Ready for Valentine's Day

Today we started decorating for Valentine's Day.  We also read a book about the history of Valentine's Day.  There was no school today, no school tomorrow and probably no school on Wednesday so we will have lots of time to do Valentine's Day projects this week!  For today, we just did a garland to go in front of the fireplace.

It looks great!

When Austin took his nap Gavin and I played a couple games of Candyland.  We got this beautiful tablecloth at WalMart for $5 a couple weeks ago.  I like it so much I think I might keep it on the table all year round!

That's our day in a nutshell!  I will do a better job taking pictures this week!



The Weekend

Sorry about the lack of posts.  For some reason I haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately. 

Friday we went to the park since we got into the 40s for one day.  We didn't stay too long because it was so wet with melty snow but it was nice to get out while we could (since we are supposed to get 14 inches of snow tomorrow!)

Saturday I put together a small sensory bucket for Austin.  Gavin was pretending he was a chipmunk looking for nuts while Austin gathered red heart erasers and red pom poms.

Someone taught Gavin to put things in his hands and have people guess which hand it's in.  This is his new favorite game.

After church on Sunday the boys played with Duplos.

Gavin built an awesome house!

Austin was riding around in his car talking on his cell phone.  I tried to get a picture but just got some big smiles instead!

Snow Day Part 2

That's right, no school again today.  This morning Austin worked on a penguin craft and Gavin made a thermometer (it was just paper but had a piece of yarn you moved up and down to show the temperature.  I say had because he already ripped it!)  Austin also ripped the cotton ball and an eye off his penguin.  He wants to play with his creations and I had hung it up too low on the window in the kitchen and he went over and snatched it off the window and took off with it.

Since it's too cold to go outside, we brought the snow inside.  The boys played in the snow for a couple hours this morning.

Here's Austin showing off his penguin before I tried to hang it up.  He loves his artwork!

And Gavin keeps wanting knight books to read.  We have read lots of knight books...all the ones I can find that are age appropriate...and we've read them many times.  So today I gave in to his begging and got King Arthur.  Not totally age appropriate but whatever...at least it's a classic.  We haven't officially started it yet but he spent most of the afternoon 'reading' it.



Another Snow Day

We got another eight inches of snow so there was no school today and looks like no school tomorrow.  So, we decided to make the most of our snow day with snow related activities.  We started with a couple of experiments.  Our first experiment tested what melted snow the fastest, cold water, hot water, salt or salt water.  Gavin's hypothesis was correct - hot water melts snow the fastest!

He recorded his findings in his science journal.

Our next experiment was to see how much water was in a bucket full of snow.  So we filled a container full of snow and then checked it periodically to see what happened.  Gavin thought it would be full of water, but nope, only about an inch of water was left in the container when it had all melted.  We read a few books about snow and learned that one inch of rain can produce 10 to 40 inches of snow!

Then the fun stuff.  We made ice cream out of snow!  I found a recipe online and it worked.  Gavin mixed sugar, milk and vanilla together.

Then added snow!

Here is his reaction after having his first bite. 

Austin really enjoyed this project too!  It wasn't bad but I didn't think it was great. Very cold. Gavin declared it the best ice cream ever and Austin started screaming at me when I wouldn't let him have another bowl full so apparently it was just me.

Then Austin painted a snowman and I let him put some silver glitter on it which he really liked!

Gavin made snowmen that you cut out and they connect together.  I think you can do this in people shapes too...

I didn't get a picture of the final project because the glitter was still drying.  That was our day!  It was busy but we had lots of fun!