Fall Beauty

I'm posting these Fall pictures a little bit out of order, but I wanted to share some of the beautiful colors of Fall especially for my family and friends in the South who don't get to experience it.  Some of these I took at the local park this week, and the others I've snapped here and there around town throughout the month.  Enjoy!

This one was taken in our backyard looking at a tree
 that's in the neighbor's yard.

This one is in our new neighbor's, The Burleys, front yard.  I loved that it had so
 many colors going at the same time.

I'm not sure what these berries are, but I love the simplicity of them and the soft color of orange they have.

This one was taken at the park, looking across a little field towards some nearby homes.

Halie found this leaf in the yard and wanted to
 show it to me, so I snapped a picture.

I hope you enjoyed a tour of the local Autumn colors!  I also took some pictures of the kiddos while we were at the park and I'll try to post those next.

Creation Studies ~ Days 3 & 4

 Day 3 - God made dry land appear and covered it with plants, flowers, trees, and grass.

 The kids made handprint flowers.

For our cooking project that week we made flower cupcakes.

Halie and I had baked them, but hadn't decorated them yet.  The neighbor girls were here playing one afternoon while their parents were working on the house next door and they had gotten bored with playing outside.  So I let them help us finish up our cupcakes and then eat one for a snack.  It was a fun distraction for them for a little while.

Day 4 - God created the sun, moon, and stars

They had cheese suns one day for a snack.

I helped Halie with a fun little project about the phases of the moon.

I printed off a picture to help us out and we scraped the cream off of Oreo halves to match each one.  (That wasn't my original idea, I found that on the internet somewhere)  Then they became a snack.  : )

Here she is using blocks to do a little math worksheet introducing her to basic addition and subtraction. The blocks really helped her figure out the idea of "adding" together and "taking away" from.

Our crafty/cooking project for the week was making our own play-doh.  I found the idea on Pinterest and it's called "Galaxy Play-doh."

We tinted it a nice dark black and the kids added plastic stars...

...and glitter to it to create a "galaxy."

I wasn't sure how long this would hold Burl's attention, but he really enjoyed it and played with it for quite awhile.

Trying out different things with the stars.

LOTS of glitter was used in this project, and I learned my lesson for next time.  Cover the table with waxed paper or use cookie sheets to contain said glitter.  I was cleaning that stuff up for a week afterwards!

We rounded up some little balls to use as the sun and the moon.

After they started to get tired of the plastic stars, I gave them star shaped cookie cutters to use.

They really had a lot of fun doing this and played with it for a good long while, and even played with it again on another day while they were waiting on me to cook them some breakfast.

And another little bonus is that the plastic stars are glow in the dark so now they each have pretty stars on their ceilings that they love looking at once the lights go out.

More from September

One Sunday evening, Robert and the kids were all dressed in denim so before church we went out in the yard and snapped a few pictures with our phones.

Such handsome men I have!!

They looked so cute.

He was walking around the front yard waiting on us to be ready to leave and he looked so cute.  Like he was just mulling over some big problem in his head.  : )

Did your heart just melt?  That face gets me every time!

One afternoon I was busy in the house trying to get all the Fall decor put up (which by the way, if you would like to see you can start {here} and then follow the links to see the rest) and after awhile I went out in the yard to check on the kiddos and this is what I found!

They were having SO much fun!!

I'm also including 2 more video links for you to enjoy.  This first one is of an impromptu playhouse I made for the kids one afternoon.  We still had the humongo box that their Gator came in and one day it dawned on me that it would make a great little playhouse.  They had a blast with it for a few days before it finally gave out.

See that video {here}.

This second one is of Halie singing in the car.  We were on our way to pick up a pizza one evening and she was just singing away and it was so cute.  I snuck my phone out and captured a completely candid clip of it.  She still has no idea I did it.  It was a challenge to hold it up over my shoulder while driving a stick shift, but I managed to do it and without crashing, too!  Yay me!

See that one {here}.

That wraps up September.  I'll keep working on getting caught up and share some more of our school time projects and some October happenings.

Creation Studies - Day 2

In going back through these pictures I realized I somehow managed to not take one single picture of our Day 1 week.  Among other things, we did a little light box project that the kids really enjoyed.  It helped show them just how dark it was before God created light.  And honestly, it was a good object lesson even for me.  I guess I never fully realized just how complete that darkness was.  

The light box was just a shoe box that the kids painted black inside.  We cut a hole in one end and I placed an object in it while their eyes were closed and then they had to try to guess what was in there by looking through the hole.  Of course, you couldn't see even a speck of light so they wouldn't have a clue what the object was.  Then we cut a hole in the side of the box and put a flashlight up to it and then they could see.  It was a fun little project that helped us understand the creation of light.  

Our day 2 week we talked about the separating of the waters and how God created the sky in between them.  I found the idea for "Sky Jello" on Pinterest and we attempted it for ourselves.  It didn't turn out as good as the original, but it was still cute and a fun little cooking project.

They thought it was really yummy too.  : )

For a science project that week, we made a cloud identifier and we took it outside to see the different types of clouds.  It could have been fun if there had actually been any clouds that week.  It was mostly just smoke/exhaust/whatever from planes.

For math I made up this little cloud game.  She put the corresponding number of smaller "clouds" on each bigger cloud, and then we did some really simple and basic addition with it by picking two clouds and combining their smaller clouds to see what we got.

Another fun thing we did was make soap clouds.  I also found this idea on Pinterest.  We put a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave for about 2 minutes.

And it would puff up into these cool clouds.

She had fun watching that happen.

Afterwards, we crumbled the clouds all up into flakes/crumbs, added a little bit of water and food coloring and pressed the mix into cookie cutters to make soap bars for the kids.

Fun stuff!

September 2012 {Part 1}

September started us into a busy phase.

Our new neighbors were busily working on remodeling their new home so their kiddos spent lots of time in our yard playing with our kiddos.  Here they are enjoying some popsicles.  I didn't stage this picture either, that's how I found them.  All stuffed onto the swing and Gretchen just waiting for someone to drop her a treat.  : ) 

We changed the railing on Burl's crib to make it into a toddler bed.

What a big boy!  I think he fell out about 3 times in the first week, but ever since then he's done just fine.

We started up school time again.  Halie is doing pre-K work.

I include Burl in on the school time for the first little bit each day.  He's been learning colors.

Here he is doing some color sorting.

The weather started to turn just a bit chilly, and on one beautiful morning we took a break from school work and went to the park.

They had a blast collecting tons of acorns!

Best buddies!

I'm doing my best to get caught up on this ol' family blog.  I seem to always be running behind.  : (

We've been studying Creation so up next I'll share some of the things we've been doing to go along with that.