Ladybug built the third bag of the Lego Home Alone house today, which included putting down the floor, and more importantly, the front steps into the home!
Advent 2023–Day Two
Lego Ideas
Advent 2023–Day One
Blessed Advent!
For the fifth (and maybe final…we’ll have to see what the future holds as far as big Lego sets we like) year running, we’re building a special Lego set as an Advent project. I’m super excited about this one…instead of being related to a trip we’ve taken, it’s connected to one of favorite Christmas movies…it’s the Home Alone house! I’ve actually been holding on to this set since it came out, so it feels like we’ve been waiting forever to build it. To start, Turkey built the foundation of the house:
But more importantly, he also built the bandits’ van, and the bandits themselves!
I really can’t wait to see how the house comes together, and I’m especially looking forward to discovering all of the details from the movies that are hidden in the set!
Lego Build Day
Today is LEGO Build Day!
I’m not sure exactly when LEGO came up with the idea, but it’s the perfect way to spend the day after Christmas, especially for a family that always receives at least a few LEGO sets as gifts!
The Fab Five received The Child as a Christmas present, and I’ve also been hanging on to 123 Sesame Street for a special occasion, so those were the two sets we built today. At the same time. On the same table. Which was a bit confusing, but we managed to keep the pieces separate for the most part.
They’re both beautiful sets!
Of course, pretty much any day is LEGO Build Day in our house (we just finished Lego Diagon Alley as an Advent project), so I’m sure it won’t be too long before we have another set to work on!
2019-20 School Year–Week Thirty-Five
And so ends another school year.
It was a fairly low-key week, with no field trips (obviously), and several subjects already wrapped up. We continued taking our daily pre-lunch two mile walk around our neighborhood, and while I miss playing tennis, I have to say that time of walking and talking together has probably been my favorite thing to come out of our modified schedule, and I’ll be sad when it gets hot and we won’t want to do it anymore.
Turkey and Bunny read about the fall of Constantinople in world history, and we finished US history, with most of our attention on FDR and WWII, and a brief race through the decades following. They worked with limits of a function in pre-calculus. They also finished reviewing various comma rules in grammar, and read an ode by Phyllis Wheatley.
Ladybug wrote a 1,200 word paper on one of her favorite books to finish her writing curriculum for the year. Her final chapter in history focused on the California Gold Rush. She finished science by learning about the five senses. She also read about Paul’s final missionary journey in religion.
Chickadee finished reading The Sword in the Tree. We also finished My Father’s Dragon. She wrapped up her study of astronomy. Her math lessons were mostly review, although some more complicated borrowing when subtracting was a fun surprise for her.
Today we built a Lego set, as we always do on the last day of school. It was nice that Moose was able to be with us for our last day, even though he won’t be done (and graduated from eighth grade!), until the middle of next week. This time it was the Lego Ideas ISS, which goes well with all of our other Lego space sets!
This is the most anti-climatic last day of school I can remember, and I have to admit, it was kind of a sad day for me. I had so many things that I wanted to do in the last few months…visiting the Van Gogh exhibit at the St. Louis Art Museum, touring the Mississippi River exhibit at the Missouri History Museum, spending many lovely hours walking around the Missouri Botanical Garden and sketching the spring blooms, enjoying tulip time in Forest Park, and visiting the St. Louis Zoo were all on my list. Obviously, none of that could happen, and we also haven’t been able to look forward to our annual trip to Chicago that we were supposed to take next week. I’m also trying not to think ahead to the future too much, because it scares me a little when I think of what the beginning of our next school year, Turkey and Bunny’s last year of homeschooling, could look like. I’m trying really hard to focus on the positive, so I’ll leave you with some pictures from Wednesday, when we got to play with dry ice, something we probably wouldn’t have gotten to do if it wasn’t for this weird time of isolation:
Friends Day
“No one could ever know me
No one could ever see me
Seems you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be me
Someone to face the day with, make it through all the rest with
Someone I’ll always laugh with
Even at my worst, I’m best with you, yeah!”
Happy Friends Day! Could I be any more excited?!?
It’s hard to believe that one of America’s most-recognized sitcoms (and one of my all-time favorite TV shows) is celebrating its 25th anniversary today…I’d certainly rather not dwell on just how long I’ve been watching! But, as always, I love an excuse for a celebration, and since we finally allowed our children to watch through the entire run of the show starting around Thanksgiving last year, I knew it was a holiday we could all enjoy.
