Delaney's Baptism

The magical birthday year has now come upon Delaney....she's turned eight and thus has the opportunity to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints....a choice she's wanted to make, yet, been nervous about.  We've taught her the joys of following the commandments and the responsibilities.
We invited our family...Granny and Papa-- Uncle Brian and Aunt Risa ( Brennan and Logan too) and Aunt Elizabeth  came too, they wouldn't miss this event. Plus many friends from our ward came too.

Delaney planned the whole things.  She asked Brian and Risa to give the talks on baptism and the Holy Ghost.  She asked me to play the piano and Elizabeth to lead.  She chose to sing How Firm A Foundation..all seven verses.  The first three for the opening song and the last four for closing song.  This has been favorite of our family, since Barry's deployment years, and we still have many of the verses memorized.  Since we're a musical family...Cailin and I also performed the song Baptism  Cailin on the flute and I accompanied.  Delaney wanted to sing the song  When Jesus Was Baptized  so, she had her primary class join her with this.  Practicing wasn't a problem as many from her class were at her birthday party the night before...we just practiced then.

She asked her Granny and Papa to give the prayers....which was a big deal for Papa...he doesn't get up in front of many people to say or do anything, but for Delaney he would brave it and gave a lovely prayer.   Ryan was asked to baptize her.  Of course, this was his first time performing this sacred ordinance.  He was quite nervous....Delaney was quite nervous....but after three tries at getting her totally immersed in the baptismal waters....he was successful.  Because they are both worrisome, they were embarrassed by this but a story from Uncle Brian of his unusual re baptism a month after his first (and incomplete) one and a private pep talk by the bishop put her fears aside. ( Ryan, I'm so proud of you for prayerfully and lovingly fulfilling this priesthood duty.)

Most of Delaney's primary class...(after the meeting it was hard to corral all of them for a photo.)  L to R:  Janet Brame, Amber Mattson, Delaney, Krysal Mattson, Eliza Morgan, Grace Walker.  Missing was Nicole Robinette...Liam's in front.  (Amber and Liam, of course aren't in the class, but how can we not have them help with the song?!)

Our family

I'm so proud of my beautiful sweet daughter.  She tries so hard to be good and make good choices.  She's often plagued with overwhelming fears...of many many things, which is why she was nervous for this step in life.  I think it was the change...a show that she's growing up and taking on responsibility for her life and choices that made her uneasy.  However, she has a loving spirit, always kind and thoughtful.  She's especially loving with her little sister and has a mothers heart.  She's on her way to brighten other's lives with her talents and gifts the Lord has blessed her with.  She sure does brighten mine. I love you my Laney Janey.

A Mermaid Birthday

Delaney's 8 now!!!  She's been planning this party for about 3 months now...it took her a while to decide on a mermaid theme for her party.  Lately she's loved watching a TV show called H2O about youth girls who were mermaids...and wanted to be one for a day too...so she was!

We hung blue crepe paper from the ceiling to give an underwater effect to the room and the girls worked to make their glitter crowns for the day.












Afterward they filled their tummys with octopus, shells and fishy blue jello.

Next on the schedule was a treasure hunt.  Cailin made a creative clue releated treasure hunt for the girls to find the treasure chest.  They traveled from clue to clue until.....

They found it!!

Eweee, it's filled with seaweed (green spaghetti noodles)...oh, and CANDY!!!

Next, they donned their flippers (trashbags taped on with duct tape) and flipped around int he sea to see who could win the race.

So many cute mermaids!!!

Oh, this cake too way to much frosting...but that didn't matter to the girls.  They loved it!  It required two full cake mixes...one was red velvet, that definitely  wasn't the best choice for our purposes.  It took so much frosting to cover the red crumbs.  But it was done.  I don't think I'll make this one again, but it was fun to make with Delaney.  She enjoyed using the canned orange icing to decorate the hair.

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!!

Opening the gifts...

What a cute mess.

She enjoyed getting lots of different art supplies and little stuffed animals and gummies...Mmmmm, "Thanks to all my friends!"  says this happy mermaid.

A Bittersweet Ending---our last day of CC.

Blake Hall, Cailin, Mrs Dabney, Wesley Brewer, on floor--Celia East, Aaron Greenaugh, Elijah North.

It's our last day of CC today...and I shout hurrah!!  'we're so ready for a break...yet, sad, because we know we won't see them again next year. (We will not be joining CC in September.)

