Dinosaur Week

 We had "Dinosaur Week" from Sunday, August 24 to today, Monday, September 1, 2014 this year. It was A LOT of fun! I couldn't really find any printables online that met our study level and had the dinosaur theme, so most of our dinosaur studies were crafts, activities, and t.v. shows or documentaries.

We started off the week with a fossil kit for kids that I was actually pretty impressed with.  I found these at a dollar store and bought the last 2 they had....I would have bought one of all 6 kinds if they had had them. The "rock was just hard enough that the kids had to work at it to get to the bones, but not too crazy hard that they couldn't make steady progress. Plus my girls love getting dirty!

Here is a picture of the completed skeletons with some little toys of Korbin's. :) 

  A few days later we attempted to make salt dough coffee ground dinosaur fossils but it ended badly. The mix was way too sticky even though I added extra flour. We tried some of those dinos that you soak in water and they grow in size......I still wasn't impressed.

 

 We also found this little gem on sale. I mean, who doesn't love origami? Turns out it was way too difficult for us to do this year. That's ok though. We'll tuck it away for a bit and try again next year.

So basically, we watched dinosaur documentaries, did a lot of drawings and paintings of dinos and had ALOT of dino playtime with a decent sized herd of plastic dinosaur toys. We made sugar cookies with dinosaur footprints too.

As our grand finale and also as a celebration for Korbin's 2nd birthday, we went to Dinosaur World in Plant City, FL and it was WONDERFUL! 

(You can visit their website at the bottom of this post.)

We got to listen to a paleontologist talk about her job and all of the fun things she gets to do. 

I don't think I've ever seen this dino before......did the guy get the horn on backwards? 

Korbin's definite favorite of the whole week has been the triceratops. He can say "ceratops" quite clearly. 

The kids got to try their hand at excavating a skeleton in the huge sandbox with paintbrushes. 

This stegosaurus was enormous, but it doesn't show well in the picture.....I doubt I would be able to reach my arms around that tree in the pic. 

 Here, we dug through the sand to find fossils, shark teeth, and pieces of amber. 

And finally, we prospected for semi-precious stones before hitting the gift shop and museum and heading for home. 

 It was a wonderful and exhausting day!

 

 And here's the birthday boy with his new little friend, "Topper."

www.dinosaurworld.com/florida/  

2 Days Until Vegetarianism Test Drive (and NO soda)

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but my kids will be joining me on much of my vegetarian journey. I don't intend to deny them a particular food that is already in the house if they want it or limit their choices if we go to a restaurant, but when I cook, I will cook for myself and the whole family. It will just be a little easier on me that way...and probably healthier for them as well!

I've been researching a little more and learned a little more, but overall I don't think this will be too terrible of an experience. There are a lot of foods that are just regular grocery store foods that are coincidentally also vegan/vegetarian. I joined a Facebook vegetarian site and was quite surprised that many/most people who call themselves vegetarians still eat dairy and eggs. Cheaters!! You are Ovo-Lacto Vegetarians and that is much easier than being a true Vegetarian.
I am only so serious about this because I had some internal conflict over whether I should I should do my Bucket List item in the true sense of the word Vegetarian or take the easier way out and do as these other "Vegetarians" do. I opted to try it out in the true sense of the word. I'm hoping to feel much better in my body by the end of the month; healthier, more energy, all of that...less headaches would be nice too. If it ends up being "all that and a bag of Cheetos," I am slightly excited about continuing as a Pescatarian....can't help it, I love fish and shrimp!

 

 

And EGGS! Lol I really love eggs....especially the ones from my own chickens! It just dawned on me that my little flock will probably start laying during my Veg Month!! Oh NO!! That will be hard, but I will enjoy "playing" with them and trying to figure out the males from the females. I have 12 naked neck chickens that I bought at auction as chicks awhile back.


But back to my preparation for Vegetarianism, here is a list of foods that I have put together that will be okay for me to eat.
Ghirardelli Hot Chocolate (made with soy milk)
Orowheat Country Potato Bread
Healthy Choice Asian Potstickers
Pillsbury Turnovers (Apple and Cherry)
Simply Potatoes Diced Potatoes with Onion
Smart Balance Light Buttery Spread
Aunt Jemima Coffee Cake Mix
Jello Instant Pudding (Pistachio, Lemon, Vanilla, Banana Crème)
Tropical Source Dark Chocolate Chips
Hurst's HamBeens Soups
Hormel Vegetarian Chili
Del Monte White Corn (Cream Style)
Hummus
Silk (soymilk)
Cereals-Life (regular and cinnamon), Just Right, Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs, Corn Pops, Kix, and Cracklin' Oatbran
Pop tarts(!) (UNfrosted apple cinnamon and strawberry)

And of course loads and loads of fruit and veggies! Plus I plan to make smoothies to squeeze in some of the veggies that I don't really care for (kale) but that have such great nutritional value that I really want to include them. Bonus-the kids LOVE smoothies. I'm also going to poke around the veggie burger, tofu **cringe**, vegan cheese section of the store too and see if anything looks good enough to give a try.

My kids DO NOT drink soda. I drink far too much. I have quit before but it only lasted a month or two and I started back up. I hate all of the crap that is in soda (diet soda that I drink especially) and I am determined to quit again once and for all and set a better example for my children. The caffeine is usually my biggest hurdle so I'm planning on having some chocolaty and coffee-like caffeinated drinks around to ward off those darn with-drawl headaches.


Thank-you all for visiting and reading my blog! I would love to hear what you think and if you have ever have done or will ever be doing anything like this! Be sure to put together your own list at Bucketlist.org too! It's really fun to work towards accomplishing goals you set for yourself! Thanks again!

