Ragnar Relay

200.9 miles of running.  Yep, that is a bit crazy, but it is a fun kind of crazy that makes you feel good.  We had a great team and had a lot of fun together.

While we were running from Huntington Beach to Coronado Island, James, his sister Megan and the 4 kids were the cheering squad along the way.

The kids love the team's mascot.  We hand it off at each exchange, and they kids love being on the catching end.

They were able to visit Aunt Eileen's ranch in San Marcos.

 

In case you can't tell from the picture, Ethan LOVES In 'n Out.  He eats an entire hamburger on his own, easily.  

And, he especially enjoys the chocolate shakes!

A good portion of the running route was close to the beach, so the kids enjoyed the time to play in the waves.

And of course, there was time for picnicking at the park as well.

Now that I see how much fun the kids had while we were out running, I'm a bit jealous.

My first leg was 5.4 miles in the city of Corona. It was a nice neighborhood, but was quite hilly and it was HOT!  It was almost 90 degrees.  There were people that had to be taken to the emergency room because of dehydration.  Not exactly the best way to start the race.  I was glad to be finished with that run and get back out of the sun.

My middle of the night run was 6.5 miles in Fallbrook.  It was about 2:30am and it felt so much better to not be running in the heat!.  I had a 3 mile hill to start with, but was able to finish coming down.  During the night we run with headlights, 'tail'lights and reflective vests so we can be very visable. 

And here I am taking off for my final run.  8.3 miles through the city of San Diego.  I ran right past the airport and through Seaport Village.  I had another steep hill that was a gut buster for the first 3 miles, but after that I was able to enjoy the ocean view in San Diego.

This is our team at the finish line, excited to be finished after about 34 hours of nonstop running and very little sleep.

We finished just as the sun was going down on the beach in Coronado Island.  It was BEAUTIFUL!!  It was a team effort with all the runners and support to cheer us on. 

Fish

Last week we focused on fish. I thought about getting the kids a pet fish, but I was concerned about Ethan attacking it with too much love. (Think about that girl from tiny toons, Elmyra...that would be him for sure).  We'll wait until next year.

Goldfish Graphing

As always, we like to play and learn with our food.  

Brielle even requested to do this again another day, probably because she wanted to eat goldfish crackers, but still.

Fish Puzzles

Ethan LOVES to do puzzles.  It is one of the only things I can get him to hold still for.

Pattern Fish

Brielle has finally grasped the concept of patterns, and has been very excited about it.  I laminated this sheet and she picked different patterns to color over and over.  We still need to work on coloring inside the lines. :)

Number Fish

We went fishing.  Which the kids loved and requested to do again and again.

After catching a fish I had them identify the number and then 'feed the fish'. They had to clip on the number of clothes pins to match the number on the fish.

Books

Favorites:
The Deep Blue Sea by Audrey Wood
Ten Little Fish by Audrey Wood
We've gotten these books a few times and my kids love them every time.  They like a lot of Audrey Wood's books.  Brielle requests them quite often.  She has them memorized so she now 'reads' them to Ethan (which makes my job easier!)

We had Dr. Seuss's Red Fish Blue Fish on CD to listen to in the car.  Brielle loves to listen to books and read along.

We also played a lot of Go Fish, and went to the Japanese Garden at City of Hope to feed the fish.

Resources:
Fish Worksheets
Ice-Fishing
Goldfish Graphs

Gardens

I am not a gardener.  It is not that I don't enjoy them, it is just that I am very good at killing them.  I'm hoping the kids can see at least one of their seeds sprout from this week!  We'll see.

 Measuring

We worked on measuring and number writing practice.  I drew my own flowers to go along with the worksheet that Musings of Me created.

The little kids enjoyed this one as well.  They also liked using the rulers to try to draw straight lines.

 Planting

Gavin and Lissy's Mom got everyone their own gloves and trowels.  They were VERY excited!

The kids loved planting the seeds 

digging and planting

and Ethan especially enjoyed the permission to play in the dirt.  He stayed interested much longer than the other kids who went of to play pirate.

It started raining for a minute and then the sun came out.  Gavin and Brielle immediately ran to check the seeds to see if the rain and sun had made the seeds start growing.

File Folder Games

I had some various garden themed games for the kids to play. 

This came from homeschool creations.  The kids chose a number and then turned it over to see if the trowel was hiding under it.  It was good number recognition practice.

  

Books

Ellie's favorite: Cecil's Garden by Holly Keller It is a good book about solving problems.

Ethan's favorite: Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert (Although, he usually just chooses whatever book is on top because he is racing to get a book to me before Ellie does, so if I am bored of reading a particular book I can just move it to the bottom of the stack :) 

My Favorite: Mortimer's First Garden by karma Wilson

Ethan was supposed to be napping.  I found him in his room laying all the books out.  He was anticipating the need for picture time.

