This Friday Liberty had a Tea Party to celebrate the end of her chapter of  learning about the Boston Tea Party. We made home made cookies and cupcakes for the occasion. The cup cakes were lemon cake with cream cheese frosting and the cookies were chocolate chip cookies. We had tea, fruit punch and water for the drinks.
Liberty invited her friends and family to come and had a pretty good turn out. After everyone had showed up, we all went into the dining hall and Liberty explained what she has learned in the last past week. I taped this there but my memory card was full so I didn't get it all. We did come home and rerecorded it. Below is that video.

She did really good and I was very proud of her. Everybody enjoyed the Tea Party.

Mobile School

On Wednesday we took our school on the road. My mom asked if we wanted to go to Chanute and Independence to put flowers on graves because Monday she wouldn't be able to go. I of course said yes and had planned on just pushing school back a day, but then thought why, it's a long drive we can do school in the car so that's exactly what we did.

We had a lot of book work so it was pretty easy. Liberty did her spelling on her own, while I worked with Teyla. Teyla was suppose to do letter k, but when I picked up her stuff I picked up all the stuff for letter M, so we just went ahead and did M. She made M art and I know this is crazy but she finger painted her M's. Teyla is a pretty clean finger painter, she usually just uses a finger or two so I figured we could still get away with her doing it. I brought some paper towels and it all worked out fine. She then did some tracing work with Mary Mary Quite Contrary. She had to find and circle all the pictures that begin with the letter m, and then she also did some M books. She only worked on her ABC note book because I forgot to pick up her workbook.

Landon did some finger painting too, he is working on the third letter of his name N so I put tape making a N and he finger painted over it.  He also practiced printing the letter N and he practiced writing his name.

Liberty got her spelling done and then she had a test over what she has been learning in Heritage Studies.  She pulled off another A.  In math she is working on rounding to the nearest 100's she will be taking a test over that this Friday.  Science we have finished our curriculum so she has been doing an ocean lapbook, but it has a lot of cutting and pasting and little parts I figured we would take a break from it since we were kinda confined with what we could do in the van. English she had a cumulative review over writing a book report and over the last 3 chapters we went over.  We will start our research project on Tuesday of next week. Reading I forgot her books so she read a book that Grammy had packed in the van, it was her reading book that she read when she was in grade school. The story she read was about a boy detective and his missing dog lady.

We stopped in Iola and headed to the Russel Stover Candy factory. We made this educational by making Liberty round the money to the nearest dollar of everything we bought. I also had her estimate how much money it would take to buy certain things. The kids made out Grammy bought them their favorite Jelly Bellies. After leaving RSC we headed to A&W root beer and grabbed some lunch.

Off to Chanute to decorate graves and then to Independence. It had been raining off an on all day and in the past when we've gone to Independence after decorating graves we have gone to the zoo and the kids really wanted to go again this time too. We told them that we would have to wait and see what it was like when we got there. So when we got in to Independence and it wasn't raining and the sun was shining the kids were ecstatic, just as we put the last flower on the last grave it started raining again. The kids were devastated, but by the time we got out of the cemetery it had cleared up again, and we went to the zoo. It was a great time the following pictures are from the Independence zoo.

We had a great day and 

I really love that home schooling is so flexible

Field Trip to KC

So we went to Wonder scope Museum with Leland last year as a family and had a great time. We found out later that since we have an Exploration Place membership we are able to get into Wonder scope for free. I have been promising the kids we would take a field trip there and bring Grammy along too since she missed out the first time. I had it planned for Friday the 20th. Luckily I went to the website to check for directions and discovered that they would be closed on Friday so they could get ready for a special event, so I did some rearranging and our trip was on for Wednesday the 18th.

Wonder scope is about a 10 min. drive from where the American girl store is and 10 min. away from the AG store is Smallcakes, a cupcake store that we heard about from food network cupcake wars. So we had a busy day planned because it would be ashamed to go to KC and not hit those destinations too since they were so close together.

We left El Dorado at about 9:30 got to KC about 11:30 grabbed some lunch at Burger King and then headed to Wonder scope. We got there at about 12:15 and let me tell you I really enjoyed just showing my Exploration Membership and being told thank you have a great time.