Shark Week

To go along with the Discovery Channels annual Shark Week on television, we have been doing worksheet units downloaded from http://3dinosaurs.com/wordpress/index.php/free-mini-shark-pack/ and www.royalbaloo.com/shark-unit-study. These units have a variety of shark themed worksheets for most of the subjects we try to cover each day and they are FREE to print out, which is always nice.



We found this Great White postcard so Olivia went ahead and practiced her writing skills and sent it to her penpal friend back in Colorado.

Then we put together this awesome 3D model of a Great White and learned about the internal workings of a sharks body. We'll be hanging this big guy up in our classroom soon! 

  

 

I read online that Caspersen Beach in Venice, FL was a great place to find sharks teeth, so we had a field trip! We found several critters on the beach or in the shallows. Everyone ended up with a bit of a sunburn, but it was great fun! Olivia even found a very small (possibly) shark tooth but it got mixed into our seashell bucket and we haven't sifted through the sand to find it again yet.

 

 

 

We were really lucky to have a nice lady I met online give us a bunch of sharks teeth that she had no use for. We will be using these in several projects to come!

 

Who wouldn't LOVE going to the beach and watching tv shows for school!? ;D

 

 

Thank-you for stopping by my blog! Be sure to read through all previous posts and comment often!

Vegetarian Research Findings of an Omnivore

Wow. I hadn't realized the lengths vegetarians go to to ensure that there isn't even a trace of animal product in their food.  Apparently some breads have added gluten in them that are taken from animals. I knew that Jell-O gelatin is made from animals, so I had expected that one. The bread thing is going a little far for me though. I found an online list of "surprisingly vegan" foods that I am going to use as a main guideline for September.

That's another thing too; I Googled for info, food lists, and recipe ideas for vegetarians and almost all of the search results were vegan this and vegan that. I guess people nowadays don't feel that vegetarian is taking it far enough. Ha! I am NOT one of those people. If I end up finding that this diet change is just spectacular and want to keep going with it, I'm pretty sure I will only go as far as Pescetarian....because I loves me some seafood.....and I won't beat myself up over a little milk or a couple eggs either. I love keeping chickens and having my own egg supply.

Another thing I am getting geared up for is lentils. I had read several times that lentils are an acceptable substitute for ground beef in some recipes and had meant to test it out for quite awhile now. I'm excited to finally get around to that....and the kids will have the final say on the subject. Also, I've never had tofu. Just the word makes me cringe and wrinkle my nose. Tofu. We'll just wait and see if I get that brave.

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September Bucket List Self Challenge

So, the other day, my husband stumbled upon this website to keep track of the things you want to do before you die and we both started putting together our own lists. www.bucketlist.org  The neat thing is that you can see some of the things other people have on their lists and get really great ideas for your own. I found several things this way that I never even knew I wanted to do! Here's what I have so far:
 

• Ride a Segway 
• Become a vegetarian for a month   
• message message                                
  Send a message in a bottle 
• Knit and donate 30 scarves for the homeless
• skill skill
  Paint a self portrait on a big canvas  
• Blog about my life consistently for at least a year   
• Go indoor skydiving   
• Go scuba diving   
• parasailing parasailing hawaii hawaii
  Go PARASAILING over WATER on a boat!!! 
• Own a 1963 Jeep Gladiator J20-light blue  
• Get a sleeve tattoo    
• Run a 5k   
• nieces family aunt family family aunt family
  Become an aunt    
• photography experience adventure family experience family new year family adventure new year adventure experience new year adventure photography expérience family photography
  Take a photo with husband every month and make a collage out of it  
• adventure travel travel travel adventure travel fun travel adventure fun travel adventure fun
  Ziplining  
• experience adventure travel travel travel expérience adventure history travel experience experience travel adventure history travel adventure history
  Visit the pyramids in Egypt   
• travel travel travel travel travel travel
  Visit New Orleans       
• south america mayan history ruins history south america ancient ancient mayan ruins south america history
  Mayan Ruins          
• travel travel travel travel travel travel
  Visit Stonehenge  
• trail hike perú inca perú peru inca peru trail hike
  Trek the Incan Trail to Machu Picchu          

Now, I know a lot of the world travel part is going to be a ways off still, seeing that we have such a young family, but a few of these are very doable with a minimal monetary investment on my part! There were a lot of other "easier" bucket list items or ideas that I have already completed, like having a baby or falling in love, but I wanted to keep my list with today as a starting point. 

Aaaanyways, I think I am going to try to become a vegetarian for the month of September.  I have no qualms with butchering an animal and eating it, this bucket list item is simply to walk in someone elses shoes and see how it may or may not effect my health. I'm going to start looking into it and figuring out what products I can and cannot eat. As a bonus for my health, I am also going to attempt to once again cut soda completely out of my diet. I've done this once or twice before but ended up hooked right back on the darn stuff again each time. I drink WAY too much diet soda. Bring on SODA-FREE SEPTEMBER (and steak-free, sausage-free, salmon-free, shrimp-free ***SOB!***)
     

A Sampling of MKCDays--Photo Style!

A lost tooth!

 

Getting our volcanoes on!

 

Recent shopping trip to the bookstore. 

 

Fishing with Daddy!

 

A couple caterpillars we have found so far.

 

Me and my little guy.

 

The kids helping to "fix" the tub out of the old washing machine. :)

 

Another creepy crawly....actually a translucent, bright green color.....and they JUMP!

 

 

Fun times outside. 

 

One of the several tortoises that live on the property.

 

We HAD to stop and see the airplane in Arcadia, FL.

 

This was the first bug adventure we had after moving to FL. I believe it was called a Giant Leopard Moth, if I remember correctly.

 

Gecko!!

 

AND WE LOVE THE BEACH!!