Apple Picking!

While we were on vacation some of us went to this delightful little orchard, it was a beautiful place. The apples we got here were all for applesauce. In the past I've gone to a local produce stand to get my apples for applesauce. The price at the orchard was so good, it seemed stupid not to go pick!

This was the "interesting" thing...we picked off of the ground! (Did I hear some of you saying eww gross!?!?! ) It really wasn't too bad. We were able to choose good ones that were firm and had little or no soft spots. They sell them off the ground for $4 a bushel! This saved us at least $25! I felt it was worth it, and look forward to going again.










They have some for sale already picked for a little bit more than we paid.

School Room

I love to check out school rooms! It's always interesting to me to see how they display things, how they organize things, really just what they have going on in their room. My room is feeling a little more complete so I decided to share some pictures! I'm going to say that it's not done 100%, and I won't be shocked if it gets changed around a bit. I'd love to add a really nice world map,an area to hang the kid's art projects, and a work station for the little boys.


This is the view when you walk into the room... When we built our house, I HAD to have a formal dining room. I'm really happy now that I did, it makes an excellent school room! I hope some day to get a light something like this, we'll see!


We have two bookshelves in the room. They hold all sorts of stuff! This one holds math manipulative's, activities for Reuben and Titus, toys for them to play with, books to read, and some of my supplies. (pens, scissors,dry erase markers)


This shelf holds our core curriculum books ~ math, spelling, grammar, art, science, and bible. It also has some toys and activities for the little boys!


We have a total of 5 gutter shelves in this room! Whoever came up with this idea was a genius! They take up a small amount of space and hold a fair amount of books! I first saw this on my sisters blog.



This room is pretty small, in past years we worked at a small round table. My brain is non stop thinking of ways to improve spaces, it's a sickness, really! =) In my thinking I decided a counter top would take up much less space than the table...I was right! I LOVE the counter! It's turned out to be a wonderful thing! Getting it on the wall was a bit of a brainstorm, but with the advice of my dad, brother and Mark we (they) figured it out!



This is the "paper" holder up close! My awesome brother made this for me! I'm super excited with how it turned out. The idea for this came from this cute little blog! I loved it as soon as I saw it. I had a few changes because of the size of the space I wanted to put it, but I think it turned out great! Thanks Shawn!


Now onto a few of my favorite things in the room... I love having pictures in my room, it's great to be working on something and look up and see my favorite people and places! I probably have too many pretty things in this room, but we spend A LOT of time in this room. I wanted it to be pretty and functional!
The candy is something they get when they've done something great, or have done something without complaining!
The last picture... a verse to encourage, some pretty stuff, and a flashcard significant to our family!!






I hope you've enjoyed taking a peek into our school room! Thanks for stopping in!

Vacation Pictures

We had our family vacation (my side) last week, here are some of my favorite pictures.

Flight

I guess I'm like many who've gone before me, flight fascinates me. I could watch something fly for hours! We've been studying flight for a few weeks. I'm still hoping to accomplish a few more activities before our unit is done, we'll see how it goes!
We started by reading a book about the Wright brothers. It was a very interesting book! They were fascinating men. I think we all learned a lot from the book! We talked about experiments and how inventors have a lot of work to do before actually making a product. We did some wind resistance experiments on bikes, but due to the fact it wasn't windy we didn't really see any results. =)
We read Amelia Earhart's biography, and mapped out her route. We didn't find a lot of information on her, but we enjoyed reading what we found! As quick as we were done reading Brie had a lot of questions about women's rights. She had a hard time believing that women were not always a part of the work force. It is interesting how different things are now, kind of like it's opposite from how it used to be. When you live in a world where you see women in any job, you just assume it's always been that way.
We also read "The glorious flight", a story about Louis Bleriot. He was the first person to fly across the English channel. He made 11 planes before he had one that worked and flew the way he wanted it too. So we made 7 different airplanes (11 proved too many!!), named them, and then made estimations as to which would fly the best. I think Zeke was the closest.

Here are our planes...



I thought this one was pretty!


Zeke getting ready to test one.


Reuben and Titus getting in on the fun!


Brie trying one out!












One plane actually flying in the air!


Brie trying to get higher!



Close up, just because she's so pretty!



My cute little brown-eyed boy!