Week 27 march 29-April 22: Spring Break and Bees!

The last two weeks of March feel like they whizzed by in about four days! We did more traditional school work over what was our charter school spring break, and took a more relaxed un-school week last week! It just worked out that way! So here is a combination of the last two weeks activities rolled into one post!

Michael has been listening to SO many books recently. I feel a shift as he grows a little bit older this year...almost 11!! He wants to spend a lot more time alone, and doesn't play quite as much with the younger two. It has caused a riff in all three brothers relationships, as they scramble to reconfiguring their relationships around these changes. Parenting is uber challenging; dealing with all these shifts and changes and the effects it has on siblings, however watching the dynamics change when I have space for a little perspective sure makes life interesting!

They had their very first co-op day without me while our babysitter, the Amazing D.L., took care of them. Avery was especially worried, but they went to a familiar park and he did awesome! Here they are, all packed up and posing for a picture so I could send it to D to help remember all their items. 

We are testing ways to help our pasture grow better. My "school" this winter has been learning about the benefits of rotation grazing, for the soil, for the animal, for the earth. I *think* I have a plan down, and the boys helped me sow seeds into tilled and not-tilled spaces to see how that effects growth rate. 

Michael baked a s'mores pie from a recipe card from our cooking subscription box we had last year! He did the ENTIRE thing himself, as I was working that day and, again, our amazing babysitter let's him do his thing while supervising. :D

One day with co-op we visited a local park with a community garden space. They have many mason bee hives and are just starting to fill them with last years tubes to prepare for hatching. We made mason bee headbands, the kids added proboscis as well and drank liquid from flowers. 

Avery's favorite part of the garden was the carnivorous plants. He plans to add some to our garden space in our backyard this summer. Cool fact, their growing material is 50/50 blend of pearlite (a type of rock) and peat moss, which means they grow without ANY soil. I thought that was fascinating. 

Cool poster in the garden.

We have a patch of miners lettuce that grows naturally in our yard. Avery and Emmet especially love it and often go munching in the spring. Avery and I were nibbling one day and also discovered dandelion, clover, and dead nettle, also all edible plants! We call it our salad buffet now. 

We had Fluxx Anatomy from the library. The boys enjoyed it a lot! I hope to do a more in depth study of body functions at some point soon and will have to get this game for our collection. 

More cooking! Learning how to make onion rings from scratch. Emmet said "Wait! I need goggles!" and wore them to cut the onion!

Our happy place!! Now TWO libraries are open for browsing in our area!

We have a super fun game called Pirates. You build the little pirate ships, then sail from island to island collecting gold coins, but watch out! Another ship can get in range and sink you! This game is AWESOME visual game for math concepts. You place the islands where ever you want, and use credit card size plaques that represent each ships movement space. Each ship has a specific amount of movement each turn and you use the card to measure that space out. Once in range of an island you can collect gold or in range of another ship you can fire your cannons! A great game for measurement skill and visual estimation of space. 

We had one of our co-op friends over for a special day to teach them how to make cookies! Michael was SO excited to teach a class. He made a step by step plan, wrote it on papers to hand out to our friend and each brother, got all the ingredients out and measuring tools, and prepared aprons for everyone. I think he enjoyed it, however his brothers quickly abandoned the group to play somewhere else as Michael was VERY excited and had a specific plan to follow. The friend I think enjoyed baking with Michael, but it was a little strict on what had to happen when. Ha ha. It was a good learning opportunity, and in the end we had some very yummy cookies.

Our first flowers here are usually our camellia bush! The boys were super excited and picked a bunch to arrange in jars for the house. 

Easter!! 

Our cornish cross chickens (destined to be meat) needed their house cleaned. So we turned them out to the grass and watched them closely (dogs, cats, birds, so many things to eat tiny chickens!). 

The feed we buy for our chickens is whole grains, too big for baby chicks! We don't have a great way to grind it, but tried out this meat grinder. It worked pretty well!

Overall it was a great two weeks! Hope your spring break and Easter were hoppy! ;)

The Dillmans