Resources:

Gardening Worksheets

http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/2011/03/preschool-corner-gardening-unit.html

hand print flowers

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/2011/03/spring-brings-collection-of-simple.html

Spring Worksheets

http://thoughtsofesme.blogspot.com/2011/03/spring-has-sprung-new-unit.html

Garden Sensory Tub

http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2011/03/spring-garden-sensory-tub.html

Venus Fly Trap-Game

http://www.notimeforflashcards.com/2010/07/venus-fly-trap-craft.html

Seed Graphing

http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/2011/04/seed-graphing.html

Coffee Filter Flowers

http://www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com/2011/04/how-to-make-your-own-sunshine.html

Collection of Ideas

http://www.abcand123learning.com/2011/04/spring-gardening-planting-activities.html

Fun Field Trips

Our outings this week had nothing to do with space, so they deserve a post of their own.

Reagan Library-Simi Valley

I love that we live close enough to some of our extended family.  The kids are able to have some very great memory-building experiences with cousins, grandparents, great grandparents, etc.  4 generations exploring the world together is pretty amazing.

The highlight was being able to go on the Air Force One airplane, although the kids were hoping the airplane would actually go up in the sky.

Ethan loved also seeing the Fighter Jet.  The museum is set up on the hill with a breathtaking view.

Crystal Cove Beach

My little sister Nikki was in California with a family that she babysits.  We were able to meet up with her for a gorgeous day playing at the beach.

Ethan loved playing with the sand toys and watching the waves. 

 

And drinking the ocean water and sand.  I keep wondering if he is ever going to grow out of thinking that everything should be ingested.

Brielle went right for the waves.  We were able to see some dolphins and she LOVED it!

The kids were so excited for some fun Aunt Nikki play time

Once Ethan got down to the water, I couldn't keep him out. 

Space

The ideas for this week started building in my head when we moved into this house.  There is a little closet under the stairs that I knew would make a perfect place to play in 'outer space'.  

 We hung glow-in-the-dark stars and planets in the closet.  The kids spent all week pretending to get on space suits, get in their rockest and blast off into outerspace.

Star Counting

I wrote the number on the paper, Gavin and Ellie then put on the right number of star stickers.  Ethan and Coco put on as many stars as they could fit! 

Star Cookies

Since a star shaped cookie cutter is one of the only shapes I happen to have, I we made sugar cookies to decorate and eat.

Constellations

There are lots of worksheets that have a space theme (see the resources at the bottom of this post).  The kids enjoyed the dot-to-dots.  Ellie and I later went out star gazing to find some of the constellations we had talked about.

Orbiting Planets

I really wanted to use this idea of having the object for the planets be sized to correct scale, but with the ages of my kids, I decided not to worry about it this year.  We roughly picked out larger balls to represent bigger planets.  Gavin was being the sun, and the kids then picked balls and ran circles around each other pretending to orbit.

Later in the day Ethan got the balls out again and set up his own solar system with planets copying what we had done earlier.

Painting the Planets

I cut these out and hung them on the kitchen wall, which has kept Ellie asking all week about each of the planets.  It is a fun way to review.

Roll-A-Rocket

more simple number practice.  The kids thought when they were done building their paper rocket is was actually going to blast off, which is what inspired the next activity.

Rocket Explosion

Next time I want to do the Mentos/Coke explosion.  We did some simple science with baking soda and vinegar.  The kids LOVED it and asked to do it again and again.  We went through a lot of vinegar.  Ethan apparently likes the taste of vinegar.  He kept trying to stick his hands in and eat it.

Writing Practice

I slipped this in a sheet protector so we could use dry-erase marker.  I was impressed Ellie had the ability to sit long enough to do the whole alphabet in one sitting.  The sheet has the letters in very light dashes to trace over.  If she didn't get it quite right she erased and tried again.  She is still not great at writing letters on her own, but tracing over the lines she is getting pretty skilled with.

Books

Top Picks

Brielle: On The Launch Pad-Good practice for counting and recognizing numbers 1-12.  Ellie also loved that the numbers were hidden in the pages.  She chose this one a lot this week.

Ethan: My Space Adventure-it is a simple board book, but had some fun activities on each pages that all the kids liked (counting, colors, finding pictures etc.)

Oliver Who Would Not Sleep-interesting choice, since he is also not going to bed as easily, since switching to a 'big boy' bed.

Mine: Living in Space and Sun, Moon and Stars.  I love the Usborne books.  They have great information in them.  The kids will listen to them once, but because they are not a 'story' they don't choose them over and over like the others, but the are good 'reference' books for me to remember things that I learned a long time ago.

Resources:
http://homeschoolcreations.com/astronautpreschoolpack.html
http://thoughtsofesme.blogspot.com/2011/01/man-on-moon.html
http://www.learningpage.com/free_pages/galleries/space.html
http://www.hsprintables.com/files/AaLetter_Idea_Bank.pdf