Look what hatched!

Last week we had an amazing discovery!  The 2 cocoons we had found about 2 months ago had hatched...and they weren't cocoons after all!  They were egg cases!

Can you guess what kind of creatures came out???

Praying mantises!

Yes, she was brave enough to hold the stick which the egg case was attached to...and if you look closely you can see that there is a baby praying mantis on each end of the stick....and boy do they move fast!

Then we released them back into our garden!  Look closely!

Tadpole to Frog Update...

BIG discovery today in our household!  Tadpole now has 2 back legs and *drum roll please* 2 front legs!

Yesterday he was only hanging in there with 2 back legs and one front leg.

Hooray little guy!  Now you've progressed to the next picture on our "growth chart"!

Soon it will be time to say "goodbye".

In other news, I've ordered Isabel's homeschool curriculum for next year from Catholic Heritage Curricula!  I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas Day!   For those of you not-in-the-know, we have decided to start homeschooling her starting in August!  (She would otherwise be in the 4 year old preschool class).  She had her last day at our church's preschool this Wednesday and while she did just great, I was in tears!  Although I feel very confident about our decision to homeschool her next year, it is still difficult to leave a preschool program with which we were so very pleased!

It's hard to say "goodbye".

H is for......

HOARDING!  

Isabel has this habit of hiding things under her pillow....on this day it happened to be black socks, a rubber frog and a whole bunch of kleenex!

HOUSES!  Bird houses, to be exact.  Isabel painted these which she received as a birthday gift.

HAIRCUTS!  For both Isabel and the grass she grew last week!

HEART toast with fresh strawberry jam!

HEART sponged H's....

HELPING Mommy sort silverware.

WHOLE body pictures....Okay, I know it doesn't really start with the letter H, but it does start with the "H" sound....and at the end we labeled all the body parts that we could think of that begin with the letter H!  She was a little confused at first (which is why the solemn look at the beginning) but absolutely loved coloring herself in!

HONEYSUCKLE!  We gathered honeysuckle from the sides of the woods that surround our neighborhood one afternoon and I taught Iz how to bite off and spit out the green stem part and suck the sweet nectar (I know, kinda red-necky, isn't it?)  But what kid doesn't love to do this??  She was no exception!  At first she wanted me to bite off the ends, but once she figured out how to do it, she couldn't get enough honeysuckle.  We brought a stem home to see if the other flowers would open.

HEAVENLY dessert!  In honor of Ascension Thursday/Sunday we made heavenly dessert which did not turn out quite as pretty or as delicious as the ones at this website where I found the recipe.  But it was fun to be able to talk about how Ascension Thursday/Sunday is a special day we remember Christ ascending into heaven!

HUMMINGBIRDS!  We learned about them, circled them out of our Big Backyard magazine, made our own hummingbird feeder and refreshed the food in our old feeder!  Oh....and did I mention that we spotted our first hummingbird of the season during H week???  What a blessing!

HOLY COW THIS WAS A LONG WEEK!   Well, yes, that's because it was actually spread over 2 weeks.  I was sick for one week which really set us back so I decided to turn H week into two!  This worked out nicely because to finish up H week we ended on Pentecost Sunday, which of course is when we remember the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles!

We talked about how the Holy Spirit is part of the Trinity.  And to "show" her what three-in-one meant, I took three candles and lit them separately.  Then I took the three candles and made the flames touch, which turned into one big flame...and then I'd separate them back out.  Not sure how much of that she really processed, but it was a cool visual and she was really intrigued by the flame!

We also did the Hokie Pokie and played Hide and Seek.
We did a "Holy Spirit" tong activity where she moved doves from one container to another using tongs.

We read:  Hands Are Not For Hitting, Hug, Horns & Toes & In Between, Hippos Go Berserk, The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog.

We ate:  ham, hamburger, hashbrowns, honey, and my favorite: a Humboldt squid hot dog.  I wish I had taken a picture of it, but basically you cut a hot dog into thirds and stick several pieces of dry spaghetti through the center of the hot dog....boil it in water until the spaghetti is cooked and wallah!  You have squid dogs.  All from Family F.un magazine!

I like ostriches!

Today we were reading a make-your-own book that we cut out of Big Back.yard magazine about grassland animals. 

When we got to the ostrich, she exclaimed, "Oh! I love ostriches, they're my favorite!"

I was completely shocked...I had never heard that she was into ostriches before.

So I replied, "Oh really? What do you like about them?"  (I was genuinely curious).

She said, "Oh I like that they can run fast and I like their tailfeathers and I like their long neck...they're just great!"

Ostriches!  Go figure!

Homemade Naan

Last week Isabel and I made naan (indian bread) from scratch! It was time consuming but pretty tasty!

We mixed the dough and she helped me pound knead it!

Here is a picture of the dough before.....

And after....

She was impressed that once she woke up from her nap, the dough had really risen!

We pinched the dough into balls and let it rise again, before rolling it out flat....

and then we fried them in a pan!  Serve your naan (here's the recipe we used)  with curried coconut chicken.

Delicious! :)

G Week!

Isabel made upper and lowercase G out of glitter glue....glitter glue is always a hit in our house.

We came up with a gazillion G words on the chalkboard this week...okay maybe not a gazillion! 

