It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Since Chad is off of school and we were enjoying a couple of weeks off, we decided to put up the Christmas decorations inside (its too cold outside yet).

The boys have their own Christmas tree which they are completely in charge of. They get to fluff the branches and put them on the tree (with a little help).

Zeke was tall enough this year to help put the top on.

Then the decorating began. The boys get a little help putting things on the top, but when it comes to the reachable parts they do all their own decorating.



Their tree winds up perfect for four little boys and over Christmas they have a tree that they can redecorate as often as they like.

We also have a tree in the living room.

Recycled Art...

This week at the Library there was an art class for homeschooled families. The theme for this month was recycled art and after looking at some examples the kids were sent on their way to create their own recycled art out of old library materials. The boys each created a computer using an old key board, books and a mouse. Zeke is working on his typing and spelling on his.

A couple of days later we were building bookshelves in the garage and the boys were creating more recycled art.

Zeke created a football field and goal posts. JJ built a variety of things and designed the wooden castle for Chad to cut out and help him put together.

Noah and Seth also got in the creations and made a "Chuck E. Cheese Game". I didn't get a picture of this one, but there were basically a lot of carnival style games like throwing things into egg cartons and filling a glass jar.

Build me a city....

Tonight we were watching some of our friends kids so they could go out on a date. This brought the total number of children in our house to 7. The Hoems have 2 boys, Max (8) and Nigel (6), and one girl, Sophie (4). The boys all get along great, but there is a lot of energy when they are all together. We spent some time eating pizza and watching High School Musical 2. After the movie ended the kids went a little wild. They were running up stairs and down and there was a little wrestling and before we knew it, someone was getting hurt. I walked into the toy room and looked at all the kids and said, "I want you to build me a city. You can use blocks, lincoln logs, legos or anything you want. But I want a city that fills this whole room and it needs to have roads and train tracks and everything." That helped to settle them down and they had a great time building after that. There were lots of little houses made with just one wooden block.

Some areas were set up as bigger buildings. In the background you can see some of the train tracks that were out. They even incorporated some of the empty boxes into their city.

It helped to occupy the kids for a while... now who will I get to pick up all this stuff!

Oh yeah and next week it is our turn!

Balancing Act

Science Central, our local kids museum, hosts Homeschool afternoons where they offer a science class for homeschooled children in the area. Today we headed out the door for Zeke's "The Math is Right" class. We got there a little early, so we grabbed one of their adventure back packs to learn a little bit about the physics of balancing.


The first explorer bag had two dolls and the boys had to balance them on their heads and feet. Then they were to discuss why they could or couldn't get the doll to stand up.

It was discovered that the doll with the heavier head would stand on her head and the doll with the heavier feet would stand on her feet.

The next bag gave them the task of balancing 10 nails on the head of a nail. After several unsuccessful attempts we looked at the answer and Zeke successfully balanced the nails by hooking them together.

When we returned to our table and pulled out our last bag, the task was to balance a popsicle stick on the end of their finger. The boys all immediately knew that this would not work and thought it was a silly request, but they tried it anyway. But of course this was not the end of the lesson. The next set of instructions were to create a set of counter weights to enable them to balance the popsicle stick on the end of their finger. After a few minutes of attaching pipecleaners and paperclips to their toothpicks they were all able to successfully balance their popsicle sticks.

Puppet Show

"Mommy, can you move the couch out so we can have a puppet show." I oblige and then return to my laundry. For the next hour or so I hear giggling and talking in the toy room. Then JJ comes to me. "Mommy the show is ready."

I step away from my laundry for the fabulous show that is about to take place in our toy room.

This puppet is named Sprout and managed by JJ. He tells a story of several animals including a parrot, a mouse and a lion. One of them has a piece of paper that is a fantastic ticket of some sort (I missed the details on what this ticket does). There is about as much giggling as there is actual talking by the puppets (and occasionally a boy in the background says something along the lines of "no, not that one yet" or "we need this puppet".) Periodically a head pops up to make sure there is still an audience. (Who would leave a show as fantastic as this one!)

The show ends with a curtain call by all the fabulous Potts puppeteers!

The Science Project...

JJ recieved a book for his birthday called "Kid Conncoctions of Biblical Proportions". In it there are several projects for kids that teach a Biblical idea. JJ always enjoys these projects and keeps the book in school box. Today as we were finishing up the readng and math books, He pulled out the book and asked for a project. I flipped through and found one where I had most of the needed ingredients in the house. We made treasure fizzle stones.

Using baking soda and and water we created stones and hid "treasures" inside them.

We added a little to much water and had to wait a day for it to evaporate off so we could make the stones and then we left them to dry overnight. After they had dried we dropped them into vinegar and watched as the vinegar transformed the stones into tiny little treasures to display that God has made us new and the old has gone!

Trunk Or Treat 2

Friday night was our turn! Our church hosted a trunk or treat and we volunteered to have a car out there. Each year our family picks a theme and we try to all dress up together. This year we all dressed up in Star Wars theme.

Zeke chose Darth VadarJJ chose Obi Wan Kenobi,Seth and Noah chose storm troopersChad chose Hans Solo and I chose Princess Leiagh. Here is the family picture our church took!

We even got our car into the theme by decorating with wings and stars to enhance our star wars theme.

During the trunk or treating there were also games taking place inside the church and a supper of hotdogs. When the games and trunk or treating ended we had the kids gather together for a time of singing.

We really enjoyed our alternative Halloween!