Electrical Gardens

25 February 2012

This morning we had breakfast then went (with the keys this time!) to get my husbands paycheck and we ran a few other errands on the way home. Ra listened to and read along with the read-along books we checked out from the library. I went over some of the facts of George Washington's life while we were in the car as well. I read them a few poems about George Washington that I had found online as well. I also started introducing the kids the the colors in German. Rot, orange, gelb, grun, blau, lila, schwarz, weiss, braun, silbern, and golden. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white, brown, silver, and gold.) Time in the car has been greatly under-utilized by me and I hope to remedy that with exciting discussions and topics and books to listen to and memorization drills.

We had lunch and cleaned house a bit when we arrived home and after lunch the hubby pulled out an electricity science project kit we had bought for our kids a while ago but had not opened yet. I thoroughly enjoyed myself as I sat back and listened to the hubby explain what a "circuit" was to the kids and how electricity works. I put in my two cents now and again when I felt I had an insight I could share or another way of explaining something that the kids might be able to understand easier. We all had a good time with it.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon planning my garden and doing research on how much to grow and where to grow certain plants in relation to other plants. I decided which plants I want to start with this year, instead of jumping headlong into a large variety garden my first year doing one on my own. While graphing out my garden on graph paper I explained to Ra what a Ratio was. I told her that for every two squares on my graph paper that showed one foot in actual garden. I told her we do this most often to scale down things into workable sizes. I couldn't very well draw out the garden on a piece of paper as big as the garden because then I may as well just do it in the garden itself. I still have a lot of planning to do, but this is a good start.

After a very good dinner the kids played around and Ra helped tend Em while the hubby and I set up my computer with Call of Duty 4 so that I could play it with him for a bit. It was fun to just chill and take a bit of time to relax from the studies I have been involving myself in during my spare time. Unfortunately the play time ran over and we didn't have time to read our kids a story before bedtime. But I was able to get in some valuable leisure time which I have been needing, but having been allowing myself. 

The kids and I also finished the Log Cabin out of twigs we started yesterday. I will post pictures of it soon. I absolutely love how it turned out.

Log Twig Cabin

24 February 2012

This morning we played around the house and cleaned up a bit until about 10:30 a.m. when I piled the kids in the car to drive the half hour to pick up my husband's paycheck from The Yard. When I got to The Yard the paychecks hadn't arrived yet so I drove down the street to a local park and let the kids play for about 45 minutes then drove back to The Yard. When I pulled up I found that it had been locked up and everyone was gone. This usually isn't a problem because I have a key to the office door, but I had left it at home. So, I took the kids to lunch since they were hungry, we weren't close to home and it was lunch time.

After lunch we went home and did our President's Day/George Washington's Birthday crafts. The first ones we did were George Washington and Abraham Lincoln finger puppets. They were so easy to make and they are so cute. It cost me one $1.04 to make four of them since I had construction paper, glue and scissors already and we needed a quarter for each George Washington and a penny for each Abe Lincoln.

The next craft was far more involved. I had cut out the shapes for the 4 walls, roof and floor of Lincoln's cabin and I had the kids go outside and collect me some sticks. We have an enormous willow tree in our back yard so the lawn was covered in easy pickings. I showed them how to do a rough measuring of the length the sticks needed to be and how to break them where they wanted. They glued the "logs" onto the construction paper and we let it dry all day. We will actually assemble the building (Gebäude in German) tomorrow.

After we were done gluing on sticks the kids wanted to go for another walk/bike ride. I called Grandma Jane because she said she might stop by our house and I wanted to make sure we weren't going to miss her if we left. She said she was still at the school (she teaches 4th grade at the public school my kids would be going to) setting up her classroom and getting ready to go back On-Track (the elementary schools here do a "track" system with A, B, C, and D tracks, all taking breaks at different times to be able to accommodate the large number of students). The school isn't much farther than where we were planning on going for our walk so I told her we would walk up there instead and help her finish setting up her room.

The walk/bike ride was quite stressful as we walked on a major road. My kids aren't yet familiar with all of the rules and whatnot of riding a bike near such traffic. They did good though. At the school we helped Grandma Jane put text books out on her kids desks and sharpen pencils and organize and decorate a board. While we were there my husband arrived back from work and drove the car over to the school to meet us. He conned his mother into watching the kids for us and we went on a much needed date. Grandma Jane put the kids to bed for us and she read some of the abbreviated children's version of Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson to the kids.