Family Schooling Summary: Art class on Paul Klee and Trick or Treat through History

In this week's art class the teacher taught the kids about Paul Klee.  She showed them several books with images of his paintings and then encouraged them to try to do their own painting in his style. 

 It was interesting to see how each of my kids had their own unique interpretation of his style.

On Friday we went trick-or-treating through history at one of our local historic manor houses.

 Every room and building of the museum had different characters from history giving out candy and telling a little about themselves.

 Betsy Ross was my favorite. We just finished reading a book about her, so her story was fresh in our minds.

 It was also fun to see the museum and various out buildings all decorated with scary Halloween themes.

Field Trip: Autumn Tour on the Walkersville Train

 The Walkersville Train is an old diesel electric. The engine is from the 1940s and the passenger cars are from the 1920s. 

 The seat backs slide so you could face whichever way you preferred.

 We rode for an hour and it was pretty chilly with the fall temperatures, but we saw some fall colors and picturesque farmland.  It was fun to imagine what it would have been like for people in the 1920s as they rode the train.

 The conductor collected our tickets.

 After the ride we walked around to look at some of the other train cars that they are working on restoring.

Shark Party: Happy Birthday S!

  Brother S has been planning his shark birthday party for a long time.  When we saw this big shark pinata at Walmart we HAD to get it for the party.   We had pizza and a variety of gold fish crackers.

 The kids set up an "ocean" in the toy room. We played "walk the plank" with everyone assigned to do various things like walk blind folded, skip down the plank, hop on one foot etc.

Then we made it even harder.  They had to throw a little shark into the great white's mouth. 

 Success! Cousin B was the first winner. She got a little stuffed shark for her prize. 

 We tested out several variations of "ocean cake" made with jello.  We discovered that the most important things were: #1 insert gummy fish and sharks into the "ocean" and serve immediately (so they don't get squishy), #2 quickly dip each gummy fish in water before sliding it into the jello ocean, #3 one must have cool whip on top, and #4 letting everyone help makes it more fun.

  It looks kind of small in this picture, but to fill this bowl we used five boxes worth of jello mix!

 The pinata worked great. Everyone got a couple turns and the candy came out gradually as it fell apart.

  The littles hits were the cutest.

 Little Miss Rainbow Unicorn...

 

 Batter up! We had to make it extra hard for cousin L's powerful swing. Daddy was lifting the pinata up and down.

Field Trip: Amish Produce Auction

My friend managed to get a picture at the Amish produce auction that we went to last week. You can see that side of the building was almost all pumpkins and gourds.

I mentioned last week that we bought 6 bushels or about 240 lbs of apple seconds at a nearby discount store instead.  It was 62$. 

 Those apples made 92 quarts of applesauce and about 15 gallons of what I hope will be apple cider vinegar. It is my first time making vinegar with the peels and cores, but so far it is pretty easy.

My shelves are overflowing...  I have met my 500 jar canning goal.  I have plans to can a lot of the  80 lbs of sweet potatoes that we just harvested and am about half done canning the rabbits that I harvested this week.  I am trying the "bone in" raw pack canning on those.  It will be interesting to see how that effects the taste and moisture of the meat.

My friend also had these great pics of the kids being silly with their buddies at the Amish Smorgasbord.

Family Schooling Summary: Fleet Week, Maryland Historical Society, and Lancaster

Last week we went to Baltimore to tour the ships on display for Fleet Week.  It happened to be a very hot day. 

 We enjoyed looking around the real battleships (tight security to get onboard these) and the replicas that reminded us of pirate ships.

After awhile we got too hot and used our membership to the Science museum to go in and cool off.

 They have made some improvements since our last visit.  The kids really enjoyed the new water tables. Benefits of being home schoolers -- our buddies and we were the only ones in there most of the time.

The kids and I are really enjoying their art class.  The teacher is enthusiastic and patient.

 She does a great job asking questions and hearing her young artists ideas.

 Miss L was shy the first week of her ballet class, but now she enjoys it. She is running around with her friend before class in these pictures.

 The lunch room is wild! So many kids all eating together.

 Brother S and Miss L's brainy games and puzzles class has busy interesting moments and quiet thoughtful moments... which is nice for the assistant teachers, like me.

Maryland Historical Society had one of their homeschool days this week.  The theme was "Maryland Through the Arts".  I appreciated how they divided the kids into age groups and gave them age appropriate tours and activities. 

 Miss L and I followed brother M and S's group around.  Brother S loved the Mastodon bones. Brother M kept talking about this strip representing one stripe of the "Star Spangled Banner" that hung over Fort McHenry in 1814.  He loved seeing a tangible representation of how big that flag was. 

 They learned about early photography and how their used to be MANY steps to taking a single photograph.

 Here is brother S taking his turn looking through the camera.

 The guide showed them all the different chemicals involved in the process of developing a glass plate photograph.

 He showed pictures of immigrants coming into Baltimore Harbor at the turn of the century.  He told the kids about the art forms that immigrants brought with them. One was this German paper cutting.

They also looked at some quilts, which is an art form they are pretty familiar with.

 For part of our home studies this week we did a fun science lesson on anatomy.

 We also made a quick jaunt up to Lancaster to go to an Amish produce auction. It was a lot of fun with our buddies as usual.  I bought 6 bushels of apples to make applesauce -- only 60$ for  about 250 lbs. of apples.  That price definitely makes homemade applesauce worth the work. I have 50 quarts canned so far and still about 100 lbs to go.