Scarecrows

My second theme for October to compliment pumpkins (so I wouldn't get pumpkined out) has been Scarecrow.

We have been doing a few things actually over the last 2 or maybe even 3 weeks, but I'm lumping them all together now, just for organization's sake.

First, we learned the following poem:

Die Vogelscheuche

Die Raben rufen, krah krah krah.

Wer steht denn da, wer steht denn da?

Wir furchten uns nicht, wir furchten uns nicht

Vor dir, mit deinem Brillengesicht.

Wir wissen ja ganz genau

du bist nicht Mann, du bist nicht Frau.

Du kannst ja nicht zwei Schritte gehen.

Du bliebst beim Wind und Wetter stehen.

Du bist ja nur ein blosser Stock

Mit Stiefeln, Hosen, Hut, und Rock.

Krah, krah, krah. Krah, krah, krah.

The Scarecrow

The ravens crow, krah, krah, krah

who's standing there, who's standing there

We're not afraid, we're not afriad,

Of you, and your glassesface (you know, like four-eyes)

Yes, we know perfectly well

You aren't a man, you aren't a women

Yes, you can't walk even two steps.

You stay out standing in the wind and weather.

Yes, you are just a stick

With boots, pants, hat, and coat

krah, krah krah. krah krah krah.

And then we made the following crafts to go along with our poem.

Corn (this went along with Christopher Columbus too, since one of the things he brought back from the new world was Mais. And I finally realized I don't NEED a popcorn popper to pop corn, therefore we will probably be eating popcorn more often)

Abigail kept asking for more and more popcorn. I couldn't figure out how she was eating it so fast... until I looked a little closer :) Food Storage - just like her parents.

There is a MUCH better picture of our corn craft later on (at least it is identifiable as corn). I like to let the kids be "creative" and Joshua knows this so sometimes he glues things in "creative" places - as in not where I would put them.

Scarecrows. We didn't have any brads, but I wish we did. That would have been more fun. Instead we just used staples. That's ok too. This is just a color, cut out, and stick together project.

Ravens. I was inspired by these adorable little metal ravens my mother-in-law has on her kitchen windowsill. They were so cute and I figured there has got to be a way to some how recreate that. Mine aren't anywhere as cute as hers, but of course I am not in the habit of bending and painting plates of metal and such. Felt and cardboard, good enough

In case anyone is interested in recreating this craft, this is how I did it. My only word of advice is to think a little bit about the balancing part when you glue on the legs. These crows do much much better if you leave them alone.

All together.

My "better" corn picture. With actual popped corn.

And we experimented with watercolors. Very nice.

Yes, there is a hole in Abby's painting. I think it makes it kind of rustic, you know, scarecrow rustic like.

This was supposed to be our crowning achievement in the scarecrow unit, but I think they look awful. I wanted to make a real one (at least child sized) but realized I didn't really have the resources or the will to go get said resources, so we settled for what you can google as a "mini scarecrow."  After completion of this project I've decided I should have looked at the online photos of the craft for more than 3 seconds because I'm pretty sure when they said "craft sticks" they probably meant ones like tongue depressors and not popsicle sticks. I can imagine these would look much better with bigger sticks.  However, the children really liked collecting "hay" from outside and then holding the finished product while reading our scarecrow books.  This craft is NOT toddler appropriate, but just mostly because I used hot glue most of the time so the children couldn't actually help. When I switched over to Elmer's, it was easy/complicated enough to capture Joshua's attention for a good while, but was way over Abigail's head still. So instead of making her scarecrow herself, I made it for her. But at least she likes to play with it, and that is important too.

And we read some books. I very much like "Feathertop" and I think when the library opens up again I'll have to get the Nathaniel Hawthorne version of the book for myself. It promises to be very thought provoking. Maybe I'll have an intellectual conversation with myself.

Besides that we've been pointing out all the scarecrow decorations we've seen outside, which has been really fun. I really like Fall decorations and it is neat to see what others put up on their front porches.

Scarecrow was a fun unit in as sense. I mean, I think the kids had fun, at it was different than just doing ghosts and witches for Halloween. But it wasn't very educational. So maybe next year we will do Bats and um... something else. I don't have to think about it for another 11 months so maybe I wont. In any case, I am kind of excited for November when we get to learn a little more history and geography, and then December for our unit on Astronomy. You know, applicable things. Especially for a 2 and 4 year old. :)

Pumpkins 2: the Patch

We've also been working on a few scarecrow items but I'm waiting until I have enough to make a substantial blog post solely devoted to that.

