(And All My) Work Be Praise

This post requires completely random back-story, so if you'll indulge me for a minute: We drink raw milk from a farm about 45 minutes north of us (we own shares in the herd). We pick up milk once a week, but since it's such a drive, we share the pick-up with three other families so that each family only has to drive up once a month. (By the way, if anyone else local is interested in getting raw milk and joining our driving co-op, shoot me an e-mail.) All of that to say, once a month on a Tuesday, I pack up everyone (and three large coolers) and spend an hour and a half in the car. Back in the fall, I decided we should use that time to listen to something enriching. After a very unfortunate audio version of some Curious George stories, however, I decided to forego audiobooks from the library until I could ask around and get recommendations. For lack of any further inspiration (or, more precisely, lack of ability to remember to get something new at any point other  than Tue...

My little bean seed got big enough to re-plant in a pot with soil! We also got a few more books on plants: Plants Feed Me by Lizzy Rockwell A Seed in Need by Sam Godwin What are Seeds? by Molly Aloian How do plants help us? by Bobbie Kalman They're all pretty generic, but Levi really likes A Seed in Need . :)  Also this week, Levi and Owen watched a video on photosynthesis, found here . Who knows, we might have actually learned something about botany this spring after all!

Almost exactly eleven months ago, I set Silas up at the refrigerator with a hastily-constructed letter poster and some letter magnets. ( See it here. ) He's now a whiz at capital letters, including their phonetic sounds, but I realized recently that he doesn't know most of the lower-case letters at all. So I re-created our letter matching activity, but this time with lower-case letters on the poster! I ran out of room for y and z, but Silas made me squeeze them in with a pen later. Since last summer, we've managed to lose several of the big letter magnets. I fully expect to find them all if our stove ever has to be moved. Fortunately, Silas received these wooden letter magnets from his great-grandmother for Christmas, and I tucked them away for "the future." The future is here! The magnet set includes both upper and lower case, but I only gave him access to the capitals for now. We have several road trips coming up this summer, so I'm brainsto...

As I've mentioned previously, we're following the Well-Trained Mind suggestion for first grade science: twenty weeks on the animal kingdom, ten weeks on the human body, and ten weeks on botany. The first few units were fun and engaging, even for me. But botany? Botany is NOT my thing. The garden in my front yard? Planted by the people who lived her previously, weeded by my husband and my mother-in-law. The two plants inside my house? Both gifts, both watered by my husband. I can't tell you the names of flowers and I don't really care that I can't. It's just not interesting to me at all. (The world takes all types, right?) Still, something had to be done, and here's what it's looked so far: Book about Plants Seeds! Seeds! Seeds! by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace.  This is a really cute book, and thanks to the book's suggestion, we're saving seeds from different foods we eat to make a seed poster. From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons.  We always lo...