A Day In The Life of the Brown Bear Cubs...Random Pictures and a Video :)

I had the camera out a bit recently and thought I'd share some highlights...

LadyBear very proudly came up to me wearing all of this (I'm absolutely certain she chose these pieces and put them on by herself...this girl LOVES clothes).

And this sweet boy...I just love him so much.

He was very excited to see our garden peas are growing great so far!!

We even found a friend who agrees with us!

I am a bit concerned about this box as it is shaded from the sun by the fence, but I didn't notice that until after I planted everything in it and I'm hopeful it won't end up making THAT much of a difference.  Maybe as the season progresses, it will get more direct sun...

LadyBear found her first dandelion and was smitten...

Big brother showed her what to do with the "fuzzballs..."

And how to pick them...

Then, off they went to explore...I'm SO thankful we have this fence!!!

Then LittleBear decided to teach LadyBear how to slide.  The good news is she loves it...the other news is that she insists on sliding down backwards on her tummy.  What can you do, this girl marches to her own rhythm and I love her all the more for it :)

And here is a two minute excerpt from our day...I wish the camera battery hadn't died until after LittleBear was done with the book (he's reciting most of it from memory), but at least it's something!

Brown Family Garden 2014

 Our garden today...

Garden season has started here at the Brown household!!  The seeds have been ordered, dirt has been bought and mixed, new boxes have been built and just today, we had our first two sprouts show up.  Fun and exciting times!

This is what I started with a few weeks ago:

This year, I built two new boxes to house LittleBear's peas.  He loves peas and we've never been able to plant enough in the past, so this year I've got three different varieties going:  our normal favorite the Tall Telephone garden pea and two new kinds to try, Sugar Ann Snap Peas and the Improved Maestro garden pea.  Hopefully this year, we'll get enough for more than just LittleBear to eat :)

LittleBear mixing dirt!

He was beyond excited when I told him it was almost time to plant the peas.  My little boy who hates getting dirty jumped into a big pile of dirt and helped me mix it all up, then fill my new boxes.  He has been reminding me that they need to be watered and even showed LadyBear the proper way to water his new pea plants.  With Texas weather being all over the place lately, I'm a little nervous about what kind of harvest we'll get, but we had to try!!  Anyway, we'll see what we get...who knows.


LittleBear watering the peas...

Here are the other seeds I anticipate planting this year:
Black Beauty Zucchini
Lemon Basil
Sweet Genovese Basil
Black Plum Tomato  (*new variety for us to try)
Chadwick Cherry Tomato (*new variety for us to try)
Emerald Giant Sweet Pepper
Orange Bell Sweet Pepper
Hearts of Gold Melon (Hoodoo)...very similar to a cantaloupe
Honeydew Tam Dew Melon
Ananas D'Amerique A Chair Verte Melon (*new variety, which was a freebie pack of seeds included in my order)

LittleBear carefully planting his seeds...

Also, any day now, four new additions will be arriving to the Brown Family Garden.  I am now the proud owner of a Fuji Apple Tree, a Red Delicious Apple Tree and a Jubilee Blueberry bush and a Sharpblue Blueberry bush.  The apple trees are dwarf trees, which will grow to 8' or so and will be grown in large pots, so I can move them around the yard, if necessary.  They will take about 2 years to produce fruit, but I'm looking forward to that!!

Our first sprouts!!!

Fun Times at Crestwood Oaks Academy

The blog has been a bit quiet lately, but don't think that because the blog has been quiet, the house has been too!  We have been busy learning and I just haven't been able to get myself together enough to post after each home school unit we've been doing. 

So, I'm going to show you some highlights :)

We kicked off "O is for Octopus" week with a trip to the donut shop (O shaped snacks!), which thrilled two kids (& Mommy) to no end!

Working with Cuisenaire Rods:

 
Here is LittleBear learning about why the ink an octopus squirts when they are in danger is helpful to them.  You really can't see through it!

Then we moved on to "W is for Water" and learned about solids, liquids and gases.  Our solid was an ice cube, our liquid was water and our gas was peppermint oil in my diffuser:

Then we moved on to "I is for Insects" and started an ant farm!

as of 2/4, it looked like this (and they are STILL going)!

We also released some ladybugs into our garden where we have the ladybug house (using this tutorial) we built during "N is for Nest" week:

You can click on these pictures to see them larger, if you wish...



We finished up "I is for Insects" and ran around flying like bumblebees to "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Korsakov:

This week (G is for Goat), we have been talking about farm animals and while I don't have any super fun games to share, I did want to give you a peek into how LittleBear is doing with his reading.  He's getting there!  The words on this sheet were mostly new to him and he did great with them!  Here he is figuring them out on his own with a little help from LadyBear:

My Father's World Kindergarten Unit 8: Dinosaurs!!!

This week, I especially, have had a ton of fun with school at home :)  We've been learning about dinosaurs!!!  There are SO many fun things you can do with a dinosaur theme, I really had to edit myself and my lesson plans.  We went with all the usual things we do in My Father's World Kindergarten and I added in a few extras (I usually don't add in this much, but after just coming back from a month long break, I thought it would be a fun way to transition back into "doing school.").

I also tried to involve Daddy in more of it than usual so it really was a fun week!

We had Dinoday where we visited a few parks and learned first-hand how big dinosaurs were and how many different kinds there really are!  PS- Grams' and my favorites were the Diplodocus dinosaurs...after a week of reading dino books, I now know what they are called :)

 We built 3-D models of a stegosaurus and a tricerotops:

We dug for "fossils" and put together a mini-dino skeleton (I found this egg at HEB for way cheap and now I'm wishing I had bought more)!

We read several books and made playdough dinos:

And since we live so close to the Waco Mammoth Site, I thought it would be good to talk about another kind of animal we don't see anymore, Mammoths.  LittleBear seemed to really enjoy it and even LadyBear was mostly interested in the dig site.  I'm hopeful this will help him not take the animals around us for granted and realize that taking care of the world God made is super important.

Just for fun, here is a video of Jeff and LittleBear digging out some of the fossil bones :)