TRAVELING TO FLORIDA!!!

Today is January 24th- We left the twin cities around 11am. I joked that we wouldn't run into any traffic in Minnesota because everyone would be home preparing to watch the Vikings game. We have decided to take one route down and a different route back to give the kids a change of scenery. On the way down, we are going through Iowa. There isn't a whole lot to look at in Iowa. Lol. No offense to Iowians. We did stop for lunch in Waterloo which is a much bigger town than I thought. While looking for Arby's (we are hoping to limit eating out to once a day or less) we got to discover Waterloo because of bad directions given by a gas station attendant. Oh well, it was cool to see the guitar sculpture at the Waterloo art center. They also have many beauitful brick churches and older homes. Though they are stuck in the car, we are still trying to limit their television viewing. We are interchanging DVD's and books on tape. We listened to "Spongebob-tea at the treedome." Then we turned on "Dear John" by Nicholas Sparks. We are not done with that story yet but the speaking was putting Michael to sleep while driving so we had to turn on the radio. The children are helping us track the map and distances (well the best a 5 & 7 year old can). This basically means they are looking at the map and seeing where each town is and how far we have gone and how far to the next major city.
We arrived in Florida Monday night. The trip was good. I love driving long distances. It is now Friday and we have been soooo busy. We have been to Old Town where the kids road on rides, looked at the shops and collected acorns. We saw a squirel and it came right up to Michael's hand. We went to Downtown disney where they made Mr. Potato heads (and we bought one to bring home) they dressed up my little ponies. We looked at all the different stores including the Rainforest cafe where they had real parrots. We played with legos at lego land. The coolest part was eating at the T-Rex restaurant. It was sooo cool. They have animatronic dinosaurs/ an octopus/ mammoths and bugs. Every half hour there were "meteor showers" where the sky had a screen that showed meteors falling from the sky and the rooms turned red. There is an "ice cave" where you could sit that was blue but turned red during the meteor showers. It was so much fun. We have eaten out WAY TOO MUCH though.

January 17th- January 23rd

January 17th- The kids played at Scheels in their play place. We looked at the camping gear and have decided to start looking for a kayak. I don't think they have ever been on any type of boat so we figured its about time.

January 18th- Today we are celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. day. I read two books about Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement. I couldn't help but laugh when my daughter said," Mom, why were people so stupid?" in response to the segregation of dark skinned people. I wasn't quite sure how to answer that beyond, I really don't know. The girls then made "I have a dream" mobiles where they wrote different "dreams" they had to make their communties, the country and the world a better place. They came up with ideas for "people to like one another, for people to want to help homeless people, for all kids to have families, for people to be able to marry the people they love and for good people to change bad laws," thought up on their own. They make me so proud. We are watching Corina, Corina and discussing the segregation and injustices we see in the movie.
January 19th- Well, now I am sick so Michael took over the learning for today. The kids spent a LOT of the day playing educational games on the computer. Michael showed Ava how to type in the different web addresses so she could help her siblings change websites. They LOVE Nickjr.com. They also painted and played Connect 4. We spent a couple of hours going through all their clothes handing down Ava's old clothes to Amara so we know what to buy Ava. There were even a couple pairs of Amara's jeans that would work for Corbin. I can't believe how many clothes they have. It was insane! I am also working on packing for Florida. We are leaving in less than a week. We are all so excited!! Its going to be a long drive though. Lots of time for school work. lol. Maybe they will enjoy workbooks more if they have nothing else to do. lol
January 20th- We spent a lot of time in the basement doing cartwheels, handstands, roundoffs and somersaults. We also touch the kids how to jump rope and even gave double dutch a chance. It was hilarious to watch us try if nothing else. The girls and I worked on packing for Florida.
January 21- We watched a video on the "mysteries of the sphynx" on Nova. It was cool learning about the ideas of who the sphynx maybe carved after. After watching the video, we concluded that we agreed with the archeologists in the show, that the sphyx is Pharoah Kufu's son Kafri. Ava went to gymnastics. We spent all evening shopping for and creating an emergency car kit.
January 22nd-We finished packing and drove to the cities. The drive was slow because it was raining IN JANUARY so the roads were getting icy. By the time we got there, we had dinner and then it was bedtime.
January 23nd-We went to the Minnesota Science Museum and stayed for 4 hours!! It is so cool. I think the kids liked the dinosaur bones and the human body exhibit the best.