She finger-traced the letter G and did some letter tracing worksheets and a G letter search.  This was the first letter search we had done and she liked searching out the Gs and circling them.

We watched the wheatgrass seeds she had planted begin to sprout and grow!  She remembered every morning to check the frog planter to see how much the grass had grown.

 At the beginning of the week:

By the end of the week:

We did some grocery shopping together :)  Nothing like practical life!

We waited for and watched the garbage truck take away our stinky trash.

She helped me do some gardening....pulling the weeds, watering our vegetable plants and noting which vegetables were sprouting.

We gleaned the fields at a strawberry patch!  Okay...so gleaning is technically gathering crops after the first harvesters have gone through...so we weren't actually gleaning.  "Harvesting" or just plain "pickin'" strawberries is more like it!  She ate them as fast as I could pick them and it was alot of fun since the berries were beautiful and soooo sweet!

We had GOBS of whipped cream to go with our strawberries.  Iz ate this whole plate.

I made some Gooey Goop from a F.amily Fun magazine recipe and we both had fun playing with it.  It was a really cool texture activity because the goop would initially have a more solid texture while you were picking it up, but as soon as it was in your hands it became a gooey liquid!  Mommy and Daddy were equally amazed by it's consistency!  The best part is, it washed off VERY easily, much to my surprise!

G week was the perfect week to talk a little more indepth about God.  We read the Little Golden Book about God, which is a family favorite.  And I found a "To God be the Glory" coloring page. 

G foods included:  grapefruit (this was a big hit since we haven't had it in awhile), granola bars, and goldfish.

Finally we went not once, but twice to feed the wild canadian geese at Shelley Lake.  Isabel was braver than many of the adults there.  She handfed the noisy, honking and sometimes pushy geese in true Isabel style, without any reservations or hesitation!  One goose even decided to jump up onto the rock (from which she was feeding them) and sat right beside her.  The only problem we had was that sometimes a particular goose would steal a large chunk of bread straight out of Iz's hand before she could break off a small piece for it.  But she just laughed and laughed...she didn't mind at all.

Mother's Day 2010.

We had a very special Mother's Day this year.  Every year is special as I get to reflect on the wonderful blessing that Isabel and my heavenly babies are to me, and as I come to a better understanding of the blessing my own mother was and is for me.  It is remarkable to go through the love, challenges, tears and trials of raising a child and to realize that your own mother has gone through all of that for love of you.  Having your own child really allows you to come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of parental love and sacrifice.

So I got up and made homemade strawberry shortcake for Mother's Day breakfast.  I know, mothers aren't typically supposed to cook for themselves on Mother's Day, but I was really excited to prepare this for myself, so I didn't mind :)  And everyone enjoyed it!

Then we scrambled to make it to 9:30am Mass and afterwards went to Shelley Lake so Daddy could experience the fun that is feeding the geese (this was the second goose feeding episode from "G week").  Then we had some family playground time and then headed home for lunch.

What's that you say?? You want to see more video from the great goose feeding???
Okay, scroll down to the very bottom :)

After lunch we went to Falls Lake and walked along the water, enjoying nature and collecting smooth stones and opened clam shells from the lake.  We had a couple neat discoveries there including a turtle shell and 2 lizards (neither of which we could catch, sadly). 

After the lake, we headed over to Grandma's house and Rob cooked hamburgers for me, Grandma and Grandpa Holmes and Isabel.  It was a great end to the day!

The Letter F.

We had a whole bunch of FUN during F week! 

We thought of lots of F words to write and draw on our chalkboard.

We did some letter practice.

We made an F out of feathers!

We built a farm out of pipe cleaners (no, I'm not this creative...it was a clearance kit I found, and it was HARD to do!).

She did a color matching activity with fish stickers.

I had her pick out stickers of animals that would live on a farm and stick them to a sheet.

We also did numbering 1-12 with face stickers.  She is really good at 1-6, but we still need practice from 7-12.

She conveniently turned FOUR during F week!  Yay!


We made our thank you notes (for her birthday party), creating "fingerpaint frogs" from an idea out of Fa.mily Fun magazine.

We talked about the life cycle of a frog.  She came home from preschool with a great diagram of this and I was very excited because I posted it behind her new FROG life cycle aquarium tank she got for her birthday!  We went and caught tadpoles this week and she had the BEST time doing this....it was wayyyy more fun for her this year than last year.  She was a muddy mess with the biggest grin you can imagine holding tadpoles in both hands in delight!  We transferred them to her tank and have been observing them all this week.  (Picture below is of her dropping in a food pellet, not dropping in a tadpole) ;)

 She painted a Frog planter which she received for her birthday!  And we planted the wheatgrass seeds that will soon sprout out of it!

We did some flower arranging.  I picked them, she arranged them.

She drew a picture of her family (including the cat and dog) and we talked about what makes a family, and how we are also part of God's family.

We read a coloring book story about St. Francis of Assisi.  We have a St. Francis statue in our garden in which he is holding a small bowl (for bird food or water) and we talked about his special love for animals and nature.  I thought he would be an excellent saint for her to be able to relate to, since she has a special love for God's creatures too!  It was kind of a long story, but she sat very still and patiently listened.

It worked out great, because at the end of the week, our neighbors invited us over for a fire!  Yes, a small campfire where we toasted marshmallows...she loved getting to stay up while it was growing dark.