Caterpillars

When I was ordering our school supplies this year I went ahead and ordered a caterpillar/butterfly kit.  When I was in 3rd grade we raised caterpillars in school and I still remember it to this day as one of the most exciting school projects ever.  So I ordered them after we got back from St. George and they arrived last Saturday.  They were just tiny little things at that point and I took a picture but I guess I deleted it because it wasn't very clear.  Then around the middle of the week I realized they had grow a ton, like doubled in size and I wished I had kept the first picture.

Here they are on Thursday




Then on Friday/Saturday they started to hang out around the lid a bit more and I told the kids about how they would hang like a "J" before we'd see the chrysalis and they'd become butterflies.

Then this morning (Sunday) they were really excited when I got up to show me how the catterpillars were hanging like j's.  So I took a picture.



We went out for the day and when we came home we found that two had already shed their final skin and you could see the chrysalis. And now a bit later a third had.





The fourth is hanging in the J shape and the fifth is resisting.  He's spending his time poking #4, who doesn't seem too happy about that.  I guess it's boring as a caterpillar when all your roommates go through the change before you.

I also ordered ladybug larvae but when they arrived in the mail this last week they were all dead.  So a replacement order is being sent.  I hope we have better luck this next time.

Even more Lagoon pictures

We've discovered the best way to enjoy Lagoon is at night.  We went Friday and Saturday night and stayed until after 10pm.  It isn't hot out anymore and roller coasters are more fun in the dark.  Anyway I finally took my small crappy camera and got some more pictures of the kids and their rides.  This little camera sucks, my phone takes much better pictures but at least this one can zoom a little better and has flash so I took it.



The Ladybug Bop, John and Bella love this one.  It goes up into the air and then drops.  It creeps me out quite a bit as I am terrified of elevators for fear of them dropping, and that's pretty much what this ride is.  So when I ride it I scream like a little girl. 



And below is a picture of Moonraker, Phoebe's favorite.  She will ride it over and over again.  That's her and John riding together in the picture.


And here we have the Fire Dragon.  I rode this one once, with Bella.  Before we got on I asked her if she was scared and told her we could leave if she was.  I have to admit I was kind of hoping she'd chicken out so I wouldn't actually have to go.  But she LOVED it.  She's been on it 6 times now and it's the first thing she asks to do when we go.  It totally hurt my back though so I haven't been back on, luckily Corey likes it too and they ride together.  And best of all the line to get on is always short.  Unfortunately John cries everytime they go because he's too short to ride with them.


You can see her and Corey in the back on this picture.


We recently discovered the kiddie bumper cars and I'm glad we did.  John and Bella can go and take Phoebe with them.  She has so much fun riding in the cars while they drive.  And John is really good at it.  I guess all that time he's spent pretending to steer his toy car has paid off.









And lastly the big kids playing in the water fountain at the front of the park. Corey and I were in no mood to do the waterpark (it's a LOT more work than fun with 4 kids that can't swim) so we let them wear the swim stuff and play in the water there before we left.








We've been 11 times this month, we might be a little addicted.  But I'm trying to make up for 6+ months being stuck in the house with 4 little kids during the long winter.  That and season passes aren't cheap and I'm determined to get every penny's worth out of them.  I don't think that's going to be a problem though.

Week 1

We just finished up week one of first grade today.  The week went great and I really like how I have things laid out.  In fact sometimes it feels a little too easy.  It's taken us about 2 hours a day to get our work done which still leaves plenty of time to play outside, clean the house and have fun.  And Phoebe and Hazel have been great too.  Phoebe likes to sit at the table with us sometimes and color in her coloring book and say she's doing school too.

Handwriting
We're doing handwriting without tears again this year.  I've found that John really needs the continued practice or he forgets what he's doing.  I also picked up a dry-erase book of numbers yesterday at Lakeshore Learning because he does all his numbers backwards and is constantly asking me "does it go this way" and makes some weird motion in the air when he asks so I don't even know which way he means when he asks.  He's pretty mad at me for getting yet another book but he definitely needs the practice.

Science
We've only done one chapter in science so far but so far I like it.  It does a good job explaining the concepts on a level the kids can understand but it still uses the proper terms for things.  The kids are now enjoying calling people homo sapiens.

For our science experiment (there's one every week) we described various items and then put them in different groups based on the description.


Geography
I realize now how little I know about all the states myself.  So I'm looking to forward to this year and learning a few new things myself.  The kids are very eager to learn the states and be able to find them on the map.  Also as Lakeshore Learning last night I picked up USA Bingo.  We played today and it was fun.  We stopped and found each state on the map every time I called a new state and then they looked on their bingo cards to see if they had it.





Bella won and John wasn't too happy about that



Phonics
I have heard nothing but good stuff about the Explode the Code workbooks and so far I have to agree that they are great.  John definitely would not have been ready for them last year, and maybe not even Bella so I'm glad I waited until now to start them.  There was a page today where you read two sentences and then pick the one that matches the picture.  John immediately went to saying he couldn't do it because he couldn't read the sentences but had no trouble at all.  At which point I told him "see you're reading!"  He's my "I can't" child and thinks everything is too hard.  If he only had more motivation I'm convinced he'd pass Bella by in no time.  I really hope that someday he'll find that motivation.

Art
We're doing Draw Write Now, I bought the book last year and we did the first picture but then I decided to save it for this year.  So today we redid the first lesson.  Each picture also has sentences to go with it and practice handwriting.  John threw a fit at the end when it was time to write though so he now has homework.  It was his second meltdown this week, I'm hoping that eventually we'll haves weeks without them.

