Wednesday, April 18, 2012

My Father's World--The Letter B (Butterfly)

I'm always amazed at how our homeschool lessons fit in with our life circumstances.  Just as we were studying the letter B with the key words "God can make me new" we were getting ready for Easter, celebrating the New Life we have in Christ.
I also had the awesome priviledge of photographing one of my friend's births, capturing a new life on camera!
Due to our busy-ness with these things and also 2 of our kids catching another stomach flu which put them out for a couple of days, we ended up spending 2 weeks on butterflies.


Jeremiah tried to catch a butterfly every day but wasn't successful. 
We saw a few but they got away...



Butterfly-shaped grilled cheese for lunch.


The boys had their last week of swimming lessons. 
I am so happy with the progress they made over the last 6 weeks. 
Jer is swimming very, very well and Justus is getting there!


These butterfly cut-outs were part of the hand-me-downs that various homeschooling friends gave me last year.  Since we didn't have tissue paper to glue to them for stained-glass-like window decorations, we just glued them to our binder pages and colored them.


We read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, along with other butterfly books, and the kids made their own books, illustrating the story.  This was Ali's.









 
Our little friend William is ALWAYS having lemonade stands to make money.  After helping William with his stand one day, Ali declared she wanted to do a stand in our yard.  Her friend Lindsay came over to help.  They made the cookies and the lemonade and sat out on the curb for 3 hours in the hot, hot sun!  It wasn't a great time of day so the customers were fairly sparse but they made around $7.  It was a lot of work for Mom but I was pleased with how much they learned just from the experience.  Cooking, customer service, math skills, business skills, and manners lessons all rolled into one project!


My folks went out of town for a week for spring break and so Jeremiah was ecstatic to take care of Sally the Salamander, my mom's class pet.  He did a wonderful job!  I'm convinced that he'll probably get a job at Reptile Gardens someday.  He loves animals, especially reptiles!


Josiah worked a booth at the Backyard Show in town and showcased the furniture that he and my dad build.  He built this swing himself!  I want one for our yard!  The kids took turns hanging out at the show with him and it turned out to be very educational.  They had booths on planting flowers and bugs and worms and let the kids plant marigolds to take home and take little cups of ladybugs home.  In the parking lot there was a car show so the boys ran around getting their picture taken with the cars that looked like Lightning McQueen, Finn McMissile, Tow Mater, and  the Hudson Hornet.





I spent a full day at the hospital on Good Friday as my friend Whitney labored, waiting for that big moment to photograph her birth.  It was by far the coolest thing I've ever had the honor of photographing!  She was a trooper!  She was a few minutes shy of 13 days overdue, had a 15 hour labor in the hospital, and refused an epidural!  She didn't know the gender of the baby and she cried with tears of joy when Annabelle Sage, her 3rd baby, and 1st girl, was born!  It was amazing and miraculous! 


On Palm Sunday, the kids went to the church for a Benjamin Box thing and they made a box with resurrection eggs in it, and each family was given a story that goes along with the box called "Benjamin's Box."  For Easter dinner we had 3 of our favorite families over, and my brother Grant, for a big meal and the kids did several rounds of Easter egg hunting. 




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