January 10th-January 16th

January 10th- The kids spent the morning playing board games together. They played Memory, Don't Break the Ice and Hi Ho Cherry-O. Mom and dad didn't help at all. They set up the games, took turns and helped each other stick to the rules. Even small accomplishments like that make me proud of them.
Michael spent time with the girls doing math problems and reading. Throughout the day he quized Amara on the order of her numbers 11-20 and had Ava answer questions by doing math (adding and subtracting without carrying over) in her head.
We of course played on the foam mats (the best $100 I ever spent. The girls did cartwheels and hand stands and chased each other around. It is a great outlet for 3 VERY hyper children. I would reccomend anyone who has the space to make a "workout" area for their hyper children.
January 11th- School starts for Michael and I today so I am sure this week will be spent figuring out the best way to complete our school work while making sure the children are learning through life experiences. In their playroom, we made a wall of melanite boarding so we can use dry erase markers on it. This too was a wonderful investment. The children draw on it almost everyday. Michael and I use it for math and reading activities for them. Today we did math problems for the girls. Simple adding and subtracting for Amara and large adding for Ava. She can now add three digit numbers (including carrying over). She is flying through math!!! I am so proud of her. Amara played reading games on the computer for about 45 mintues. We then played the Wii together. The girls bowled, golfed, did baseball and tennis. I think the creator of the Wii should get a noble prize for creating a video game that can help you stay physically active!!!
January 12th- Today Michael did math and reading with them in the morning. He worked with Ava on number placing (ones through millions). Amara worked on counting my tens, twos and counting 11-30.
We went to the community center and played in the gym. We played basketball, soccer and raced. Amara played "fetch" with a boy where he threw a football and she ran after it. It's nice to see older kids playing nice with younger ones (the boy was about 10). We then went to the library. Ava and Amara picked out books to read. Corbin but together puzzles and was able to identify all his shapes and colors. They spent about a half hour each playing educational games on the library computers. The kids played board games together including "Don't break the ice" and "connect 4".
January 13th- Today the girls wrote letters to their grandma. Amara read a board book about animals and then read about 15 words off her slight word cards. I read a book called "Cheech, the bus driver" by none other than Cheech Marin. It was a cute book. We watched the movie "Pride and Prejudice" and discussed the differences in our era and the era in which the book was based on (i.e. Women's rights to own property, the style of speaking) etc. We discussed other books by Jane Austen and am going to look for them at the library.

January 14th-Well, we have some sick kids so we are taking it easy today. Ava is upset that she missed gymnastics.

January 15th- Today Michael had the girls practice their writing. They also read the words they were writing to help their vocabulary. Michael also had Ava work on telling time. The girls played educational games on their v-smile.
**On a side note. Almost everyday our kids spend hours in free play using their imaginations. They play everything from Superhereos to Harry Potter to Princesses and firefighter and everything in between. They seem to be feeling a little better.

January 16th- All three of the kids are feeling terrible again so we spent the day watching movies and relaxing in the living room.

January 3rd to January 9th

January 3rd-
So far this week, we have watched the movie "twister" after they expressed an interest in learning about tornadoes. After watching the movie (and discussing the over exaggerations and hollywood effects of the movie) we looked up the fujita scale on this website: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f-scale.html. We learned about the new "enhanced fujita scale" and read more online about tornadoes under their FAQ webpage. We then made a "tornado" using two 2 liter bottles, water and blue food coloring. Though the duck tape allowed the water to leak, it was still exciting to see and a little messy too, but what kid doesn't love messy projects!