Wonder scopes is in an old school building so there are different rooms, the first room is filled of all different types of ramps and balls. You have to figure out how to get the balls into  buckets by speed and distance. It's a lot of fun.

The second room is the barn room. It is filled with a barn and farm animals. They have an area where the kids can plant pretend vegetables, and they also have a grocery store area. It's a lot of fun. The kids can put on a puppet show. Go shopping, dress up like animals, milk a cow, even collect eggs from the chicken coup. The last time we were here this room was very busy so the kids didn't get to play in it long, but this trip they were happy to see it wasn't busy at all.

The next room use to be the tinker room it was a room filled with different sections of track and you made small roller coasters and used balls to see if they would work. We enjoyed this room last time, but they are redoing it. The kids were a little sad about that, but still enjoyed playing in this room. It's going to be a music room. They didn't have it completely set up but they did have some of it done and what they did have the kids really enjoyed. It's hard to describe all that they did so I will with pictures.

They had a very large xylophone that everyone had fun playing with. It's sound was so pretty not annoying like the little metal ones the kids played with when they were little lol

These were different sized metal bowls that they had hung on a board upside down. It was fun trying to see if we could play a tune with them. (You can see that the room is quite finished and still has stuff up from when it was the tinker room)

These were fun too. You blew into the tubes to make different notes. We found out the harder you blew didn't change the note, the kids thought maybe it would make the note go higher. At one point they each choose a tube and they were making some music together. They sounded pretty good too, sadly I was enjoying the music too much and didn't take any pictures of it.

On to the health room. This room is full set up as a doctor's office on one side and all around the room they have different things set up that help you learn about your body. The girls of course had to dress up like doctors and take care of their babies. They have puzzles that teach you about the bones and muscles, that Landon had fun doing. This room Libby reviewed all she had learned a couple weeks ago when we studied about the human body. I was quite surprised that she remembered all that she did and there were only a few things she had to be reminded about.

In the hallways on your way to the different rooms they have little things you can stop and play with. They had this mirror on the wall and we all had a good laugh at how we looked.

Our next adventure took us in to the art room. I think this is one of the Kids favorite rooms. They have all kinds of things you can make crafts with. Paint, glue, stickers, ribbons, but what they love most is they have a face painting station set up where the kids can paint their faces.

Liberty starting to paint her face. I had to help her a little. It took us awhile to realize if we just wet the little paint crayon it was easier to paint that way.

Grammy helping Teyla, we still hadn't figured out the easy way and Tey was getting a little frustrated. She did most of hers, but Grammy just did some touching up.

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Landon as spiderman. They didn't have any black so we used blue and again we did his face before we found the easier way to do it. lol

Libby the butterfly

Teyla the kitty cat

making crafts, Teyla made some too, but for some reason I didn't get a picture of her.

The H2O room was the next room, We didn't stay in this room very long it was really busy and some kids were getting a little crazy and by the time we left the kids were pretty wet. They did have fun though.

The last room at Wonder scope is the kids most favorite room. It's the Lego room. They have big blue blocks that are like Lego's that the kids love to build with. They spent over an hour and a half in that room. The only way to give justice to this is room to show the pictures.

The kids had a great time here and can't wait until next time.

We left Wonder scope and headed over to Small cakes. We really wanted to check this place out since we heard about them on Cupcake wars. We were not disappointed the cupcakes were delicious. Teyla had a Hot fudge sundae cupcake, Liberty had a Pink Vanilla cupcake, Landon had a Blue birthday cake cupcake, Grammy had the peanut butter cupcake, and I had the cupcake of the day Strawberry lemonade. I also took a bite of everyone Else's cupcakes too, and I gotta say they were all yummy. 

We enjoyed our cupcakes and the kids were ready to head to the American Girl store so we headed that way. Each of the kids had their doll get a bath and the girls had their dolls hair done. The girls bought a pair of shoes each for their dolls with their allowance and then I bought them the care kit. It has a foot cast, crutches, a finger splint, ace bandage and few other things I can't think of right now. Landon got some training pants for Landon a new Hawaiian outfit and  some little snacks for Dolly Landon. 

We also hit the Disney Store while we were there, picked up some new swim suits and flip flops.

We had a great day and a wonderful field trip. I know it all wasn't educational, but we had fun and learned a little along the way.