Someone had a birthday!

Organic nectarine cobbler with homemade ice cream!

Thank you for the shirt, Aunt Whit!

Satori Smiles: Reading Room

A few months ago, I shared a new favorite blog of mine, Satori Smiles. If you haven't been over there lately, go now and check out their new library reading room! It's wonderful!

We have a display bookcase, but I'd love to put up rain gutter bookshelves for more display space.

My Week in Review

Wednesday Afternoon: M. falls out of swing and cuts lip.

Friday Afternoon: N. gets finger stuck in vacuum and rips skin off. Call 911 and discover that they "don't do anything for broken fingers so just watch it." It's not broken but bleeds intermittently for two days.

Sunday Lunchtime: N. falls out of booster chair, fortunately to the side and not forward into table.

Sunday Bedtime: N. attempts to dive off of changing table. Fortunately, I have a hand on him and catch him as he is hanging upside down. Reflexes like a cat.

I think I lost five years off my life (at least). I need a cookie. And a hug.

Sharing Nature Camp

This summer I signed M. up for a once-a-week preschool nature camp at a local nature center. There are five sessions, and after two weeks I can say that we love it! It's about an hour and a half long and each class includes a nature walk, activity, and craft.

Our first class was on frogs, and today was ponds. After a short hike, the children tried pond dipping!

They found a lot of neat things: tiny mollusks, nymphs, lots of coontail, some fish, water striders, and maybe a small frog or two.

We hiked back toward a pavilion, and the kids were able to make their own "ponds." M. is doing very well at arts and crafts lately. He created his design all on his own, though I think the favorite part of each child was sliding the "button" to cut his or her own piece of plastic wrap for "water"!

The nature center has a visitor center with mounted animals typically found in the area surrounding it including a beaver, coyote, and muskrat. There are also tanks with various turtles, crayfish, and snakes. Our favorite, though, is the beehive. I think M. could watch it for hours.

Next week our topic is turtles. We can't wait!

Strawberries!

I've been meaning to post about our garden, but just haven't had a chance to do the project justice. The short story is that we planted 50 strawberry plants in a pyramid this spring and 49 of the them survived and for the past week have been bearing fruit! We're picking every day!

Our first strawberry, July 5:

Today's bounty:

We regularly eat locally-grown berries, but these have a "certain something" the others just don't have!

Our modest garden also features potatoes, winter squash, and sunflowers!

Before and After: Closet (Again!)

A few weeks ago, I decided I'd had enough of the growing disorganization in one of the closets. Its original purpose was storing off-season outerwear and extra picture frames, tablecloths, etc., but it's also morphed into storage for Montessori works, completed art projects, and other homeschool materials. You can see the way the closet looked after a bout of Lenten Cleaning a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, everything started to pile up and not only couldn't I find what I was looking for, I also completely forgot about some treasures!

So with an idea in mind of how I wanted to transform it, I set to work. Here's the before (I'm so embarrassed!):

After! All organized and much better!

Shaving Cream Art

On Tuesday we tried an idea I've seen on several blogs, most recently Chasing Cheerios: shaving cream and food coloring art! It was a lot of fun...messy, but so worth it! Next time, I think we'll do this outside or in the tub so the mess can spread even further! It was only very reluctantly that we cleaned up (expecting company!).

First we spread shaving cream all over a cookie sheet and M. added food coloring where he liked:

Pressing down the paper:

Scraping off the excess:

After we used up our paper, it was a sensory play free-for-all!

Two of our creations:

Birthday!

It's no fun being sick on your birthday, but we still had some fun!

A gift from mom and dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and friends:

Half moon cupcakes:

Happy Birthday!

Craigslist Finds

In the past week, we found two great pieces on Craigslist.

An "antique" toddler chair for older brother:

A china cabinet for our homeschool books and art supplies. I love the space to spread out my plans and supplies for the current day/week.