We are still in a heat wave so the boys are spending most mornings outside in the sprinkler and kiddie pool.

In the afternoon they have been playing with Duplos and Legos.

I made a summer-time wreath using a wire wreath form (that I already had) and fabric scraps (that I already had) so all I bought was a $1 pair of flip flops.  It's a little shaggy, but not bad for $1 craft.  I got this idea on Pinterest.

Adelaide is getting very handy on the exersaucer.  She is grabbing and spinning the toys all over the place and she thinks it's awesome!

We have also added two new pets to the household.  Some of you may remember Monet from last fall, well the same neighbor found two more caterpillars in her parsley, so we are going to try and raise them until the butterfly stage again.  Their names are Louis and Marie Antoinette.

Today we recived our first packet from Little Passports so we learned about Brazil!  We found out about these monkeys with the red faces and learned that Brazil has a lot of natural resources.

They even sent an amethyst!

It was very neat.  Then we read a few books about Brazil and Gavin traced the country on tracing paper, then added major cities and the Amazon River.  This is actually going to be a part of first grade.  Since we are learning about geography this year, studying one country every 4-6 weeks, I decided that even though it's summer we are going to start with Brazil so we can include it in our notebook.  Instead of making Gavin draw things (because he doesn't like to draw freehand) I decided to let him trace each country onto tracing paper.  This way he gets the kinesthetic action of drawing the shape and features of the country but without the pressure of trying to do it freehand (plus it will be more accurate!).

Also in the mail today, my roommate from college is in the army and stationed in Afghanistan, and she sent the boys hats!  As you can imagine, Austin was very excited about receiving new hats!

And, because our day wasn't exciting enough, we had a special July 4th dinner in the form of red, white and blue kabobs (also found on Pinterest)!  Why is everything more fun when it's on a stick?  Anyway, we made kabobs using red grapes, strawberries, blueberries and star shaped marshmallows.  Since I thought we should throw in a veggie, we had cucumbers from our garden to round out the meal.  Not exactly a well balanced meal but the boys loved it anyway! 

Gavin got to make his own kabob.  He didn't even put marshmallows on them but he did take the last of the strawberries!

Here they are in their hats again!

Here are the books we read today about Brazil.

This book is a Brazilian legend about tiny monkeys that live in thorn trees along the Amazon River.  It explains why they live in the thorn trees and don't build a nest or permanent home.

And this book was about a famous soccer star from Brazil.

We are still working on The Burgess Animal Book at mealtimes.  We are getting to the end but are really enjoying learning about animals.  Just in case you think we are just being lazy taking so long, it's almost 300 pages so it takes a while to read it outloud!

We just finished Lightfoot the Deer, also by Thornton Burgess, before bedtime...

...and we started The Adventures of Prickly Porky yesterday.