Smiles

Summer Memories!

I didn't get a lot of time to blog this Summer, so I am catching up now! I wanted to share some of the fun we had this summer with you.

The girls had an awesome time at Vacation Bible School at the beginning of the Summer.

They did a lot of swimming.

We went to a baseball game with our friends and Pie Pie got a foul ball!

We finally got to go on a family vacation to the beach.
This is Pants's first visit to the ocean!

We had a lot of fun relaxing and enjoying our break from school!
We hope you had a fun Summer too!
Smiles,
Nikki!



Our Turkey Hill Experience

It seems as if I have been working on this post forever! I'm not even sure when I started it, but it is getting published today!
Daddy had an unexpected day off, so we decided to visit The Turkey Hill Experience. It was a great trip. I had promised the girls we would go and they were very excited!

When you get there you are invited to make your own ice cream flavors. We did the experience on their computers, but you can also visit their Taste Lab and actually make your own ice cream. Pie Pie made a very yummy flavor.

They even got to design the package for their ice cream.

 

Pants made one too! She had to put her favorite color in her ice cream. Pink! Which is actually a bit purple.

Here are the girls working on the computers to make their very own ice cream.

They are both definitely nuts!

Before you leave don't forget to get your free ice cream!

Pie Pie had Dutch Chocolate, Pants had Party Cake, Daddy had Peanut Butter Cup and I had Maple Walnut.

Yummy!

This was a very delicious Field Trip!

Around the World-Australia


For our 200th post I am going to take you on a trip to Australia! Not for real, but you can pretend like we did! Sit back and enjoy our journey to the Land Down Under!
We have been studying American History and Geography for the past couple of years, so we are ready for the World! I'm not sure how we are going to go about studying all of the continents, but we started with Australia. It is Pie Pie's favorite and small one, so it worked out quite well.

source
 

I bought each of the girls an artist notebook which has in it, wonderful blank pages. The girls can draw, write or paste pictures in them. They will be our Geography and History workbooks for the year.

I started out by looking up Australia on the Internet. I found a great and free lapbook at Homeschool Share. Then I went to the library and looked up videos and DVDs. Some of the DVDs we found were:

 Families of Australia,

The Barrier Reef and Northeast Australia,

and Australia-Destination.

 We really enjoyed the Families of Australia because the girls got to see how kids lived in a different part of the world.
We found a lot of wonderful books at our local library too.

The books we used in our study were:

 Wonderful Animals of Australia by National Geographic,

Look What Came from Australia by Ken Davis,

Endangered Animals of Australia by Marie Allgor,

 Welcome to My Country: Australia by Peter North and Susan McKay,

 Koalas by Susan Louise Kra,

 Emus by Julie Murray,

and Foods of Australia by Barbara Sheen.

The girls also drew lots of pictures of animals in their notebooks of all of their favorite animals in Australia!

We finished up our study with an Australian feast!

We started our meal with Damper. This is a bread usually made over a fire. Bread is not one of my specialties. It was very sticky so I added a lot of flour which made the bread kind of dry. I'm sure it would taste better if you are a better bread maker than me. It was pretty good if it was warmed with lots of butter.

  

For our main meal we made Toad in the Hole. This is a meal with sausages in a bread, egg, and milk mixture. They use lamb sausages, but we used regular ones. It was okay. We added some cheese to the top to make it more tasty. We love cheese!

For dessert we had Lamingtons. These were definitely the highlight of the meal. These are very easy to make, but very messy! All you need is cake, chocolate and coconut. 

 

All of these recipes can be found in Foods of Australia by Barbara Sheen. 

Our next continent is Africa. I have no idea how we are going to break that up to make it easier to learn about. I have a little time to figure that out because we are doing a Science Unit next.  Tornadoes!
I hope you enjoyed our trip to Australia!
There is lots more Princess fun to come here on our blog!

Memories From Gettysburg

At the end of our last school year we finished our study about the Civil War. I found out that this year was the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg. I thought it would be a great time to go for a visit. We purchased tickets to visit the Blue Grey Alliance reenactment of some of the battles. It was an interesting trip. We really enjoyed into the woods where they had a huge Union camp. It is much cooler in the shade. We never figured out where the Confederates were located, we didn't actually try that hard to find them.

 

 

 Here are some of our memories from Gettysburg.

 

1. People from Texas have more fun! A man from Texas struck up a conversation with us on the bus while we were waiting to get to the parking lot to the battle area. They have much higher speed limits there, I did not know that.

 

 

2. Be careful where you go in the Union Camp to take pictures. Someone may be sleeping and blending in perfectly with his surroundings. Surprise!

 

 

 

3. The battlefield is very far away.

 

 

4. The people wearing the clothes from the Civil War time period are probably hotter than me.

 

 

5. If you cough too much there is a good chance you may throw up.

 

 

6. For the rest of Pants's life she will remember that "Gettysburg is freakin' Hot!". No, we really don't approve of that language, but it was funny at the time!

 

 

7. I have no need or desire to ever visit there again.

 

 

Overall, I am glad we went. We got to spend time together as a family and we all received a little more knowledge about that time in history. 

 

This is post 198 in our countdown to 200!

Giveaways very soon!



Smiles

What have we been doing?

 

We got all of our homeschool paperwork done for the year! Pie Pie has been officially promoted to 4th grade. Pants will be starting Kindergaten in the Fall too.

We have been attending a lot of birthday parties! Never a problem, friends and fun in the same place.

 

 The girls are enjoying the slide with their cousin at a really fun birthday party!

 

 

 Hanging out!

 

 

Learning all about the different reptiles at a Reptile Show.

 

 

 

Playing Pirates!

Watch out for Cannon Fire.

 

 

Where is the treasure?

 

 

We'll find it!

 

 

Finding insects too.

 

 

  What have you been doing this Summer so far!

Smiles,

Nikki!



Summer School is in Session!

We finally finished our official 180 days of school!

 I felt like a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders. Our portfolio is all ready to be evaluated and seen by our school district. To celebrate finishing school we went out for ice cream!

 

 

At the Boo Boo Princess Charm School for Girls we take a break from Math and Language Arts for the Summer. Those are the two subjects that Pie Pie does not like. We don't take a break from school all together. We do fun projects and LOTS of reading!

We have been currently working on some art projects from the fabulous book Art in Action 1 by Maja Pitamic. In the book you get to learn a little about the artists and then make your own project based on their work. If you are interested in making any of these projects all of them are explained in the book. 

 Our first projects are inspired by Matisse. These are pictures with lots of colors and color tones.

 

 

 

 

 

The second style is inspired by Seurat. These are dot paintings made by spattering paint with toothbrushes.

 

 

 

 

The third style is based on Lipunja which uses Earth pigments and texture.

 

 

 

Pants also did her own take on art with her pet shops and paint!

 

 

Messy, but fun!