Birds and Boats

Well, the baby birds flew the nest! I kept meaning to get another picture of them before they got too big, but when we looked in on them yesterday, they were gone. The kids were amazed. "How could they get so big so fast?" I said, "Now you know how I feel about you!"

Yesterday we did our boat activity from Day 63 of MFW 1st grade. The kids did really well figuring out how to make a boat out of aluminum foil without instructions! I did make one of my own, but they didn't really copy mine. We tested our boats in the swimming pool. You are supposed to see how many pennies your boat will hold, but I couldn't find a quantity of pennies, so we used beans. I put a handful of beans in one boat and it held up just fine, so I figured the boats were sturdy enough! We didn't count the beans because I realized that if the boat sank we would have soggy beans in our pool! The kids wanted to float Legos and other things in the boats, but I said no to that also. It didn't help that the pool was full of algae too! So maybe when the pool is clean, if we can find the pennies, and we have time, we will re-do the boat activity!

My boat and Sweet Potato's boat

The tiny one is Cupcake's boat, but it held a lot of beans!

Summer

We are not taking a summer break from school this year since we are so far behind, but we are still having a good time! This week we had our Awards Picnic for Cub Scouts and Keepers at Home.



Sweet Potato earned about 2/3 of what he needs for his Tiger Cub badge, so we will continue working on those requirements through the summer. He also earned his Chess belt loop and Conservation patch. Here he is with Daddy after receiving his awards.

Cupcake earned Keepers silver pins for Rubber Stamping, Soapmaking, Embroidery and Horses. Here we are with our leader and her daughter (the only other girl in the group!)

We have been perservering with our MFW curriculum, though not doing as many of the projects and additional stuff like art and drawing. This week during school we kept hearing a loud noise - like birds chirping but it sounded like it was in the house! Well of course with this heat we have our windows open, and here is what we found under the awning outside our laundry room window:

Yep, a nest full of hungry baby birds! The kids were so excited. They have been "checking" on them every day, watching for the mother bird to come and feed them. Sweet Potato came to me the other day and said, "Mom, do you know what I saw? The mama bird took a worm and bit it up into little pieces for the baby birds! Can you believe that?" No, I couldn't! I mean, I was amazed that he was actually able to witness that. I will try to get some more pictures before they are big enough to leave the nest. Isn't wonderful how our kids learn sometimes without us doing a single thing?