Our first Flat travelers have arrived....

Our first two flat travelers have arrived. A Flat Winter from Stafford, Virginia and an authentic Flat Stanley from Liverpool, England. He's still recovering from jet lag, so there's no picture yet, but you can see Flat Winter riding a whale tale in the park.....and K2 climbing the shark!

New resident...

Today I went out to the back porch and was surprised to find myself staring into the face of a mourning dove when I reached up for the Windex. This will be fun for us all to watch. No playing on the porch for a while!

Are you ready for the summer?

Summer has just begun and already there has been much water fun. Trips to the beach the pool has opened, the WOW garden at our favorite haunt, the Botanical Garden, and the Slip-N-Slide has been broken out.

We finally got our garden in....

This year we decided to plant some fruits and veggies. We are going with raised bed gardening, specifically something called Square Foot Gardening. I have just planted my seeds though; hopefully not too late. I was really trekking on the edge of the planting season for what I planted, but I am hopeful. Part of Square Foot Gardening is "vertical" growing. you build a trellis on the back side of the box and you can supposedly let watermelons and other heavy things grow vertically. I'm going to try some strong tomatoe cages, instead. They should be able to do the same thing; I think. We'll see. Here are some pics of CC and the boys getting the garden ready. Our neighbor was around to give Keona a hand finding worms.

Flat Traveling...A new adventure.

So this week we read Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown (circa 196os). This is a story that has started a whole fun movement that we are going to take part in for a while. But let's start from the beginning....

Flat Stanley is a boy who woke up one morning after being literally flattened by his bulliten board that fell on him during the night. The book continues on with his many adventures. Keona is really enjoying the whole thing, so I thought I'd go for overkill and sign us up to exchange flat travelers with other homeschoolers so we can find out about other places both exotic and not so exotic from the eyes of people who've been there. We are taking a pretty cool trip ourselves this summer, so we'll take several flats with us. Keona is a little wary of the project, but I'm sure once the first flat arrives in the mail and we get started he'll warm up to it more.

Here's Wikipedia's overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Stanley

And of course, someone has created a movie. It's a riot if you have some time to kill.

Flat Stanley's Holleywood Adventure
http://www.flatstanleymovie.com/

Here are a couple of Yahoo Groups if you want to join the fun...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FlatTravelers/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flat_travelers_homeschool/?yguid=302984278

There's tons of stuff out there. Just Google Flat Stanley or Flat travelers..... ENJOY!

1-2-3 Magic!

Yes, there is such thing as MAGIC! Last week we had an increasingly mouthy and uncooperative 3.5 year old. This week after having watched half a video and putting what we learned into practice, we have a beautifully cooperative child. Seriously, it took half a morning. Who knew? I knew something had to change when it seemed both of us parental units were frequently screaming ourselves purple and our son was spending lots of time crying in his room, so I went to the library seeking solace and information and came upon this video called 1 2 3 Magic. http://www.parentmagic.com/ Check it out if you are having any similar issues. Now, I have to go watch the rest of the video!

Hey, Mom! I have a GREAT idea....

Are some of my favorite words from Keona. He's really starting to put together some complex thoughts and come up with plans of his own. Today, out of the blue, he decided we needed to do something about the trash. He said we need to get a new trashcan and a slide...and we need to find a window in the house that doesn't have curtains to get in the way. Then we put the trashcan under the window and the slide goes in it. Then when we need to throw out the trash we open the window and let the trash go down the slide!

Oh yes, in a few years my little inventor will make my life simple and I'll be living on EASY STREET! LOL!!