Mapping our Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day! We made Maps of our Hearts last week to show us what is important in our hearts and what has made us who we are today. It was really interesting to see some of the memories that the kids have and the little details of their life that they see as important.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of my little Valentine's!

Love, Mom

Museum Day, Creating Sculpture

The girls are getting an extra museum day each month and they are not complaining! They are now old enough for the older 6 year old program but still like going with Erin to 1st Saturday's. We make a morning of it with lunch and walking the galleries. It is one of every one's favorite places to go. This month the project was on the stone sculpture artist Tim Lewis. The kids were given blocks of material that was foamy (if that is even a word!) that you could carve on.

They had steps to complete the project and you worked your way through the stations. First was the base painting so it could dry before the end. Paige chose black. Lindy and Erin, white.

The serious painter.

Lindy begins carving a ladybug.

Paige carved a dog.

There was lots of sanding and dust, miss clean fingers was not too happy about that!

After the sculpture was hot glued to the base it was time for glazing.

Erin made a heart.

Lindy and her ladybug.

The art project is always fun but we also really enjoy the gallery activity. Especially when we get to take it home! This month they gave everyone a folder with a story and Velcro pieces in the middle of the story to represent fill in the blanks. There was a little bag filled with pictures of all of the sculptures in the collection. As you read the story you fill in the "blanks" with a picture. A rebus story, art style. Very neat and they are still making stories this week.

I got my chicken salad fix at lunch where we all enjoyed chatting and giggling. We all love our little girl excursions!

She's as Cute as a Cupcake!

I love my Brownie girls! They all are so special and unique. When I say they are a great group of girls I mean they are GREAT! They treat each other kindly and with respect. Mackenzie is a special part of our group. She joined our troop right after our Daisy year. She is creative, funny, a little quiet, and can sell a serious amount of Girl Scout Cookies. She sold over 400 boxes this year, she needs to go into sales!

When her mom, Angie, told me she wanted to join our troop I was thrilled. I had her in Storybook Art class at co-op and we bonded. She always liked the art projects and was an eager learner. I also was ready to play matchmaker and fix her up with Lily. The two remind me of the other and I thought they would really hit it off. I was right they have become great friends at Brownies and I love seeing them form a friendship and grow up right before my eyes.

Angie has been taking cake decorating classes, much to my delight and I think it is rubbing off on all her kids. Mackenzie always puts effort into her Valentine's. Last year she came with little tote bags for all the girls filled with goodies. This year her dad, Jay, walked in with boxes and containers filled with cupcakes, cards, and a cake. Little did I know that there was a special container with a cake just for me. That's right an entire cake for me! Cupcakes for the kids but a cake all to myself. I could hardly wait to grab a fork. And believe me when I finally got to it, there was no disappointment. Her cupcakes were all packaged in adorable little individual boxes. Boxes so cute we had to keep them I could not throw them away. Later that night Lindy came up with the idea of packing the girls lunches for co-op in the little boxes and having boxed lunches. Too cute! Not sure how long they will hold up but I have never seen them so excited to eat lunch. I guess it's true that presentation if everything.










The Jackson family holds a special place in my heart. Not only do I love just talking with all of them, Angie and Jay are wonderfully positive people, but Cassie and Zach always keep me entertained. Last year when I had my spinal surgery they brought me three dinners in addition to an "extra" dish for my freezer. Mackenzie made me pictures and cards and delivered our meals with a smile.

They will be moving this summer as Jay will be finished with his training to be a pastor. I know they are excited for their move someplace out west. They have all worked hard and made a lot of sacrifices to reach this goal. It has been a joy to watch them embrace their dad's dream and help him achieve it. There will be a church in the Rocky states that will be blessed with a wonderful family to lead their way.

I am blessed to have had these past two years with Mackenzie and to have become friends with all of them.

Valentine's Day Brownies Style!

Claire and Annabel take a break from making their TV dinner



How much can you do in a 3 hour Brownie Meeting? A lot! One of the benefits of homeschooling is the opportunity to have a long meeting and really get into our projects. We can accomplish so much and the girls learn so much because they are able to have a "full experience".

