Josiah's Birthday Fun

We recently celebrated Josiah's 10th birthday, with friends and later with family, and in between with some "wild" animals.
Here's a Smilebox as proof.

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An Animal Surprise

On our ride home from vacation last Friday, it was cloudy and rainy. It would have been a dismal day if we had not had some surprises along the way. Our favorite was a little petting zoo just off the interstate that we had never noticed before. Shortly after going through Macon, we were in need of a stretch break and saw a sign. The rain had stopped, so we pulled up by the gas station, paid a $1.00 entry fee, got food for the animals and took some time to enjoy more of God's creation.

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Time for a Vacation

We had a wonderful relaxing vacation revisiting our favorite island (so far, anyway), Jekyll. For almost a full week, we enjoyed the sunrises and sunsets on the beach.

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Smilebox for a Mouse

This is actually for Josiah, my little animal-loving boy. When we all got mice, he chose a tiny black one that turned out to be the tamest, cutest mouse I have ever seen.
The relationship they had was special and so I want to remember all of those happy times with this Smile Box.

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My Memories of May

This is our lonely homeschool room. Where are the kids? Hannah often goes up to her room to work on some of her assignments in piece and quiet. Josiah is probably outside chasing a bug. Tboy might still be at public school. We're not stuck to this table all day. Thank goodness! We do our reading on the couch or I read to them at the table while they eat. Even spelling and math and English are often done on the couch or even outside. Yay for home school.

Hannah and I were in the Spring Handbell Concert. Josiah did not participate this session, but Hannah is still very much into it. It really is a lot of fun.

The guys went bowling with some friends. They seem to have had a good time. I wasn't there. I'm glad Theron took them for some special time, though.

Reading and Cooking

It can be hard to find good books for our children to enjoy - ones that they like and we want them to read. Some of the same ones Hannah was fond of are not Josiah's "cup of tea". Enter Mr. Putter and Tabby, a hit with Josiah.

 

What fun books! They are by Cynthia Rylant. Josiah is pretty picky about the books he reads (i.e.- if he doesn't find it interesting, it's not worth his effort), but he gets into these and so do I. I find myself laughing at the antics of the characters and the situations they find themselves in. If you have a youngster who is ready for easy chapter books. Let me recommend Mr. Putter and Tabby.

 

Another thing I would recommend is teaching your children to cook. It worked for me today. Josiah offered to cook supper. I asked him what he would fix. He said tomato soup and grilled cheese, because I had taught him how.

Once he had the "go ahead" from me, he proceeded to get out the ingredients and with some supervision, was able to do everything except turn on the gas stove (which I have not taught him to do yet ;) ).

 

 

 

That's one very proud 8 year old!

 

 

 

Cooking up his favorite grub!

 

 

Flippin' it to perfection!

Bells are Ringing

This school year, Hannah, Josiah and I joined a bell choir. We've been practicing since September. On December 11th, we were part of Carol with the Bells at First Baptist Church in Lilburn. There were several different groups playing. Ours is called the Joyous Ringers and we rang Oh Come all Ye Faithful and Joy to the World.

 

 

The choir is directed by Phil Meyers.

 

 

 

Hannah and Josiah did very well and we enjoyed listening to the other choirs that performed, also.

 

 

 

OCC 2012 Packing Party

We have such a fun time doing this every year. We've been saving up stuff  for a year. Now the time has come to FILL THOSE BOXES!



This year we got premade boxes. Josiah noticed a neat picture on the bottom. Thanks to Mrs. Thomason, who coordinated everything.



Josiah had to try on and test things to make sure they were apropriate for the 8 year old boy he was packing his box for. Hannah is writing a note to go inside the box she is making for a girl.



We packed about 70 boxes this year and then loaded them in the van to be taken to the processing center.

Fun on a Budget

Recently a neighbor had another tree cut down.
For us, that means FREE wood chips.
We use it to mulch around flower beds, etc.
And it also serves an unintended purpose.



As the kids were digging out chips for me to add to my flower beds, they got the idea of
making a den of sorts in the huge pile.



Beaver Den 
Materials -$0
Hours to build -1 hr to 100 hours (endless play)
Instructions - none needed

Josiah's Apple Pie

"What cha takin' ma pitcher fer?"

 

"Well, you are the person who made this pie, are you not?"



 

"I did the stuff on the top o' the pie. See the D for Dad, the J for Josiah . . ."

