The Pacific Northwest!

So we took the entire day yesterday and jam packed it with fun lessons geared towards Washington, Oregon and Northern California! What was so fun about these lessons is that we had just been to Oregon and N. California this past fall so the kids vividly remembered the landscape, culture and of course, the Redwood trees. 

We started the day off reading books on the states mentioned above, talked about apples, tall tales, volcanoes and Paul Bunyan. We loaded ourselves up with science experiment equipment, heavy "logger" attire ( and might I add this was an insane idea given it was 88 degrees yesterday) and made the long trek " through the woods" to the logger camp, aka: the park. 

What a great time we had playing logger games: shimmy up trees, arm wrestling competitions, "chopping" logs and having a log( child) rolling contest. Oh how the personalities of my children come out when the word contest or " on your mark, get set, go" are stated. Austen, is so competitive that he is known to walk away and sulk if he does not win. So, we dealt with character and , oh my , cooperation as well. Funny how I mentioned that we were still on cooperation...well, I felt a little better looking at how long Konos gives to work on it and it was 30 weeks....so I guess that would be about a school year...thank you Konos now I don't feel so slow! 

We also built a mountain out of sand and brought a bottle filled with baking soda, started off with 4T of baking soda but then Hannah, some how amidst eating grass, leaves and other odds and ends dumped over the bottle and spilled probably half of it...oh well, I was able to salvage most of it and our experiment was a success. It was fun to talk about Mt St Helen erupting when Nana was only 19 years old- the kids thought that age was really funny on Nana :) 

We came home, ate applesauce in memory of Washington apples that are actually the apples that we receive here in AZ and took naps. What a great day! Oh, and we didnt' die of heat stroke either in spite of our heavy logger shirts.

Verse we are learning Romans 12:18 As much as it depends on you, live in peace with one another. ( Cooperation)

Riah rolled down a grassy hill, full speed ahead on her pink and purple bike, hit the curb, flew forward and landed on her face all in about 5 sec after arriving at the park

building our volcano

Mt St Helens

log rolling contest