CC End-of-the-School Year Presentations

Even though we are still doing "school"-type things around our house, our homeschool Classical Conversations group just wrapped up our last day with a pizza party and a little presentation of some of the things we learned. Andrew and Leah have truly loved going to CC this year, have learned a ton and made a lot of new friends. Sadly a lot of those friends live an hour away, where the homeschool group meets, and some are not coming back next year, but we may still have chances to get together with them over the summer and beyond. Andrew really did well for being the youngest in the class and is really starting to find his "niche" in schoolwork.

Here is a little song all the kids learned this year in order to help memorize some Latin. It is the words to John 1:1-6 in Latin. I cannot believe how well these little 4 and 5-year-olds retained this information, and Andrew can still sing the song (although I doubt he could tell you the meaning of any of the Latin words if you asked).

And Leah's class had fun learning this geometry song to memorize some of the formulas. I can't say I learned any of this stuff until high school! They are building a great foundation  for when they get older and remember these songs when it comes time to actually learn how to work with this information.

Here are their class pictures, actually taken a little while ago. Andrew's friends in his class were the only boys, Ravi & Wyatt. His teacher was Mrs. Young.

Leah's closest friend in her class is Fiona (to her left in the picture) and also Evelyn (to her right). Her teacher was Mrs. Larson.

Resurrection Sunday 2015

It seems like the holidays are always sneaking up on me and I end up feeling like we should have done more to celebrate. But actually I think the one or two things we do (consistently, every year), are probably enough to leave an impression on these kids.

This year we made Resurrection Rolls the Friday before Easter. You roll Jesus' body (a marshmallow) in oil (butter) & spices (cinnamon & sugar) and then wrap him in the tomb (crescent roll). When you cook them, Jesus' body is no longer there! They're actually a really tasty object lesson!

Sunday morning we saw the Easter bunny had visited. We try not to make a huge deal out of the bunny, so as to take away from the true meaning of Easter, but we do small baskets and let the kids think what they want about the bunny. They each got one thing to play with inside, one thing to play outside, a coloring book & crayons, plus some candy. They seemed happy. 

Abigail hasn't been feeling great the past two days, with a few teeth coming in and a fever as a result, so she was a little uncertain at first. I had to pull things out of her basket to show her and she eventually warmed up to it.

This was the first Sunday in awhile that Brett didn't have to do a sunrise service (it's entirely too cold in Vermont!) so we had him with us for the Easter baskets, and the rest of the day on Easter.

Thanks to Brett's mom and sister Karen, we had beautiful matching outfits for Sunday morning. Of course we had to cover them up with sweaters since it was 40 degrees outside, but at least we were styling. Andrew even had a little matching bow tie.

Abigail wasn't really having anything to do with pictures Sunday morning, since she still wasn't feeling well and just didn't really want to be around people unless I held her, so this picture was actually taken a few days ago when we got the outfits and tried them on. Hence the reason for no shoes. The sanctuary will have to do for a backdrop since it was too cold to go outside.

After church there was an Easter egg hunt. Well, it was more like a mad dash to get as many eggs as you could! It was over so quickly I didn't get many pictures, but the kids all got a ton of candy. Abigail again wasn't really into egg hunting-- at all-- she didn't want me to put her down. I don't know if it was too cold, or she was just tired, or scared-- I could do nothing to interest her in finding eggs. So I collected a few for her.

And once we were inside she managed to muster up some of her usual energy to convince me to open every single one of her eggs so she could single-handedly eat every single piece of candy. (Even though she'd eaten nothing for breakfast, mind you.) 

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I finally managed to get a few candid shots of her, but nothing with her brother & sister. She was happiest with candy in her hand.

And to recap my morning: "Hold me, Mommy!" I suppose I will cherish it while I can!

Easter Egg Coloring

Sunday evening we enjoyed our traditional Easter egg dying festivities. We got a really cool egg-dying kit this year that included paints with sponges and brushes to do some different things. The kids enjoyed that much more than the actual dye, which is always hard to be creative with. With Grandma visiting, we were able to help the kids one-on-one, and not a single egg was broken! Abigail actually did really well-- she took it very seriously and was careful with her eggs. She even managed to do a few on her own (and at the end we let her paint with the colored water just to keep her busy while we all finished).

Maple Sugaring & a Visit from Grandma

Last weekend, we were lucky to have Grandma visit us from NC for a few days. She flew in by herself just to see us. She got to go to school with us Thursday and Leah's dance class. Friday night we had an early Easter dinner with our "adopted" exchange student, Maria. Then Saturday morning we found out it was Open House Weekend for Sugarhouses in Vermont (where they collect & bottle maple syrup). I had been wanting the kids to learn the process of sugaring, so we went to one nearby and got to see it in action.

It was a very cold day and still snow on the ground!

They had a self-guided tour of the process. We really didn't get to see the actual trees they tap, which are apparently down the road a little, but they showed us an example of one and the lines they use to collect the sap.

They also had a "sugarbush" maze, where we had to find our way through a bunch of plastic tubing, which is what they use to get the sap from the tree to the collection pots. We're not sure if we actually did it right, but we found our way out without going under any of the tubes.

Though you may see a lot of these metal buckets on maple trees in Vermont, that is actually the old-fashioned way of tapping the tree and it's not really used in the larger production companies anymore-- now they use the tubing.

Once we got inside the sugarhouse, we saw where the sap comes in the building, then they put it through a reverse osmosis machine that removes about 75% of the water to make it about 9% sugar. Then it goes through the sap pan and then the syrup pan, which is heated by a wood fire inside it, to eventually boil it down to about 66.9% sugar. That is what makes it official Vermont Maple Syrup (no wonder it tastes so good!). We learned it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup (and that's why it's so expensive!). Then they filter out the cloudy impurities and put it directly into jugs or larger storage drums.

This man was the owner of the sugarhouse and he was really nice to explain a lot of things to the kids while he was boiling.

Then they got to taste some. You would not think it would be good to drink pure maple syrup, but it was actually very delicious. We also bought some maple doughnuts to take home for later. We learned a lot and felt like official Vermonters once we had finished!

And for further proof Grandma was here, and that Abigail finally let her hold her (on the last day).

And here is the kids with our exchange student, Maria. She is really great at entertaining them and adores hanging out with them when she comes over. We enjoyed learning a few words in her Filipino dialect and we also enjoyed learning how she, as a Catholic, celebrated Easter growing up.