I always try to acknowledge a special occasion with an outfit. While Pinup Girl Clothing did have a lobster-print skirt a while back that would have been absolutely perfect, I never did have the chance to add it to my wardrobe. I did wear a brooch that can kind of pass as Hugsy, Joey’s bedtime penguin pal, though!
The highlight of the day was a Friends marathon. We chose one episode (or a two-parter) from each season:
- Season One–“The One Where Monica Gets a Roommate”
- Season Two–“The One with the Prom Video”
- Season Three–“The One with the Hypnosis Tape”
- Season Four–“The One with Ross’ Wedding” (parts one and two)
- Season Five–“The One in Vegas” (parts one and two)
- Season Six–“The One that Could have Been” (parts one and two)
- Season Seven–“The One with Monica and Chandler’s Wedding” (parts one and two)
- Season Eight–“The One Where Chandler Takes a Bath”
- Season Nine–“The One in Barbados” (parts one and two)
- Season Ten–“The One with Phoebe’s Wedding”
Food is always an integral part of a Markel Family holiday. Of course we needed salty snacks, so I chose a staple from Chandler’s traditional Thanksgiving feast…a family-size bag of Funyuns. And for a fun beverage, we remembered the time Joey was bursting with Yoo-Hoo:
Dinner was easy…we ordered the Joey special: Two pizzas (from Pizza Hut, because we’re definitely not too good for The Hut)!
And I made Rachel’s Thanksgiving trifle, but hopefully mine didn’t taste like feet (the beef sautéed with peas and onions was actually Oreo crumbs mixed with coconut and green chocolate-coated candies)!
“It’s a trifle. It’s got all of these layers. First there’s a layer of ladyfingers, then a layer of jam, then custard, which I made from scratch, then raspberries, more ladyfingers, then beef sautéed with peas and onions, then a little more custard, and then bananas, and then I just put some whipped cream on top!”
The best special occasions involve Lego building, and Lego did not let us down, because they released a special Central Perk Ideas set earlier this month!
Happy Friends-iversary!
Lego “Women of NASA”
I was so excited when Lego Ideas announced that they were going to be making the proposed “Women of NASA” set. We’ve always been huge space nerds, and have a whole corner of our schoolroom dedicated to Lego space sets, so I knew this was going to fit in perfectly. Normally, I would let all five children in on the build, but since there were exactly three vignettes, one for each of my three daughters, I decided it was going to be a girls-only build!
Each part of the set is fairly small, and the builds aren’t too complicated (although they are ingenious…I love the use of a trash can on the telescope!), so it didn’t take too long to put together, and Chickadee could build her part with little help.
The completed sets include computer scientist Margaret Hamilton (and an impressive stack of books!), astronomer Nancy Grace Roman with a Hubble telescope, and astronauts Sally Ride and Mae Jemison with an amazingly detailed for its size space shuttle.
I love that Lego Ideas doesn’t just want you to build something…they want you to learn something, too! There was a page in the instruction book for each of the four women in the set, highlighting their lives and careers. It’s so inspiring to read about these real, brilliant, talented women…and even I learned quite a bit!
It’s a great looking set!
And I told you it would fit right in with our Lego space shuttle and Saturn V rocket!
This is a fantastic little set…as always, I’m looking forward to finding out what else Lego Ideas will put into production in the future!
2017-18 School Year–Week Twelve+
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that we had a busy week ahead, and I wasn’t sure how much school we were going to get done. We did have school, but only for a few days, so I’m going to combine that with this week’s wrap-up.
In addition to a couple of days of regular school work last week, we did a few fun things, as well. We celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and three of the children even got to participate in a mass children’s choir at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. It was very exciting to be part of that historic event!
We started on one of my favorite November traditions last week…we’re assembling our yearly “Thankful Tree!” As far as I can remember, the first year we did this was 2009, and that tree had handprints for leaves. We’ve also done some other variations on it over the years, including a Thankful Wreath, and maybe a Thankful Turkey, as well. Since at least 2011, though, we’ve used the current format. Laminating all those leaves was a pain at the time, but they sure have served us well!
We also went to the St. Louis Public Library Central Library to see the “We Are Shakespeare” exhibit. I almost ran out of time on that one, because it closed last weekend. It was a really cool exhibit, and I’m glad we made it!
We also took advantage of the nice weather on one of Moose’s days off last week to take a nature walk around Creve Coeur Lake. We saw snakes and birds, lots of cool leaves and fruits/nuts, and tons of other people out on bikes and boats enjoying the beautiful day.
