Cloudy with a chance of fun
29 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in co-ops
Today we had a co-op about the book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.
We went to a friends house where we listened to her read the book.
Then we talked about what kind of weather was found in Chew and Swallow or Colorado (pancakes? Chew and swallow. Snow? Colorado.) We also talked about why people might have to leave their homes (hurricane Katrina, Irish potato famine) and I added the helpful tidbit from Joel’s geography test that those 2 items are a push for immigrants (a pull factor would be good jobs, religious freedom, etc.)
Then we went over to the table and built stale bread houses with stale bread, marshmallow crème, candy, coconut and pretzels. Here is Hannah’s house.
Here is mine, I had to build a ladder because I forgot to poke a door hole.
Here is Bethany building hers.
Here is Hannah acting like Gretel: quite eating my house little girl!
We went by BK for lunch specifically to buy the toy for the movie, but they were out. Then we headed over to the movie (and got the $5 early bird special.)
The movie was awesome! It tells the story of Chew and Swallow before the town received food from the sky three times a day. It was funny, in fact I’m glad there were only a handful of people there because at times we were laughing so hard we were crying. It had a good message (believe in yourself, don’t think too much about what other people say about you, tell your family that you love them every day and giant food coming out of the sky probably isn’t a great thing.)
After the movie we went over to the Aurora history museum where they had 2 new exhibits. One about Fitzsimmons hospital, a military hospital built in the 20’s. It was the leading hospital for tuberculosis patients. President Eisenhower once stayed there for 7 weeks after a heart attack. It was also used as a POW camp for prisoners that had lung diseases. Here is a pic of the POW barracks.
The hospital has been revamped and is no longer just a military facility. Here are some items on display, a remote X-ray machine (not quite as nice as the one that X-rayed Grace.)
A defibrillator that I’m not sure I would want any where near my heart
and some hospital furniture.
In the other room was the story of the 10th mountain division that trained here in Colorado. Here is a list of what they had in their rucksack.
Here is a pic of them in uniform with their skis on their shoulders like rifles.
The 10th mountain division was responsible for going in over snow or mountainous terrain in Italy in WWII. The temperature at Camp Hale (or Camp Hell as it was known) could reach 52 below zero in the winter, cold! Something you may not know about the 10th mountain division is that if you are a skier, you have them to thank for setting up ski runs, training skiers, inventing new ski equipment and opening ski resorts in places like Aspen, Vail and Whiteface mountain.
The kids always love to stay in the play area dressing up,
listening to old radio shows and looking through the discovery drawers,
playing games
and drawing (the one on the left is Hannah’s, the right is mine.)
After going to the thrift store, post office and Wal-mart we’re finally home and cooking dinner.
Back to school
29 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in information, kids, School Stuff
Not that we didn’t do it while in the hospital, but it’s a much more normal version. Hannah found out what small to big means while playing with play dough.
I did not even facilitate this (except for buying the play dough.) She made the little snakes and lined them up by height, pretty cool.
Then she sorted her fake food and we found out there are 10 of everything except tomatoes (there are 20 of those, not sure why.) Bethany was happy with art, spelling and reading. Grace did history and math. She got to use those touch point cards I made, but I don’t have pics. I’ll have her show you another day how to use them. Joel did math and then went through English thinking that the lesson was all he was supposed to read. Oops. He was supposed to read Fahrenheit 451 and then take the test. He’s got a nice teacher who is going to reset the test for him, but next time he’ll know that when it says read the book, that’s what it means.
At dance Grace wore her mask, which upset her, but tough – I don’t care. I made sure that people knew she wasn’t contagious (although her teacher has see her 3 times at least wearing a mask after being in the hospital so she knew right away what had happened.) After Hannah went to class Grace and I walked down to the café to play a game of checkers and have a smoothie. My class went a lot better than last week. I am very visual so I think that will help. My other teacher made notes of the entire dance and that was kind of a crutch, so I think seeing what we’re supposed to do will work out. Also Tiffany has us do a set of things and then switch sides so we do the opposite, which at first was confusing, but I see where she’s going with that. We did follow along and then something that the girls and I are trying at home. Each person got 1 line of the song and had to make up a movement for that piece. Then the next person added on and so on. Soon we had a 1 minute dance with 7 pieces that fit together seamlessly, it was a very cool exercise. I had no problem talking about what God did in my life this week (oh, let’s see….provision, healing, quiet, strength, hope, yeah, not hard at all.)
I have made a decision that dance/CAP Monday’s will be hot dog nights. It’s quick, Joel can fix his before I get home and did I mention it’s quick and easy? I have no time between school/park/dance/CAP to cook; even crockpot cooking is tough. So, hot dogs on Mondays it is.
Bethany is enlisting on a new enterprise. She’s knitting baby hats and when she has enough of a collection she will be selling them on the internet. For every one she sells, one will be donated to Littleton Adventist Hospital for newborns or NICU babies. Here is grubby baby modeling hat number one.
She has pink, peach, yellow, blue, and purple.
Here are Bethany and Hannah’s Winter b-day cards.
I have to explain Hannah’s.
Ok, the big blue thing is Winter the red is a crab cutting off her tail (because Hannah heard that Winter was caught in a crab net, so there must have been a crab in it, right?) The person is…..a person helping Winter. The green thing is a caterpillar and the blue thing by it is Winter’s new tail. I’m not sure where she was going with the caterpillar, but it’s cute. She also made a card for Cooper (one of the otters at CMA.)
Look, she spelled Cooper!
And lastly, I finally finished my scarf that I only worked on at TNO (and not all of them either, maybe 9.) It’s nice and soft and see, just in time for cold weather (I started last winter, hey TNO is only once a month!)