My wonderfully talented culinary friend, fellow Brownie mom, ice cream/Wine Guy date, just all round dear friend, Aimee, worked with me to plan an awesome meeting. Combining the Make it Eat it Try it and the Brownie Girl Scouts Through the Years Try it and toss in a couple of extra requirements it was a full plate! The main idea was the invention of the TV dinner. The girls made spaghetti and meatballs, green beans, and cake all in their own little foil compartments. The girls had a blast making their own complete meal, although some were less than thrilled about touching raw meat to roll meatballs, but they are girls after all!

Mackenzie and Lily await meatball instructions.

Annabel was a pro at this!

Lily was less than thrilled about the raw meat, although I think she liked the finished product!

This is the best bunch of girls! They are so cooperative and have a good time with whatever we are doing.

Paige and Lindy set jewelry aside to dig in!

Mackenzie and Lily washed up and ready for cake making.

AnnMarie trying to stress out her Girl Scout leader and pretend she was going to eat cake batter!

Mary mixing it up in a mug and pouring into an individual foil cake pan. With a little help from Erin of course!

While our TV dinners were in the oven with close supervision by Mrs. Walton, we headed over to our friend Mrs. Smith's house. We had all kinds of Valentine's treats for her including some the girls had made at home and brought for her. She has really become someone special to the girls who they think of and love to do things together. This relationship has been wonderful for our troop and for Mrs. Smith as well. She looks forward to our visits and has a genuine interest in the girls and what they are doing. Although today we had an assignment for her to help us with telling a story from when she was a young girl. This will count toward our Listening to the Past Try it.

Mrs. Smith was born in 1915 and when she was the girls age she was attending a one room school house. She had pictures of her class to share with us. She is the only living person from her school class. We learned that her favorite thing to do was to go to her grandmothers house and visit. She loved to get cookies out of the cookie jar that was in the bottom of the old cupboard. She now has this cupboard in her home so we could all just imagine Mrs. Smith as a little girl getting cookies! We talked about her living on a farm and the girls had lots to share with the pets they have. Reading is Mrs. Smith's favorite past time and has been since she was a young girl. We have some big readers in our troop which she was very happy to hear about.

We said our goodbyes and were on our way home to eat our TV dinners.

Lily looks at a picture of Mrs. Smith when she was 6 years old.

Sharing stories and pictures from the past.

Showering Mrs. Smith with love!

"It's like Christmas!" she exclaimed. You can see the delight in her face.

When we returned home, AnnMarie shared her violin and a song she wrote. It was beautiful and all of her Brownie friends were very impressed.

We then worked on making a bar graph of our cookie sales! More on this in another post.

Dinner is ready!

Time to tune in to I Love Lucy! which also helped cover the entertainment portion of Through the Years.




The girls peeled back the foil and dug in!

No one made a peep as they ate and watched, the true meaning of a TV dinner.

We ended the meeting with our Valentine exchange and candy fest followed up with a quick badge presentation. All the girls worked so hard to earn all of their try its. I can't wait to see all those patches on their vests at the next meeting!

A Note from "Gooney" Herself...

Had to share Lindy and Paige's exciting news. We wrote Lois Lowry the Gooney Bird author an email to tell her how much we enjoyed her books. They shared their favorite books and why they liked Gooney. Well I hit send and thought this lady must be pretty busy with another book due out this spring. I even told the girls they might not get a response with her schedule and such.

Well, the next morning waiting in our inbox was a very nice note from Ms. Lowry. She was very happy to hear from them! She told them about another book she has written that she thinks they would enjoy as well. Of course I went right to the library web site to reserve it. They were positively beaming. It was the perfect way to wrap up a great literature experience.

This will be something we will have to do more often. I know they won't always get answers but I think it is good for them to let writers, artists, creators of anything, how much they enjoy and appreciate their work.

Cool - Chocolate Bowls!

