Dressed up and field trip

Is it Halloween already??

No.... it's Biography Day for the 5th and 6th graders. :)

For Social Studies this month, the kids have to pick someone in history to do their research, write a report, and give an oral presentation in character.

So last Thursday was the day for their presentations, and they had to dress in character for the whole day. Sweetie Pie was Jane Addams, one of the first women to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Pam's (my friend) kids were Laura Ingalls Wilder and Lawrence of Arabia. Technically, Lawrence of Arabia is a movie in 1960s, but it's based on the life of T.E. Lawrence.

Don't they look so cute in characters?

Then on Thursday this week was field trip day to Riley's Farm in Oak Glen. It's a working apple orchard and living history farm where visitors get to experience 18th century America History. This trip was the best educational field trip that I've attended as a chaperone. Take a look....

When we arrived, we were immediately greeted by this British soldier or "Red Coat". The groups were organized into townships. Sweetie Pie's class was the "Concord".

Then they marched onto the Heritage Homestead and were given instructions by the Red Coats.

I didn't get a picture of Master Riley (the owner of the farm), but Master Riley himself welcomed the groups, told them about the rules, where to find the restrooms, and entertained us with his flute.

While the students were still gathered on the field, a demonstration of how loud the muskets sounded.












... and what will happen should any one misbehave... they will be put into stockade for punishment.

Throughout the day, they were shown what life was like during the colonial days....

...... type of games that children played with....

..... weaving....











.... were shown how to march, load, fire, re-load a musket quickly....

of course, the muskets were just only sticks...













... black-smith....

... a mock trial to show how unfair the court system was under the British ruling ....




Unfortunately, my camera battery died after this. :(

Also, hands-on demonstrations of butter churning, writing with ink and quill, biscuit making.

For lunch, we were given the "ration" of dried beef, corn bread, cheese, apple, and lemonade. However, the adults were able to place their lunch at the "homestead". I ordered their chicken pot pie.... yummy!

The best part of the day was at the end. The groups were divided into Brits and Americans. They did a re-enactment of the battle of the colonials defending their homestead with muskets. Overall, the whole thing was well organized and well done. Every character we encountered stay in characters, spoke the Queens' English, and the costumes dead on.




Of course, I couldn't leave there without their 5lbs. apple pie! YUMMMMMYYY!!

Jog-A-Thon

This is a fundraiser for Sweetie Pie's school and a fun one for the students. A lot of volunteering parents showed up bright and early to help with the set up, get the classes onto the field when their times are due, and tallie markers. We have a check-in station to keep track of the volunteers and classes on the field, and a water/popsicle station for the runners after they run. A tallie sheet is attached to the back of the runners to keep track of how many laps they run. As they finish each lap, the tallie markers mark the sheet.

So far the Kindergarten thru 3rd grades ran this morning. I did my volunteer job this morning, and now, I'm having a lunch break and will head back to the school to cheer Sweetie Pie's class on. They are scheduled to run at 2pm. It's getting warm outside, so I hope Sweetie Pie remembers to drink her water before running. She gets extreme (almost a migrain) headache if she in the sun too much and not enough water.

What a worried Mom I am!? lol

Just Stuffs

Urggghh ... Ohh man.... I picked up that nasty virus that's been traveling around. I feel like crud! After I got the kiddos off to school yesterday, I went back to bed and slept the whole day away. Amanda had only one morning class, so she picked up her siblings from school for me.

Also, I had to cancel sewing morning with Cheryl and Crystal (Cheryl's DD, who's off track for this month). Cheryl wanted to finish her nautical quilt that she's been working on for the last two years. Sorry Cheryl, we'll get your quilt done soon. Crystal was working on some 9 patches; I think her plan is to turn it into a pillow. One summer, I gave Crystal and her girl scouts troop some lessons on sewing, and they all picked up sewing real fast. They made pillows to donate to a hospital. All the girls did a great job!

These photos of Cheryl and Crystal were taken a couple of weeks ago when they were here.

Cheryl had a specific quilt in mind for her quilt, so I sketched out a pattern for her to use. Here's Cheryl drawing out the lighthouses to be applique.

Crystal (11 or are you 12yrs. already?) already can use the rotary cutter quite well and a natural at picking out colors too. Here, she's cutting up squares for 9 patches. I think the next time she's off track and want to sew, I have her do a Disappearing 9-Patch quilt that everyone's been doing. How does that sound, Crystal? Start collecting those fun FatQuarters.

Look who's at the door and wanted to come in? Our Tabby is an indoor cat, but she loves to sneak outside whenever she could. This was last week when we had a lot of rain. I think she sensed the rain was coming so she's begging to come in.

Yoshi was looking on as if to say what are you doing out there? Are you wondering what's that thing above his head, it's a bell that is tied to a pink string that we hung on the door so that the little doxies could ring it to let us know when they want to go outside. In this case, Yoshi was ringing the bell like crazy because he wanted Tabby to come in (so he could chased her!). Don't worry, she'll let him know when she had enough of his silliness. The felines rule the roost here. lol

Here's our little Suki. She came in from the rain and all wet. Of course, she had to jump onto Simon's new blanket that I just got for him that day.

And another photo, we were watching TV one night when I realized that all of our little furries were all line up on the couch watching TV with us. It was a funny sight! See, the cats were looking toward the TV still, and those little doxies get excited when I pull out the camera. I quickly snapped this photo before they moved.

Oh man, I just realized that I forgot to get a picture of Hannah's Mission project that she had been working on for the last two weeks. She took it with her this morning because it's due today. She had to build a model using only stuffs around the house. No kits were allowed! The only things that I bought for her were little bells for the bell towers and styrofoam balls for the domes. She used cereal boxes for the building, cinnamon and paprika for roof color, oregano and parsley flakes for the grass. She made clay palm trees and water fountains, but I burned the clays because I left it in the oven too long. They were black! So we made palm trees out of construction papers instead and clay for the water fountains but did not bake it. Toothpicks for the crosses. Wish there's a picture to show. The project was on Santa Barbara Mission.

This post is long, but there's not much I feel like doing right now. I'm feeling better, but I think I need more of those flu medicines. My head is starting to hurt again. Oh and the frog up on top is for Leap day.

Have a great day!

Knott's Photos