up on some school this week.  Everyone has gotten some kind of cold last week.  Mostly all stuffy noses for everyone in our house.  So we worked on knocking out two weeks of school into one.  Which is as hard as one might think.  It helped that it was something that was interesting.

Well while we where learning about Greek columns and about the war between the 25 year war between Athens and Sparta.  My son played with a Dare Devil Doll Action Figure during that whole time.  

We started to do our projects for few that goes along with our history lessons, Dare devil stayed faithfully with us.  Learning just as much history as we were.  Well after my son had made his own greek columns he insisted that Dare Devil take a picture with his projects.  To show that he traveled to Greece.  

Also there was a quick picture of a Greek Soldier that was taken who was wondering what we we doing. 

In our tour to anceint greece we even managed to take in a small theater show.  Where the actors where both my son and his sister.

Pirates on the Table

A few weeks ago my mom sent some late Christmas presents to us.  There were several different gifts, but of all that where there the most famous was a Playmobil Pirate ship and a Little People doll.  

After opening the gifts it was hard to keep the kids on doing school.  They wanted to play with their new gifts.  here are a few pictures of the gifts.

Dare Devil Boy (DD) named the pirates, Capt. Jack Mate & Capt. Sparrow. 

A bit blurry, but a picture of the treasure chest with the compass in it.  I decided not to open the bag with the tiny treasure coins.  They would spend most of their life sprinkled all around the house and not in the treasure chest.

Our Breif Trip to China

The last two weeks of so we have been going through a short unit of Ancient China.  

It has been learning experience for both my son and me.  We learned how silk was made, that the Chinese invented the compass, an earthquake detector, and paper.  Yeah I never new that.  Or I did and don't remember.  Either way it was something knew for us both.  

To go along with with our unit on China we've been making a lapbook.  (a lapbook for those that don't know what it is in a nutshell it is a file folder that has been that is part scrapbook, part hands on project holder and review notes.)  I got the most of the templates for our China Lapbook from HomeschoolShare there Ancient China Unit and Dynamic 2 Moms under there Ancient Civilzation Unit.  There is how the outside of our lapbook looks like in the picture up above.  

Here is a another picture of the inside of our lapbook of all the things we covered while learning about Ancient China.

Pictures of some of the Projects we've been made to go along with our china unit.

Terra Cotta Soldiers Clothes pins

Chinese Lantern Chinese Numbers

(I got the these from the History Pockets we are using)

Shadow Puppets

(I got the the template fore this website)

Finally the Mini-Scroll & Wood Book

We are moving right along and are going back into Ancient Greek history.  Covering there Dark ages and then the Persian Wars.  Touching a bit on the Rise of the Roman Empire.  We are excited or at least I am.  Cause it means we are almost done with school.  I'll post on our eveything we've done on Ancient Greek when we've finished the whole time period on them.  That lapbook is still under construction.

There was Snow

It has been a while since I last posted and since then we have a few days of snow.  Not much compared to when we went up to visit Adam's family in New England.  But it was better then nothing.  The best part of it, ( i know this may sound weird but if you live in the south its a big deal.),  the snow lasted more then a day and didn't melt or turn to ice.  

You see down here well....if it starts to snow the night before or early in the morning it tends to melt away or turn into ice by the afternoon.  So we don't tend to get much snow were we are,  you know that nice powdery stuff you see on Christmas cards.  


But here are some pictures of the kids playing in the snow.  Just so you know it has all melted since then and now it is 65 degrees during the day and 30 at night.

My Oldest Making Snow Angels 

 The Baby's attempt at a Snow Angel
(He saw everyone else make them.  He thought 
they were just laying on the ground, so he did it too.)

My Girl making a Snow Man

 Later on my youngest would come over and step all over her snow man.  She got pretty hostile to that and began throwing snow balls that him.  He in turn thought she was play and began laughing at her.  Which in turn made her more angry, so she gave up.