Thursday, July 31, 2008

A Full Summer

Esme is staying busy this summer. In June she finished up soccer and Daisies, complete with her first Girl Scout camping trip. She has done two weeks of swimming lessons, a Junior Rangers program, Vacation Bible School, and continued with Lego League. She has ten stamps in her park passport and will be getting a couple more this weekend.

In addition to bringing Esme all over the place and being involved in all of her activities, I was also fortunate enough to get to attend a Project Learning Tree workshop. This is a wonderful environmental education program. I left certified to present the K through 8 curriculum. I learned so much in six short hours. I left overwhelmed by all the things I want to learn!! This weekend I will start teaching Esme how to classify and identify different types of trees.

Who says summer is for relaxing?!?

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

I can't wait to go camping!! We have only been on one trip this year but we have a couple more trips planned. Esme and I are pretty much obsessed with Mexican food so we made a new breakfast burrito recipe to eat a camp. We make it for her sans egg. We start with marinated chicken the night before, and use the leftovers. You need:

1 medium flour tortilla per person
1 egg per person
the leftover chicken
shredded cheese of your choice
rice (we like to use boil in a bag while we're camping)
taco sauce or salsa (optional)

Wrap the tortillas in foil and heat til they're warm. Heat up the chicken in the skillet, and boil the rice. Scramble the eggs, and they layer all ingredients in the tortilla, folding up the sides and wrapping the whole thing together. Serve with fruit. This is a hearty breakfast without too much cleanup.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

The Project Learning Tree workshop was amazing!! I am so thankful that I got to go! If you haven't heard of this program, check it out here. I highly recommend that anyone who works with children and is interested in nature and the environment try to find a class.

One of the things I learned was how to teach children to classify trees. In the beginning, the names of the trees aren't even important. It's important that they observe what makes each tree unique and different from the others. I never realized how many important features of leaves there are! I learned to identify 2 new kinds of trees myself.

Another thing I learned about was observing changes in a natural setting. The instructor talked about finding a "sitspot" - a place you return to over and over and observe the changes from season to season, year to year, and make your own special place in the world.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

My mom requested an altered monogram for her birthday - I made another version but I wasn't happy with it so I decided to give it another go.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008


Did this page as part of tonight's cyber crop with Lisa - it's a scraplift of a Vicki Boutin layout you can see here. I love doing layouts with blocks like this.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Our First Math Curriculum!!


I am super excited!! This past year we've followed the Massachusetts Frameworks for what we studied in Math, and it went well. I feel Esme was getting the hang of number sense and starting to understand how it all fits together. However, I decided that as she goes forward I would really like something structured for her. I am sure that if I buckled down I could develop my own program for her, but there are already so many out there, already developed, that are just wonderful. I've had the opportunity to look at different curricula through other homeschoolers, but ultimately decided on the one that I am most comfortable with, because it is the one I use at school. The Houghton Mifflin First Grade Math books are on the way to our house now!! I can't wait to get started!

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

I am WICKED excited. I just found out about some ultra cool educator workshops through Project Wild and Project Learning Tree. Theoretically I am going to learn so I can teach Esme and perhaps a group of homeschoolers or my Girl Scouts, but I am just excited that **I** get to go learn new stuff!!

I am suffering from a bit of apathy when it comes to my MMM entry. I really want to enter but I'm having trouble finding the motivation when my scrap area is such a mess. I want totally rearrange my entire house.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

DCR's Park Passport Program



We are so glad we discovered this program! It has inspired our whole family to be excited about visiting our state parks!! We got a park pass for the first time this year, and have already visited several this year. It also works very well with our love of camping and letterboxing. You can get a passport by visiting any state park or by signing up here. Then every time you visit a different state park you unlock the box and stamp the image into your passport. We love the designs chosen for the stamps. We also go to learn about the No Child Left Inside program which is also super cool.