In the meantime, here are more of the pumpkin activities we've been doing.

We made pumpkin spice cake (this recipe has no flour in it - only nuts, egg, pumpkin, spices, baking soda, and raisins. kind of weird recipe. major delicious cake)

We had dinner in a pumpkin (this recipe was also highly modified to fit our needs and it turned out pretty well.)

We went to the pumpkin patch out in Santaquin in with a new friend of mine.

This is on the tractor ride to get to the patch. I just like this photo because my kids look genuinely happy - not the fake "cheese" smile I usually get from them. They were really looking forward to doing this.

This and a few of the following are the obligatory pose with your pumpkin shots - that by the way never turn out because three kids never look at the camera at the same time. This was my best one.

This one is just so funny

This was a cute apple crate maze. It was short enough that when I went in I could see over the top - which is what I like. Joshua loved it and I let him go in by himself to see if he would make it out, and he did... but he came back out the entrance.

Abigail's favorite part was probably this tractor. When it was time to get back on the tractor ride to go back to the car she said, "No. I'm staying here. I'll drive this tractor."

This place was full of photo opportunities

Lukas calling out the inner cowboy

It was my friend's birthday so back at the Big Red Barn we celebrated with Ice Cream - I chose Pumpkin Pie. (the kids had "light pink" and licorice.)

And we saw some incredibly huge pumpkins!

This is such a bad photo but I like how it shows how excited Joshua was about the size of the pumpkin

He had to ask if this one was real

This next week we are going to paint pumpkins, eat more pumpkins, and probably head out to another pumpkin patch - a more kid activity based one I've been hearing about from more than a few people - and it's free and almost literally right down the street. So check back next week.

Bad Joke

I had this "irrational" fear a few weeks ago that since Summer went by so fast, Fall would also go by just as fast and I was upset about that because I love fall and just wanted to sit back and savor it for a LONG time. Finally I convinced myself of the absurdity of my worry. And then this happened.  I'm not laughing.

My kids thought it was awesome and they set up some "chairs" to sit and watch the snow fall from the safety of the garage.  The weather is supposed to get back up to the high 60s. I'm still waiting.

Pumpkins 1

This is only the beginning... seeing as we haven't baked anything yet and how can you do a unit on a food item and not bake anything. Yes, I know, ridiculous.

My new love is sugar pumpkin - and I also loved that the lady at the checkout stand only charged my 69 cents for the entire pumpkin, and not per pound. That was lovely.

Joshua really really really wanted to count ALL the seeds in the pumpkin

We washed and dried these seeds to use next year to plant in our garden. Hopefully they aren't (but I'm guessing they probably are) genetically altered so that they wont actually grow. That would be disappointing.

We did count some seeds. These pumpkins represent the people in our family (Maren is a cousin) and the seeds represent how many years old that person is. Lukas only got a part of a seed because he's not one yet and I added an extra seed on mine since my birthday in just in a couple of weeks. This project really helped Joshua visualize what age really means and how old we (his parents) really are. He was especially impressed when we counted out the seeds it takes to make up Grandpa Bob!!!

There were 6 pages in each book. The first is of a pumpkin seed, the second is the seed beginning to grow, the third is of a full size pumpkin, and the last three the kids could draw the things you can do with a pumpkin, such as jack-o-lanterns, pie, and cupcakes (I have never heard of a pumpkin cupcake but I'm sure it can be done.)

Some of the books we have been reading.

Happy Columbus Day

Some people have stopped celebrating Columbus Day, but we haven't. In fact, I think it is very important, and if you make it to the very end of this blog you will see why (and kudos to you because it is kind of long)

Here is what we did.

The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria making their way.

 A side note about the above project. This was going to be someone complicated to create seeing as I had no map and no play dough. No big deal, just go buy or create a map and make up a batch of play dough. But that sounded like more work that I wanted to put into the project. However, last Saturday some of our neighbors had a garage sale and sold me this map for $1! Sure it still has countries like the Soviet Union, Eastern Germany, and Yugoslavia, and cities like Ho Chi Minh and Leningrad, but come on, it was a dollar.  And then the inspired nursery teachers at church gave all the little children play dough on Sunday. Hurray! I didn't have to make any. That just made me happy.

