This and That

Wow, it's the middle of October!!! And my favorite time of year!

        Crisp air                         Red leaves            Nutmeg
 

Steaming drinks in my cup     Yellow 

Garden harvest                       Apple picking                   Canning

Piles of Leaves       Orange   Cloves    
 Football      

Cinnamon    Brown   Piles of Leaves    Pumpkin
 *******************************************************************

Life in the Donaldson home:

Nana and PopPop came for a wonderful visit in September.  They accompanied us to the Alpaca farm. The kids got to spend some great quality time with them and we are hopeful that we can make a trip to visit them around the holidays. My parents came down for a day and there lots of "old stories" going around - one of my favorite things about family gatherings is all the reminiscing.  

While on a visit to my parents house to make "no-mato sauce" (more on that later!) my Dad showed up with a couple of his buddies and a dirty rusted snowmobile on the trailer. Turns out a few years back some crazy sled-necks were trying to ride their snowmobiles across the lake.  Clearly no one told them that sleds should only be rode on frozen water. 
A local rancher saw the sled sticking out of the lake and called up my Dad to see if he wanted it. After bringing the sled home several creatures began making an appearance! We caught 5 crawdads and got to see lots of barnacles attached to the sled. It turned into a great science day!

Last week we went on another field trip. And I forgot my camera. Again. Very sad because the kids had a wonderful time! 
We visited Summit Aviation at our local airport.  All the kids got to sit in a plane and pretend to fly.  We learned how fast and how far the small four-seater could go.  
Then we got to go visit the airport fire station and sit in the fire trucks! These fire trucks are lime green, not red! And one truck had the steering wheel in the center rather than the side; the reason for that is one fireman can drive the truck and work to put out the fire!  

We started homeschool in September.  Bug is working at a 1st grade level.  I had planned to My Father's World for his curriculum but it is not challenging enough for him.  I've come up with a program for him that is working quite well!
Cowboy is at the preschool level.  He is learning to write his name and other pre-writing activities.  He is also working on the phonetic alphabet and some pre-reading skills.
I plan to post more on school and our schedule.

AWANA is underway and going well.  The boys are enjoying time with friends and get so excited to memorize scripture for which they earn patches on their vests. 

We helped decorate and then rode on the AWANA float for the local Fall Festival parade. 
We will also be participating in Operation Christmas Child - something I used to do with my mother every year.  A great family tradition to carry on with my little ones!

What we are gearing up for:

Field trip to Museum of the Rockies - Yay!
 
Harvest Festival at our church - Fun!

Field Trip to a local Donut Shop - yum! 

Packing our shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child - more info here

Making Apple Cider - even more delish!
 
Building a "Thankful tree" for November

Happy Harvest!
MadCounty Mama 
 

Weekly Pics

Funny faces... :)

The mighty wasp killers...

Gunner claiming the slide

What Princess does during school....

Backyard "camping"

Cooking dinner

Hoodie-girl!

PreK

MadCounty Mama

Back in the Swing of Things!

This week we started home school and I finally prepared a menu again after not having one ALL summer!
After a bit of rough start on Monday, we went outside and made a new friend!

Lots of Straw

A hard worker

Meet "Franklin"

My eldest is 4 1/2 and since we did preschool last year, he is working at a Kindergarten/1st grade level. I am still making up my own curriculum based on others I've found online.  We are doing less worksheets and more hands on this year!  We've started Teach Your Child to Read in a 100 Easy Lessons.  The first lessons are a lot of review for him but we are moving quickly and he is already sounding out words in our Bob Books. We're also using flash cards to learn sight words and are learning about short/long vowel sounds.  When school supplies were on sale, I picked up a dry erase board to encourage proper handwriting and he loves it! It has shapes, numbers and letters on it to trace.

Handwriting practice

 For math I printed out a 100's chart.  I really like this one b/c you can customize it - I printed out a counting by 2's chart and a 5's chart and laminated them. We're also learning to tell time, roman numerals, even & odd numbers, simple addition/subtraction, lacing activities, patterns and comparison.
I found this great book, Simple Science Fun, for our hands on science lessons! So far it has been great!