"Yes, I see that. So you can't take the credit for cutting the apples and . . . "

 

"No. Am I in trouble?"

"No, no, no! But we'll still call it Josiah's pie."

Toothless Tuesday

"Look Ma, my toosh ish about ready to sall out."

 

 

"Yep, bubble gum did the trick."

No Baby Birds but, . . .

After some time, we noticed that Lancelot and Mist were not sitting on the eggs, so we took them out and candled them. We found them to be infertile as we suspected.
The plan is to give them some time without a nest box and then we'll try again later.
For now, what's the next exciting thing?
Josiah has been wanting a small pet that he can handle and train. After much talk of guinea pigs and other possible rodents, we decided on a mouse. They are small, don't make much noise, and from my experience are pleasant pets to have.
By the time we did our research and started gathering supplies, everyone in the family wanted a mouse. We learned that they are very social and enjoy being with other mice. So what started out as a pet for Josiah has become a family project. We planned to get all female mice, because they produce less odor, so we bought them from a store that sells ONLY FEMALE mice.
We got home with them and opened the box to transfer them to their cages. We have two ten gallon tanks with screen covers with plans to keep two mouse in each.

"Aren't they cute?"

I got mine out first and noticed something almost immediately as "he" crawled up my arm. Yes, I said "he". Not sure how this happened. I certainly did not notice in the store and was not even looking since it was an ALL FEMALE MICE store.

 

Needless to say, I had to keep mine seperate until we could do an exchange. There is also the possibility that any one of our females could be pregnant. We'll have to wait and see.

Theron had picked out a mouse similar in color to mine and named it PIRATE PETE, even though we are pretty sure it is a female. What other name could you give a mouse with a black spot over one eye?

"Hi ya, mateys!"

Hannah picked out a mouse that looks like the one I had when I was younger. Mine was called "May", probably because I got it in the month of May. Hannah calls hers JEMIMA.

"I'm a natural!"

Josiah got the sweetest mouse yet. It's fur is so silky and its name is SQUEEK.

 

We've had the mice one week and I exchanged my male for a female. Her name is PETUNIA and she shares a cage with PIRATE PETE. She was very shy at first, but the other mice drew her out and before we knew it Josiah had her on his hand.

 

Here's a close up of her thinking about coming out to play.

Friday Night at the Roses - Dissecting Owl Pellets

Well, it started as a simple study of birds for science as part of our My Father's World curriculum Exploration to the 1850s .





We looked at feathers under a microscope.
Then we drew diagrams of a birds digestive system.

This one is Joish's

We learned that the bird's crop allows it to eat alot of food really fast and then the crop sends the food to the stomach at a steady rate. The stomach breaks down some of the food, but the gizzard does the grinding. Some birds eat things that cannot be fully broken down like bones, fur, and even some seeds and beetle casings. These form a pellet, which the bird expels through its mouth.

Okay, are you grossed out? Well, anyway, I decided to order 3 such pellets. These came in the mail, and as a reward for finishing all school work for the week, the kids and I got to dissect them. Theron and Josiah worked as a team.

But before we did that, each of us tried an online dissection to help us get a feel for what we would be doing.





It's a cool site. You can find it at www.kidwings.com . It can be used as a prerequisite to the actual dissection or as a cheaper, less messy and easier alternative. We are going with the former this time.

We were ready to be "real" scientists! We carefully opened the foil-wrapped pellets, measured them, and inspected them. We determined that they are most likely from a barn owl by referencing our DK book on birds.



Next, we used toothpicks and tweezers to break apart the pellet and see what's inside.



There was alot of fur, tiny bones, and each pellet had at least one skull and a set of jaw bones.

This was my first exciting discovery - a jaw bone!

It was very tedious work and took alot of patience, being careful not to break the small bones. The interesting things we noted were that my pellet had alot of dried grasses in it. Hannah's had black fur as opposed to the gray fur of the others.
It took a good hour or two to complete. We were so tired. We tried to identify all of the different bones. They were all from some type of rodent.

I laid my bones out on the diagram provided. Notice the huge skull and jaw bones with one really overgrown tooth.
In front of the huge skull is a tiny skull and jaw bones along with some leg bones.
The pelvic bone probably goes with the smaller skull also. It seems a bit small for this big fella.
 

These are Hannah and Josiah and Theron's trays. There are some nice bones in there, too. Now, to just get them sorted. Wanna give it a try?