We are back from Minnesota! (Saint Louis, Kamp Dels, and family wedding)
I know I said that we were driving up to Minnesota for a wedding but we took a detour and stayed two nights in Saint Louis, Mo. We went to the Gateway Arch, road along the Mississippi River on a river boat, and let the boys take a little helicopter tour. We also picnicked at the sculpture park. Finally, we stayed a week at Kamp Dels in Minnesota.
Looking up at the Gateway Arch
Base of the arch
View of Saint Louis FROM the inside of the arch Riverboats on the Mississippi Family photographer with her mom on the River Boat - These pictures were from Kelsey's camera. Forgot about little brother!
Mom and dad at the Sculpture park
My husband's favorite fast food restaurant growing up was Hardee's and in Texas they are all Carl Jr's. But, up north we found a HARDEES! I won't even go into Saint Louis PIZZA! I love IMO'S.
We stayed at Kamp Dels for a week and LOVED LOVED LOVED every second of the Minnesota summer weather: dry mid 80s during the day and 60s at night. Hey, if "snow birds" are people from up north who flee to the south to escape extreme winter temperatures, does that make us FIRE BIRDS???
A few of
Rodney's family members are seasonal campers there at the park (and a few live there) so we
were with family the whole week that we were at Kamp Dels. We could
walk up the road to eat at his Aunt's trailer or go visit his cousin down the
path. His uncle let us stay at his camper under the trees and right across from the water park.
Here is a video of Matthan jumping off the diving board at the pool:
A view from our deck. It was tree covered and overlooked the water park.
Kelsey
at the water park. I usually just sat and read a book as the children
played. Of course, Matthan played tennis and found some family members
to visit and play basketball with. We didn't see him much because he
was always walking around the camp grounds. There was so much to do!
Christian playing in the fire pit.
On the day of the wedding we stayed the night in Mankato but headed
back to Kamp Dels that next morning. The wedding was so much fun. All
of my children danced and had a great time with their cousins. The
wedding pictures are all on my snail camera.
It took us three days of driving to make it to Minnesota: August 10 -
From the coast of Texas up though Dallas then onto 69-75 to Durant, OK
for the night. August 11 - Up through Muskogee onto 44 to Saint Louis,
and then up 61 along the Mississippi River through Hannibal into Iowa
and up to Waterloo.... August 13- Our final destination was Kamp Dels
in Waterville, Mn. This was a different route for us as we usually
stay on 35 all the way up and avoid Dallas!
Our trip back only took two days because we didn't jump over to Saint
Louis. We were silly enough to go through Dallas again. In other
words, we sat in Dallas for an hour. Kelsey caught an image of one of
the reasons why:
And of course, my daughter came home and made a little video of HER take on the trip:
Paper Plate Puzzles - Create your own materials to teach number, letter, and word recognition:
All you need is: cheap paper plates, some markers or crayons, and a pair of scissors. Depending on the purpose of the puzzles you can tweak the design and its placement. We have used many variations.
For the younger ones who are learning their ABC's you can draw a letter and image in
the middle of the plate and with the scissors make a distinct zigzag or
wavy cut down the middle of the plate so that the image can be easily
matched to its other half. This is easy enough as the child completes
and image and sees the letter that starts the word. Notice the consonants are dark blue and vowels are light blue!
Maybe after the child knows his ABCs you can make the design placement or unique cut where matching is more of a challenge. For example: Take the paper plate and
write one letter of the alphabet on the top of the plate with a marker
and draw a picture that starts with that letter on the bottom of the
plate. Use the scissors to cut a funky shape to divide the letter from the image. The picture can
be matched with the correct letter like one big puzzle with two
pieces. The child isn't simply completing the image by matching the
two halves of the plate but trying to find a picture that starts with the correct letter.
Another variation would be to draw an image and have the child match the whole word:
My daughter made these paper-plate puzzles to help her little brother work on his reading
skills. After he matches them he can try to read only the words back:
I have made number recognition paper plate puzzles too! Notice that the even numbers are red and the odd numbers are blue!
I encourage my children to keep a journal even before they can read or write. Of course, my six year old mostly draws:
He is on the verge of reading and he wrote his first sentences yesterday:
"I miss you I loves you DAD"
I read it back to him and he erased the "s" after love. He tore the page out and put it on his dad's pillow. Isn't that sweet? His dad has been out of town this week.
One thing that is so helpful to me, the teacher-mom, is that I can
always look through the journals and see what they are learning or what they are READY to learn.
Like, yesterday, I noticed that my son had not only written a few sentences, but he had written a few words: boom,
boo, pop, poop. I took a cue from the word "boom" and showed him how
to write the words: broom and room. So, now he has a few more words in
his journal:
He is not only thinking of words but he seems to be thinking of math. He hasn't officially learned multiplication but he seems to pick up whatever his big sister is doing:
Guess what this is:
He loves us all: (He loves his dad FIRST and me SECOND, Oh well.)
Alphabet SoupAn example of how learning happens all the time and doesn't have to look like school. This was an example that I sent to the A2Z Yahoo! Group about how learning happened at lunch. This article (blurb) was published in Life Learning Magazine's May/June 2005 issue.
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