Chocolate Bowls filled with strawberries and whipped cream


Ok, this was cool. We started our chocolate unit study off with a bang - literally! The kids were so excited to do this. Even though we were having a really busy day and the girls had to get to dance we squeezed it in anyway. I could not resist and the best part was they turned out.

The steps follow, fun to make and fun to eat!





Use small balloons, in my case regular balloons blown up very small!





Melt 2 cups of chocolate chips in microwave for 5 minutes on 50%

Start dipping balloons in the chocolate, we did less than half way since we were using the larger balloons.

Put on wax paper to set. I kept at room temp but to speed up we stuck in the fridge.

We used the extra chocolate to dip some of the strawberries.

Then of course we had to lick the bowl!

Why is my 12 year old messier than my 3 year old?!

Erin is ready to break the balloons!

Kyle carefully pulls his balloon away from the hardened chocolate. We had to be careful but they held up pretty well.

A finished bowl!

Fresh strawberries to fill with.

Lindy's creation

Paige loved this. All of the kids were so excited to eat their serving piece. Lots of laughs over "eating a bowl!"

Our Favorite Author...

is Lois Lowry!

It all started last summer. We began a family Book Club where I chose a book and reserved multiple copies from the library. Bill would read aloud as we all followed along. The girls shared a copy with me and I would show them where we were in the story. Paige had the official "bookmark" job and often we would read on the porch by candlelight and flashlight in our jammies with the fireflies lighting up around us.

So, I picked up The Willoughby's by Lois Lowry. It was a new release and sounded different. Parents wanting to get rid of their kids?! Well by chapter 2 we were all hooked, not an evening could go by without reading this. The vocabulary kept us on our toes and the craziness of the eccentric family was hilarious. We loved the ending and still refer to the Willoughby's to this day. I'd say they have made an impression!

Lindy and Paige are using the Sonlight Curriculum, loosely. We are following the literature and the next read aloud was Gooney Bird Greene also by Lois Lowry. Little did I know what a gem we were starting. Gooney is a rather eccentric second grader who is new at school. She loves to be the center of attention for everything. She finds her place in the class by being the best storyteller. Before I know it Gooney is teaching the class (and my girls!) about story writing. You need a beginning, a middle, and an end. It really helps if you add a suddenly, for a little suspense Gooney explains.

We were hooked! Walking through the library I saw out of the corner of my eye Gooney Bird the Fabulous. The girls were literally squealing that there was another Gooney book. She is such a lovable character, and character she is. We started reading the book when I realized that we were reading the third book and missed the second. I quickly reserved the second book, Gooney Bird and the Room Mother.

Back to Gooney the Fabulous. Gooney teaches the class about fables and creates a class project for each student to write their own fable with an animal starting with the first letter of their name. Guess what we will be doing at the end of the month?? I have Kyle and Ethan reading them too so they know what we are doing. I am going to do a unit study on Fables, Fairy Tales, Legends and Myths. Since we already know the basics from book one Lindy reminded me all we need is a suddenly and we are set to write our fables. She has already chosen a ladybug to represent her L name.

Two days ago we started Gooney Bird and the Room Mother. I could hardly wait to see what we would learn from Gooney this time! Grab your dictionary girls, Gooney has quite the vocabulary and is keeping the class on their toes using their new dictionaries to learn the definitions. Having not done much dictionary work, we had just done a basic alphabetizing worksheet days before. They understood the concept thank goodness because we need the adult dictionary for these words. So while the "class" in the book is looking up the word so are we. Then we read to see if we have the same definition as the story. All the while looking for a room mother when no one wants to be one. I have to admit (don't tell the girls) I had to peak at the end and see who the mysterious INCOGNITO (one of our words) room mother was. I have not done that since I was a kid!

What more can a homeschooling mom want? Great books that are entertaining, funny, and teach. Teach a subject like literature, vocabulary, resource skills, and writing. That is an unusual find. I feel like we have opened a huge treasure chest of ideas.

We have grown quite attached to Gooney and are looking forward to Gooney Bird is so Absurd this spring. Can't wait to see what we will learn from her next! Thank you Lois Lowry for your creative wisdom, it is greatly appreciated.