After expresssing an interest in doing more science experiments, we went to the bill nye home page where they picked an experiment on gravity, adhesion and cohesion invloving dropping water on to a penny. Before we did the experiment, we went to the discovery channel science channel page where we did an interactive webpage about Newton's 3 laws of physics. http://science.discovery.com/interactives/literacy/newton/newton.html
Though the wording is a little advanced, the interactive images are very kid friendly (the laws are explained using an apple and a worm) and there is a quiz at the end if you choose to do it.
After discussing Newton's laws we did the science experiment, though our results were different than those suggested under the bill nye webpage. It may have been how much soap we used, but we were able to get more water droplets on the penny without soap than with soap. The girls concluded it was because the water without soap had more cohesion force than the water with soap. Bill Nye concluded water droplets with soap are smaller so more would fit. Maybe we will try this experiment on another day and see if we get different results.
January 4th-
We continued to research storms both thunderstorms and tornadoes. I found a LOT of videos and interactive sites on both tornadoes and thunderstorms. The weather channel has a special page for kids to learn about the weather. The discovery channel has a great page, http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers/handbook/handbook.html, that has interactive activities showing the destruction of tornadoes based on the enhanced fujita scale, a tornado generator and a map of tornado alley. While in the car, Ava asked how thunderstorms were made so when we got home we looked it up on the internet. We watched a few videos on National Geographic about lightning and the formation of thunder storms. Nova (on pbs) has a great movie called "Hunt for the supertwister". It is longer and not super scientifical, but it is informative. It was interesting to learn that scientists don't know how and why tornadoes form.
Ava read a book " I love snow".
January 5th-
Amara spent a lot of time on star fall (an educational reading website). She also played the keyboard and created her own songs. As a family, we played with bendaroos where Amara made everything from an octopus to ice cream cones to flowers. Ava had a little trouble thinking up something to make and finally opted to make a playground including a swingset and slide. My husband made mario on a hangglider. They spent a little time playing the wii. We listened to music and cleaned the house (finding "cleaning" activities for my 3 year old while helping his sisters is a daunting task but it was fun). We encouraged Ava to read everything around her (she is constantly asking "what does this say") so we have her sound it out on her own. We spent some time playing restaurant. Ava wrote up a menu and wrote out orders down. We played monkey in the middle and catch with a ball in the basement. Ava "made" lunch (turkey and cheese sandwhiches, kiwi and wheat thins) for her siblings and me. She did a wonderful job! I felt very productive today and proud of the time I found to balance between playing/learning with my children and cleaning. We didn't do anything curriculum wise but I feel like they learn more when we aren't struggling over when to do school work and by letting things happen.
January 6th-
Today we had an artsy day. We spent 2 hours painting this morning with acrylic paint. The catch was, I only gave them primary colors (red, blue and yellow) so they had to mix them to make any other color they wanted. Ava was very proud of her "superman" painting (she painted superman saving Lois Lane from sharks). Amara made a beautiful picture of her marrying a prince. Corbin found it more interesting to mix all the colors then paint circles on his paper.
We then went to the library and picked out books for the girls to read as well as other books. We then came home and read "Scooby Doo" for Ava and "Word Bird" for Amara. After which we played with playdough making various things.

January 7th-
Today was kind of a lazy day. Ava did gymnastics and the kids read but thats about it. I think its okay for people to have those days where nothing gets accomplished, everyonce in a while.
January 8th-
Today we definately made up for yesterday. Michael spent the morning doing math and reading activities with the kids. (This is the small amount of "paper work" we do with the kids and Michael always does it because he's better at keeping them sitting calm.) Ava and I played a game of chess while Amara& Michael played a board game that Amara made up using a chinese checkers board/othello tiles/pawns and dice. I am not sure how exactly it went, I am pretty sure she made it up as she went but they had fun. Then we read a book "The ABC's of fruits and vegetables and beyond" after which we discussed which fruits and veggies they have tried and which they would like to try. We then went on the "my pyramid" website and played the blast off game for kids. We used their ages and sex to find the amount of eat food group they needed in a day. We then used that find new healthy recipes that we can make meal plans from. We are planning on grocery shopping later tonight after making the meal plan. We are currently taking a small break to play with bendaroos and have a snack before I go to make dinner. Who knew healthy meal planning could take so long!! We've been at it for 2 hours now. lol. I am pleased to anounce the healthy lesson is already paying off, Ava choose blueberries and wheat thins for a snack and Amara chose wheat thins and cheese for a snack! (Though we have taught them from the beginning to eat healthy so this is really a refresher course.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happy New Year everyone! May 2010 be a wonderful year. We are spending New Years day playing games. Everyone put a game idea in a box and we take turns picking one out. So far:
Hide and go seek
Duck,Duck, goose
New Super Mario bros on the Wii

Still to come:
T rex game (a tag like game we made up)
Story time

I forgot how exciting simple kids games like duck, duck, goose are (especially when its my husband and me running around the circle trying to get away from each other)!

We have a book that has activities for the month of Januaray that we may do one or two activities out of but we haven't decided yet.
The big thing for us right now is saving up money for a trip to Washington DC this summer. If you have been there and have any ideas for family things to do (that may be off the beaten path) please let me know!