Testing

Have I mentioned that Nonni is a teacher? Well, she is. In the 12 years I have known her she has taught 1-5 grade and maybe even Kindergarten, I can't remember exactly. In the last few months she has been nagging  encouraging me to give Babalu the STAR tests (the standardized tests for California, the state we live in). She gave me links to both the english and math portions. Today I am printing them out and over the next couple of days he will be taking them. I'm sure, after looking them over, that Babalu will do fine but I am still interested to see how he does. I shall report his results at the end of the week.


And now a totally unrelated cat funny:

{Throwback Thursday}

Rookie eating his lunch and reading his book, just like Mommy. 

Camping with Kids II- Packing

*Intro to this series is here and part I is here


It seems that our family prefers colder weather when camping. Maybe because where we live gives us more 100+ days than I care to think about and we want a much needed relief. Or maybe it is because our food stays cold on it's own. The reason's don't really matter, the point is I have to scrounge up jeans, long sleeve tops and heavy jammies for the kids.

This summer we are lucky and seem to have enough tops and jammies for Babalu and Rookie. Snuggle Puppy has plenty of jammies (I found a box of his brother's clothes in the garage). I obviously had a few things to buy (I took advantage of the internet!).

When I pack my kids for an overnight trip with specific dressing requirements I have a system. I start with the outfit they will put on the last day and pack it first. On top of that the jammies for the last night and on top of that the clothes of the day before and you get the idea. It saves time and we always know what clothing is dirty and clean. I find this especially important when camping because there is dirt everywhere and I want my kids to wear clean clothes. Or at least put on clean clothes in the mornings.

Zoo Camp

I am so thankful to live near (less than 5 minutes away) from a rather nice zoo. Over the school breaks they have Zoo Camp (each topic last a week during the summer and one day for the shorter breaks). Last summer Babalu and Rookie spent a week learning about life under the sea. This summer they will spend their week learning about being a zoo keeper and even get to design their own habitat. They start their first day in 1 hour and 33 minutes. So excited for them to get out of the house and have so much fun.

Camping with Kids Part I: Diapering

*Intro to this series is here*

For many people the question of "how to we want to diaper our little one?" is an easy one and they pick up an extra bag of disposable diapers and wipes. For others it isn't so easy. The real question becomes "do we want to cloth diaper on our camping trip?". On our last camping trip we went for it and used cloth. It was only a weekend so it wasn't too bad (especially considering our week long trip out of state on which we used cloth only 6 month before). We have used disposables when we leave the house many times but since we were already buying new things for the trip and I went over-budget on food (poor planning... that is a whole post on it's own) we wanted to save the 20 bucks and use cloth.

My strategy-

1. Make sure all of the diapers are clean the morning we leave so we aren't leaving a pail full of nappies at home.
2. Plan on when to change Baby and then add 2 per day. That is how many to bring. I ended up packing all of our Thristies brand covers (my absolute favorites), which is about a dozen, with all of our prefolds and pocket diaper inserts to just put in the covers (*covers do not need to be changed at every change, only 2 or 3 per day are necessary). For each night, in our case 2, I packed a double stuffed Fuzzi Bunz. This is what we use for nighttime at home. I also packed all of our wipes (just two layers of flannel sewed together and a few wash clothes) and had a water bottle set aside to get them wet. We will also have the gDiapers that we keep on the car on a regular basis. 
3. I kept all the cleans in a a duffle and brought a pail liner to keep the dirties (held together at the top with a hair tie). We did not have an issue with smell and if we had I would have put a cup of baking soda in with the dirties. Baking soda is amazing for getting rid of odors.
4. "What did you do with the poo?" is always a common question when cloth diapers are concerned. This is the answer- it depends on the poop. If it the kind of diaper that the poo can be easily shaken into the toilet I do so. If it isn't I don't worry about it and just put in into the dirty bag (now that I'm really thinking about it I should have a separate wet bag for these so I know where they are) and rinse them with the diaper sprayer when we get home. 

Something else you can do (that I have done in the past) is use the disposable gDiaper inserts with the Thristies covers or the gDiaper covers. I like these inserts because they biodegrade very quickly (you can compost the wets!) and disposable diapers take a very long time. This is what I like to use when Snuggle Puppy gets a yeast rash and I need to use the prescribed cream for a few days (and then I follow up with a week or two of coconut oil at each change. I haven't had a build-up problem with the coconut oil so I feel comfortable using it with cloth diapers).

I hope this has made using cloth on camping trips a little less scary :)

Social Science planning

When possible I like studying world history and world geography together. When we study the Celts I want us to study Scotland (so excited for that week!), as an example. That isn't always possible because sometimes 2 or more topics take place in the same place and, aside from England, I don't want to study the same place twice because I want to introduce as many places as I can. I also managed to mostly arrange the geography topics by continent, just by luck. We will be reading books on each country and putting together lap books. Many of our geography materials are coming from a program called Expedition Earth and also from Continent Boxes. Some of the countries we plan to study are not included in the Expedition Earth so I have to search the internet to find materials. Hopefully it won't be a problem. As I've mentioned before our history comes from here.  
This is the list of what we are doing when-


     HISTORY                                                             GEOGRAPHY

1. Overview of the Medieval World                     Over View of World Geography
2. The Byzantine Empire                                      Turkey
3. Charlemagne                                                    Belgium
4. Monks of the Christian Church                         Italy/Vatican City
5. Islam/Arabs                                                     Iran
6. The Vikings                                                     Sweden/Norway
7. The Danes/Holy Roman Empire                       Denmark
8. The Normans                                                  France
9. 100 Years War and the Black Death               England
10. The Feudal System                                         Germany
11. Knights                                                           Wales
12. Castles                                                            Ireland
13. Medieval Villages and Towns                          The Netherlands
14. Christian Church/Medieval Architecture           Spain
15. Pilgrimages and the Crusades                          Israel 
16. Richard the Lionhearted and Robin Hood        England
17. The Celts                                                        Scotland
18. Burundians/Habsburgs/War of the Roses        Austria
19. The Mongols                                                  Mongolia
20. The Russians                                                  Russia
21. Africa                                                            Africa  *Africa is listed as it's own topic in history so I thought we would take 2 extra days during the week and study the entire continent at once. We will make time later to study each place on it's own.
22. India/South East Asia                                    India
23. China                                                           China
24. Japan                                                           Japan
25. Explorers                                                     Australia
26. Pacific Ocean Islands                                   New Zealand
27. Native Americans -North                             Canada
28. Native Americans- North                             Mexico
29. Central/South America                                 Brazil
30. Central/South America                                 Argentina 
31. The Turks/Ottomans                                    Peru
32. The Renaissance                                          Panama
33. More World Expansion                               Venezuela
34. The Mughals/Reformation/Counter-Reformation  South Korea
35. Elizabeth I/William Shakespeare                    Thailand
36. Middle Ages Keepsake Books                    Arctic/Antarctica 

Over our Winter Break I am planning a unit on celebrations around the world. We are mostly of German, English and Scottish extraction so I am planning to incorporate more of those countries traditions into our family celebrations (we have been celebrating St Nicholas Day for years and the boys always looks forward to having St Nicholas put candy and a toy in their shoes).

{Wordless Wednesday}