Where to begin...

This has been a very, very busy week! We crammed a lot into two weeks and this is a wrap up of it all!

First of all Madison had a History project due. Since we are studying American History and all of the great settlers of this great country, her project was to build a shoebox ship. I did not have the forethought to take pictures of each step...probably because daddy and I were fussing too much over our difference of opinion on how the ores should be situated. LOL! It was so funny when Madison finally spoke up and said "I really hate to say this but, I meant for this to be a fun project for us to do!" (Mind you it was not her idea for us to do it as a family) You can imagine what went through our adult minds when the mind of a 6 year old said that to us and about us. So I proceeded to say, "o.k. then, we will do this your and daddy's way and I wont change a thing." Then she said, "well mom it's not just you not making it fun, it's both of you." LOL! This may sound like too much coming from your child, but she wasn't being disrespectful in the least, she was actually being very cautious as she spoke these truthful words of wisdom.

So then as Phillip and I got on one accord, she took notice shortly afterwards and said, "see everything's better when we work together" LOL again! Here are some pictures of our finished product.

 We changed the sails at the last moment from plain white to blue (her favorite color) to make the ship pop! So basically we started with a shoebox, glued on some popsicle sticks all around to give it a wooden look. We made slits for the ores on either side of the ship and slid in some scraps of cardboard. We then cut out some square pieces of construction paper and taped them to the smaller popsicle sticks for the masts. Daddy drew and colored a Canadian Maple Leaf on a small piece of poster board as this was the country that she wanted her ship to represent. Daddy also drew the unicorn head for the front of the ship because she wanted it to resemble the Viking Ships from the days of old. We also attached a "tail" made of poster board. There are more intricate steps involved, but you get the idea. Once we all got focused on the task at hand...it truly was a fun family task for us to do.

We also attended a church picnic for the department that Phillip oversees at our church. The girls spent time "mining for gold." I think they got the idea from a t.v. show that we'd been watching on the discovery channel.

Because I never learned to swim as a child and still cant as an adult...I wanted to make sure that the girls had the opportunity to learn, no matter what. And I did. But this meant that we had to have a couple of days of schooling at the swim center! They did pretty good with that although they tried to trick me into letting them watch the other while they were swimming versus doing work while the other was in the pool. Mommy didn't fall for that though!

Chelsea doing work while Madison is in the pool

 

Madison doing work while Chelsea is in the pool

Another project that we did was build a little city. Well, I don't know if it is actually "building" as much as "creating" maybe?? Anyway, I got the idea from them, and we just went with it. It was a good learning experience though. They had to determine which type of buildings and businesses they normally see in a city and plan our city accordingly. Our city by the way was call Richville.

Gluing on the roads

City planning

Final product

And last but not least...halloween! After literally hours of scouring the Party City catalog, Madison decided on being Izzy the girl pirate from Jake and the Neverland Pirates. And Chelsea decided on Batgirl!