This week was a little more standard. We got back to our regular religion lessons, after taking a break for the Reformation. Turkey and Bunny wrapped up another unit in their books, but not before they learned about the Tabernacle, and the positions of all the different tribes when the set up camp around it. Ladybug read a story that was not too familiar to her…the tale of Gideon. Chickadee learned about Elijah and the prophets of Baal.
Ladybug is working on long division in math. She does not enjoy it. She is good at it, though, which is important. Turkey and Bunny worked with regular polygons. They found out how to find the measures of the interior and exterior angles of various shapes. Chickadee is still working on counting larger numbers, and she’s getting pretty good at it!
We had a lot of fun in science this week. Turkey and Bunny have been learning about diffusion and osmosis, and they got to do a few cool experiments to see how they work. Their favorite experiment involved an egg. First, they soaked it in vinegar to remove the shell (which they’ve done in the past). Then they soaked it in syrup, to see which way the liquid moved (out of the egg into the syrup). After that, they soaked it in water, again to see which way the liquid moved (from the water into the egg). They took measurements along the way, and were very impressed with the differences they recorded! Ladybug watched every step of their experiment and was fascinated by it, even as she was learning about Old World apes in her science class.
History has also been interesting. Even though they’re using different texts, Turkey and Bunny’s and Ladybug’s lessons have overlapped again. They’ve all been learning about Babylon and Assyria. We’ve talked about rulers such as Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V. We’ve also made some connections to Bible history, even though our religion lessons haven’t gotten there yet.
The girls had a fun little activity this week. We’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of the Lego Ideas “Women of NASA” set, and we finally received our copy. I decided since there are exactly three vignettes in the set that the girls should be the ones to build it. Turkey still enjoyed reading about the women depicted in the set (I love that Lego included that information in the instruction book) even though he didn’t get to help build it. It’s a great little set, and looks right at home next to our Saturn V rocket!
Next week, we’ll be starting on our annual Thanksgiving study…I can’t believe how quickly that holiday is approaching!
2017-18 School Year–Week One
The first week of the 2017-18 school year is already behind us! This year, I have two ninth graders, a fifth grader, and a Kindergartener!
We started on Tuesday, so it was a short, four-day week. And the first day of school is always mostly fun…finding out what’s in this year’s schultüte, handing out books and organizing desks, taking lots of pictures, and building a Lego set. The latter took several hours, as it is the largest Lego set (the Lego Ideas Saturn V), that we’ve ever built in school. It was a fun project that everyone got to help with (we intentionally started before Moose’s first day of school so he could participate), and was educational, thanks to the fantastic extra details in the instruction book.
On Wednesday, we had a pretty full day of school, beginning most of our subjects for the year, from high school geometry and biology to fifth grade math, spelling, and vocabulary, all the way down to reading Ramona the Pest out loud and Kindergarten handwriting. But then we took a break from our work on Thursday to go on our first field trip of the school year, to see The Discovery of King Tut at the St. Louis Science Center. It was a fantastic exhibit, full of extremely well done replicas from Tut’s tomb, and was also a great way to kick off our history studies for the year, as everyone is going to be studying ancient history in one way or another.
Today we finished off with another regular school day. The only subject we haven’t started yet is our various literature studies (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to start for Turkey and Bunny, and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for Ladybug), which we will add to our schedule next week. I’ll close with something new for this year…I chose a Bible verse to be our theme for the year for the first time ever, and I think our chosen verse of Philippians 4:8 is an especially good reminder with all the chaos in the world right now:
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Chickadee Thursday
Today we had our first field trip of the 2017-18 school year! We went to explore The Discovery of King Tut at the St. Louis Science Center. Chickadee was especially interested in the replica of Tut’s mummified remains, but that doesn’t make for a very good picture, so here she is in front of the replica Rosetta Stone:
We also visited the Missouri Botanical Garden:
And a bonus picture from our first day of school…the Lego Ideas Saturn V we built is almost as tall as Chickadee!
First Day of School 2017
Today was the first day of the 2017-18 school year!
We started with everyone’s favorite first day of school tradition…opening the schultüte:
Of course I took a lot of pictures:
After everyone looked through their new workbooks for the year (and put them away), we had a short Matins service. And then we started on our other favorite first day of school tradition…building our new Lego set for the year. This time, it was the Lego Ideas Saturn V rocket, the biggest school set we’ve built so far (it took about four hours!!!)! Since we started school before Moose this year, he got to join in the fun, too!
That’s about it. We didn’t do any real work today…that can wait for tomorrow. We’re looking forward to all the new and interesting things we’re going to be learning this year!