Telescopes - Spy glasses - Fern Glass - unocular - I don't know what they're called

I did my "research" out of this book.

Our coloring pages. The one on the left is Joshua's and the one on the right is Abigail's.

The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria out of play dough

I didn't get to reading the scriptures in the Book of Mormon about Columbus to the kids tonight. Joshua is actually still at the Circus with his grandparents and as soon as he gets home I'm whisking him into bed.  But for your reading pleasure, I have copied and pasted the following from someone else's blog.  Enjoy!

Christopher Columbus and the Book of Mormon

So, you know Columbus is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, right?

1 Ne. 13: 12-13
  12 And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.
  13 And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.

Okay, so does everyone. Did you also know that Columbus realized he was being inspired? And that he was visited by angels? In order that we may gain greater understanding of 1 Ne. 13:12-13, I quote from the Oct 1992 issue of Ensign:

The novelty of Columbus's idea was not that the earth was round—every major geographer and scholar since the ancient Greeks accepted a spherical earth, as did seamen and educated people of the time. Rather, it was that the earth was not as far around as everyone believed. The most respected geographical authority in Columbus's time was Ptolemy, who had calculated the circumference of the earth at 21,840 miles (the modern measurement is 25,902 miles). Columbus preferred the estimates of Arab mathematician al-Farghani, who came up with a measurement of about 20,000 miles.

More important for Columbus, however, was the ratio of land to water. Here he made his greatest miscalculations. Marinus of Tyre had suggested that land extended for 225 degrees around the earth, leaving only 135 degrees of water between Portugal and China. But even that was too far for Columbus. Had not Esdras written (in the Apocrypha) that six parts of the globe are habitable land and only one part water? Columbus therefore reduced the width of the ocean by 28 degrees to account for a larger Asia and then another 30 degrees to Japan, because Marco Polo had reported (without seeing it, of course) that the island of Cipango (Japan) lay 1,500 miles off the coast of Cathay (China). Columbus subtracted 9 more degrees when he decided to depart from the Canary Islands.

Thus, he calculated the distance from the Canaries to Japan at about 2,400 miles. He was wrong, of course; the actual airline distance is 10,600 miles. But remarkably, what did lie about 2,400 miles west of the Canaries was an entirely new continent, unknown to anyone in Europe or Asia.

...Columbus would not be put off. He continued to promote his project so tenaciously that it gave rise to sundry stories and myths to explain his dogmatic certainty. There are so many flaws in these stories that it is amazing anyone ever believed them, much less modern critical scholars. Yet some people are willing to believe almost anything to explain Columbus's unmovable conviction rather than accept his claim that he was led by God. "I could sense his hand upon me," wrote Columbus, "so that it became clear to me that it was feasible to navigate from here to the Indies, and he gave me the will to do it."

...On the third voyage, he was unable to control the open rebellion that had broken out in the new colony he had founded on his second voyage. In October 1500, Columbus was arrested and deported to Spain in chains.

The humiliation was overwhelming. In a letter to a friend, Columbus wrote, "The only thing that sustains me is my hope in him who created everyone; his support has always been near. On one occasion not long ago, when I was deeply distressed, he raised me with his right arm, saying: 'O man of little faith, arise, it is I, do not be afraid.' "

Later, during his fourth voyage, Columbus received another divine assurance during an extremely perilous moment when he was about to abandon all hope. "Exhausted, I fell asleep, groaning," he reported to the sovereigns. "I heard a very compassionate voice, saying: 'O fool and slow to believe and to serve thy God, the God of all! … Thou criest for help, doubting. Answer, who has afflicted thee so greatly and so often, God or the world? … Not one jot of His word fails; all that He promises, He performs with interest; is this the manner of men? I have said that which thy Creator has done for thee and does for all men. Now in part He shows thee the reward for the anguish and danger which thou hast endured in the service of others.' I heard all of this as if I were in a trance, but I had no answer to give to words so true, but could only weep for my errors. He, whoever he was, who spoke to me, ended saying: 'Fear not; have trust; all these tribulations are written upon marble and are not without cause.'" [emphasis added]

 

Columbus was wrong about some of the details of geography, and he didn't fully understand the purpose of his mission--but he knew that God had a work for him to do and he did it.

-Max (http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2009/09/christopher-columbus-and-book-of-mormon.html)

The Letter Q

What do you do with the letter Q when Quail in German starts with a W and therefore throws out all of your known options?

You pin the tail on the Q