First Day of School

Today was our first day of first grade.  Overall it went really well.  Phoebe and Hazel were so good and allowed me to sit down and teach everything in on sitting.  Hazel played in the pack-n-play in the living room with toys while Phoebe watched Sesame Street and played with toys in the same room.

John did really well until the end and then finished off with a huge tantrum.  We got to the last page in our phonics workbook and literally all he had left to do was write the letter "a" a few times.  He decided he wasn't go to do it and started screaming.  I set a timer and told him he had 5 minutes to finish and then it would be homework, he didn't do it so I went ahead and read a chapter from our book (he was good during that.)  But then when we finished and got ready to go outside and he realized he still had to do it before playing he started all over.  Threw the book on the floor, screamed and banged on the windows after we went outside.  But he did do his work and he did it a lot faster than he would have last year.  He is so defiant and constantly pushes the limits to see how far he can go, I'm working hard on staying calm.

I love seeing how they each have their strengths.  During math Bella finished every page before John and he kept asking how she could do it so fast.  Then when we started doing phonics he finished every page before her and it was a perfect example to show him that we all have things we do really well and other things that take us more time to figure out.

We learned about Alabama in geography.  The kids had fun coloring a map of it and finding it on our US map as well.  And then pointing out all the states they've been to.

More Lagoon

We've been having so much fun with our Lagoon passes.  We went again today and stayed until 8pm.  The kids never seem to grow tired of their favorite rides.  Bella's favorite is the big swings which is also my favorite, John's not tall enough for those yet.  John's favorite is the haunted house ride.  And Phoebe favorite is this little helicopter ride that goes around in circles, she is the happiest on it that I've ever seen.  A kind of bubbling over joy that only a two year old can experience.

This is her waiting in line for her favorite ride






And then we have drink cups we keep hooked to the stroller.  The straws can be hooked into the cup to close them but I told Corey that wasn't reall necessary, I guess I was wrong because he looked down a few minutes later and caught Hazel doing this...





She's a pretty smart girl.  She was in the best mood ever today.  Usually she's not a very happy baby at all but today was so different, from early this morning until we put her to be at 10pm she was all smiles.  I really hope it sticks.

1st Grade

School starts on Monday in our house!  The kids are driving me nuts so we are starting school back up on Monday.  They are just much better behaved when we have school to focus on and they'll have less time to be bored.  And you know less time with the neighbor kids that make me want to rip my hair out and cause my kids to lose all their manners.  We'll be able to get 5 weeks in before John and Bella head off on their vacation the end of next month.  We're going to switch to year round schooling, I just haven't figured out exactly what kind of schedule I want yet.

Quote of the Week

I'm not sure this counts as quote of the week since she wrote it but I'm still going to mark it as so.  I got up yesterday and found this on the dry-erase board.



"I love butt.  Inappropriate."

Notice the drawing of a castle on the right side that's been crossed out.  That's John being a typical mean brother, he crosses out Bella's pictures.

And this next one is from the first time we went to Lagoon.  Bella made this sign to put on our door so her friends would know where she was and that she couldn't play.



"John and Bella is at the Lagoon."

That's them in the roller coaster, I love it.

The Garden

So all of the plants are finally out of the house.  I've decided I'm never starting seeds inside again, it was just too much of a pain.  I'd start trying to harden them off and then the temperature would drop here.  Anyway I finally put them all outside in the ground and something ate most of them.  So we went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of plants.  The kids still enjoyed the process and I'm glad we did it and least this once.

So here's what we've got growing outside...

Apples. The tree is actually in our neighbors yard but it's huge and a bunch hangs over the fence.





Bell peppers (green, yellow and red.)



Tomatoes



And strawberries, we've already eaten several

Quote of the Week

Two this time.

The first is from Bella at Lagoon...

"Cotton candy is like eating a little piece of a cloud."

And the second was from Phoebe today, we were driving around and it started raining and the water was pouring down the windows...

"Stop raining windows."

Weekend at Grandma's (and Grandpa's)

We just got home today after a long weekend with the grandparents (Corey's parents that is.)  We had lots of fun swimming in their pool and enjoying the heat.  I was disappointed by how not hot it was here when we arrived back home.  Summer needs to get here for real and stay.

We went and saw the dinosaur tracks while we were there.  It's a bunch of dinosaur tracks that were accidently discovered in St. George ten years ago.  All those paper signs in the picture are the markings of where one dinosaur walked across the land.  I think it's the longest single track ever discovered.  There was a lot of other tracks as well and it was really neat to see, not like any other dinosaur exhibit I've ever seen.





Hazel getting ready to go swimming.


And watching a movie before bed.  The fold out couch is still super exciting to them.

Someone missed the dry-erase board...

Finally!

Finally the heat has arrived.  We had a wonderful weekend and spent it all outside soaking up the warmth.  It actually feels great to be hot.  It has been such a long winter and spring has been sticking around far too long.

We did Lagoon on Friday and the dinosaur park again on Saturday.  Then we went back to Lagoon today.  I decided to spend part of our summer fun budget on season passes there instead of a vacation (way cheaper this way too and the fun lasts longer) so we can go lots now, they have a water park there too.  It was Phoebe's first time going and she loved it.  There's actually a lot of rides she can do, which is good because we had to pay to get her a season pass too.

Then tonight we played in the sprinkler for the first time this year.  Phoebe was so excited to go out but had no intentions of getting wet.  I finally realized she didn't want to play in the sprinkler, she just wanted to put on her new swimsuit.  She was happy to let me photograph her though so that's good.  Bella was out too but way to busy playing with her friend to stop for pictures.