Excited Student

A kabob skewer thru a balloon w/out popping it!

My middle, 2 years, is doing the phonetic alphabet, sign language, number recognition, reviewing shapes and simple counting. 

Busy Bee

We also do a Bible story/lesson with a craft every Monday and learn our memory verse for the week.
Friday is extra-curricular - Music theory-the ground rules for starting piano and eventually guitar; computer time; field trips and/or playdates.

More to come, stay tuned!!

MadCounty Mama

Summer Recap

Summer has once again gone by fast but this year I am looking forward to fall. Already I am enjoying the cooler temps, especially in the evening when it is no longer still 80* at 10pm!
Life has gotten a bit busier as I have join the Tastefully Simple team as a consultant.  I am very excited about this new adventure and look forward to expanding my business.  I am working hard at getting my name out there and introducing the company to those who haven't heard of it.
At this point I have not decided when to resume our homeschool lessons and because we are still in preschool I have that luxury! It may possibly be when the snow flies as we are trying to get the most out of what remaining nice weather we have; we are still doing Saturday night Bible group; we are starting a Wednesday night group; playgroup meetings and it is getting close to harvest time/canning/butchering/cider making/applesauce time. I've already canned some green beans - will be doing more of those soon and hoping to make some crab-apple jelly.  Needless to say, this is a super busy time of year for me!
A little recap of our summer:

4th of July

All American Girl

Slip 'n' Slide Fun

Camping

Gram cooking in the rain

County Fair - Where is he?

That's all for now!
MadCounty Mama

Rainy Day = Catching Up

When I woke in the middle of the night to rain steadily falling on the rooftop, I was pleased and hopeful that it would last thru the day.  Why? I need a rainy day to catch up on all my housework, projects and other indoor activities that get neglected this time of year.  So far my morning has been incredibly productive and now that all three! Yep ALL 3 kiddos are napping AT THE SAME TIME!!! there is a bit of time to catch up on my blog.
April was a busy month for us.  PreacherMan was working at home on the ministry website, meeting with folks and reading/writing.
In preschool we did a lot of activities for the upcoming Holy week and Resurrection Sunday. More on that here.
Before I knew it May was here. We started the month at a birthday party and we ended the month with another! With several birthdays, family gatherings, warmer weather and PreacherMan going back to work outside of the home, May flew by and left me wondering where exactly am I?
Now almost a full week into the month of June the garden is planted and the weather is finely starting to act like summer is coming.  I know it will fly by too and hopefully I am able to find a bit of time to write.
For Now~
MadCounty Mama

April Activities

We started our lesson with the story of Jesus traveling to Jerusalem, discussing how they traveled back then and the importance of riding a colt and how the people greeted Him.  Our craft was to color this donkey, cut it out and put it together.  I used brads on one so that he "walks" and just glued the other.

 

Memory Verse: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Acts 16:31

Then we took a piece of green construction paper, folded it hot dog style, and made 1/2" rectangle shaped cuts where the edges met. Unfold to reveal a palm branch!

For the week leading up to Resurrection Sunday we focused on the Bible stories leading up to that day and did some coloring sheets as well as a hand-print lamb craft.  On the back was to be the memory verse for that week, but it didn't quite make it.

 

Memory Verse: "This is how we know what love is, Jesus Christ laid down his life for us." 

1 John 3:16

This was just a sheet of black foam cut out in the shape of my hand. Then a piece of white cardstock cut out like a cloud, glued to black foam.  The boys glues cotton balls on for the wool, some googly eyes, more black foam for ears and some pink of a nose.


MadCounty Mama

All About Shapes!!!

Although Sugar already knows his shapes, Spice is just learning and this was a great activity for both of them.  It had lots of cutting, pasting, coloring, and imagination involved.  The favorite page for both was the robot page.  Here's a few shots of Sugar's Shape Book:

Front Cover

Sugar's Robot

Sugar's Caterpillar

Collage

 

Back Cover

    

Thanks to Preschool Playbook for such a great idea!

MadCounty Mama

Donaldson Academy

Here's a few pics of our new classroom.

We did a little rearranging and added a few key elements to round out our space.  I'm sure we will be adding to it!