Cailin had a super class...Mrs Dabney has been a wonderful tutor...and friend (good thing that doesn't end!)

Silly!!!

Delaney also had a great year....she's particularly sad to not come back next year...but when the Lord directs you in another way...you'd be silly to not go.  She loved lunch time with her classmates and friends.  Here she is with Jackson Brockman, (with the wire glasses on)  Kayla Waters, Emma Schmidt, Luke Schmidt, Delaney, Ansley Ohanian, Stephen Cooley.

Okay, lunch time was the favortie "subject" for everyone.

Sophie Burton, Kayla Waters, Emma Schmidt, Ansley Ohanian, Gayleigh Brown, Delaney, Kaci Ratcliff , Jackson Brockman, Stephen Cooley.

 For Celebration Day (a week after our last day of class) Delaney's class dressed up to present three of the history sentences.  Pilgrims, immigrants and the lone space explorer!

 Cailin has a large English Essentials class this year.  Here, her tutor, Renee East, hands out awards to the class.

 Along with the history sentences Delaney's class also recited the first 12 elements and their mass.  They decorated t-shirts with their element.  Delaney's was Hydrogen!

Cailin's class put on a variation of the poem "The Night Before CC."  and then they sang "The Twelve Days of CC" too

“’Twas the Night Before C.C.”

‘Twas the night before C.C., when all through the house,

not a creature was stirring, not even an…?

Elijah studying his Timeline Cards? Who’s the wise guy that mixed this story up, anyway?

(Elijah is seen reviewing the Timeline Cards, maybe on his computer, but saying them over and over first in the foreground, then in the background while the story goes on…)

Our clothes were laid out by my mom with care,

In hopes that tomorrow we’d know what to wear;

The children were all snug in their beds,

While visions of History Sentences  danced in their heads.

(Everyone repeat week 5’s sentence together…?)

And mamma on the computer with the cat in her lap,

Had just settled down for a Foundation’s class wrap.

When up in her room, there arose such a clatter,

Cailin sat in her bed and studied her English grammar.

(“Why do I have to work on this? Don’t we already cover it in Essentials? Can’t I just work on my novel?”

Groaning and growling, mumbling something about “stinky fish”,

She repeated irregular verbs from Cycle 3 English.

Aaron studied his Math, row after row,

Because he knew what his tutor wanted him to know (say some Math facts, formulas)

When, what to his wondering eyes should appear,

But a new Science song that he wanted to hear.

With a little about tissues, and muscles and systems, he moaned to himself,

(“This is fun and all, but I would rather shoot Airsoft guns or paintball—what fun!”

Quickly, I reviewed weeks one and two

And knew the Respiratory system was the one that I knew.

Now NOSE, and PHARYNX, and LARYNX, and TRACHEA,

And BRONCHI, and  BRONCHIOLES, and LUNGS, and ALVEOLI….

Celia studied her Geography, but not the China Wall

Because she wanted to learn the US features in all….

She started with the East Coat and got to where she knew,

The West Coast, the North, and South capitals, too.

(Pointing to the map she made or pictures she drew…)  

It was time for Latin, but Blake was wary,

Because he didn’t really know it and found it sort of scary,

He began to get sleepy, but little did he show,

Because Latin was next with much he needed to know.

So, he started with prepositions, conjugations, and worse,

And nouns, then rules, and translations of the verse.

(saying some Latin Memory work and tying this info to some of his interests…?)

(maybe first person and all come together to say the following?)

And then, all of a sudden, we remembered to proof,

Our papers of Essentials that we didn’t want to goof.

As we drew in our hands, and were turning around,

Down the paper we read, not making a sound.

We studied the words and tenses we ought.

Many dress ups we needed to add like we’d been taught….

A bundle of ly words, we found on the back,

Of the Student Resource Notebook that was in our backpack.

(Blah, blah, blah….stuff….nor I nor you know what to do with……….)

I sprang to my bed and to my mom gave a kiss.

Because I now knew my memory work like this and like this

Next I said my prayers and thanked God for the light

And for CC and my friends, til tomorrow I said to all a Good Night!

