Down Down the Mountain- FIeld Trip

we finished off our FIAR with a visit to a pioneer museum. it was so much fun! we had a blast looking through the old log cabin homes, seeing people dressed in period attire, and watching a gunfight! the gunfight was a bit loud for Little A, so i didn't get any pictures of it as i was busy holding her ears! below are some pictures of our morning. we got to eat a picnic lunch on the town green, and then listen to one of the moms read our story.
this was my favorite thing of the morning! we got to watch the blacksmith make a nail! i was amazed!

the printing press office was pretty amazing. it was fun to watch the kids' faces when i explained that each letter had to be put into the template before they could print out the newspaper! they couldn't believe they couldn't just point and click!

my ha-ha moment of the day was when one of the girls had a conversation with me about the cameras in the old days...you know, the ones with film that you had to take to the store to have developed...boy do i feel old!

Week in Review :)

wow..does it feel good to write that title!!!

we have been away from school for waaaayyyyy too long!

we began our rowing this week in earnest :) thanks to a few helpful websites from a friend we were able to start rowing our co-op book (even though we didn't have our manual yet):

Down Down the Mountain by Ellis Credle.

i decided to start the kids off with a lapbook, and boy was it a hit! both boys enjoyed making a floor plan of Hetty and Hank's cottage, finding the Blue Ridge Mountains on a map of the US, doing vocabulary word matching, and listing foods found in the story and deciding which was their favorite.

today we worked on word problems. the boys have never seen math done that way before. we got down on the floor with counting blocks and did several addition and subtraction problems and introduced the concept of one-half. both the boys had so much fun, and before i knew it, almost an hour had passed!

what a difference FIAR has made for us. i actually enjoyed doing school with the boys this week!

we will wrap up our week with a trip to a semi-local pioneer museum. saturday, we are going to have a lunch of johnny cakes and hot dogs (don't have any ham on hand).

i am eager to start prepping for our next book. i am not sure if we will do another lapbook, but the boys have had such fun showing their dad all the cool stuff in it, it may be the way we experience rowing :)

my highlight of the week:

Joel was able to pull out his vocabulary matching cards last night for dad and get every one of them RIGHT! woo-hoo!!!