The Carrot Seed, a FIAR book

Now that we are done with CC for the year, yet not wanting to stop school this early, I decided to pick up a manual I used with the kids in our first year of homeschooling called Five in a Row (FIAR)
I loved using this program with the kids 6 years ago...I don't remember why we didn't continue with it, but I do remember having fun exploring books in this fashion.  Basically we read the same book for five days in a row and do learning activities--science, history or social studies, English grammar or geography that is exemplified in the book.
Our first rowing expedition is  The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss 

With this book we discussed color--brown and orange.  (all the illustrations we done in these two colors) 

 We talked about the needs of plants and planted some seeds of our own...radish, because they grow so fast.  Carrots` are actually quite slow in germinating.

planting and watering our seeds.

We created another file folder project for this book.  In there we

We discussed 'small medium and large"  read a poem about seeds growing and have a "seed growth chart for them to draw--from day to day--about what they observe of their planted radish seed

We talked about what other words began with the letter 'C' and some more about what seeds need to grow--sun, water, soil and air.



We had fun exploring this book and look forward to more rowing adventures.

What would it be like to have 10 kids?

....Well if they were always as good at getting school work done, helping each other kindly  I think I could handle it...but, alas, life isn't always so easy. 
We had the Mattson (monkey's--Barry's kindly pet name for them) over for three days and two nights...and there was no problems what so ever. (Chris and Jen were in Mexico)  Our six kids, plus their four...that's ten kids total.  School work was completed.  Meals were eaten and cleaned up after well.  Therapies were attended to.  Tutoring sessions were accomplished  (and we got there on time too for Ryan and Connor's math and Clarissa's reading)  AND....play practice, Young Men, Achievement girls, dance class, flute lessons...check, check, check...we got it all done.  Whew, what few days of whirling activity.  To boot, Delaney had her birthday.  She had her party later, at the end of the week, but we did have her birthday breakfast on her special day.  She wanted homemade doughnuts, sausage and fresh fruit.--pineapple was on sale, so that's what we had.  Yum!  She became the pineapple queen of the day--alas, she still had to do school work, which she'd rather not do--but she had a good day nonetheless.

In the afternoon, after school work was complete, I required the kids to create something...it didn't matter what they just had to create.  Cailin and Clarissa decided to make a dress for one of her stuffed animals. (the first day).  They didn't complete them, but had fun cutting and sewing anyway.

This picture is out of sequence, but here are the sleeping beauties ready for the night.  The littler ones decided to have a 'good old fashioned' sleep over in the living room.

busy, busy...at school work!

On the second day they chose to make and sell lemonade.  It was a hot beautiful March day and they were thirsty for some lemonade...and felt sure that others would want some too.  (I called and told Barry to send some of his fellow deputies over their way, but it was a busy, busy day for them and they could make it :(   But they did have fun making posters and singing and dancing for fellow citizens as they passed by on the road.

In, fact it was so warm that they begged me to allow them to get in their swimming suits and get wet!  and this was MARCH!   (our weather has been wild and crazy this year...just a week or so later, there were snow flurries)

Lots of water fun...

As for the boys, you need not ask what they created....anything with LEGOS!!  here they show off their DaVinci inspired cross bow. 

The Renaissance--Mathematicians, Scientists and Architecture

Today, we talked about the famous mathematicians and scientists of the Renaissance period.  Ryan and Connor were busy with their first cuttings of the mow season,

We watched some videos about the buildings they constructed, the leaning tower of Pisa, and Fibonacci's numbers.  Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, most commonly known as Fibonacci, is considered the most talented  Italian mathematician of the middle ages.  He came up with a sequence of numbers that to this day many people have interest in discovering. and playing around with.     We've heard that nature, too follows this sequence and we decided to find out how common his numbers were found in nature.

We had the kids gather many specimens for our project....but it was such a beautiful day that they had a hard time staying focused on the task at hand.

....but some found a few things....

We then had them seperate the flora and fauna into the numbers they correlated with.  This is the pattern of Fibonacci's numbers:
1+1=2
1+2=3
2+3=5
3+5=8
5+8=13
8+13=21
13+21=34
and so on....

So they decided if the flowers had 1, 2 3,5, 8, 13 ect.  petals or leaves.  we found that many did, some did not.  Recently, a friend's daughter did a science fair project on this topic and found that 60-67% of the specimens she collected from 4 different area in the New River Valley did follow Fibonacci's number rule.

Afterwards we dined on our last day of scrumptious  Italian type foods...which may or may not have been served during the Renaissance.  We know they didn't have tomatoes yet, but the bread noodles and pesto sure may have.