Oklahoma's First Capital

 This morning we set out early for Guthrie, the first capital of Oklahoma.

 Our first stop was the Oklahoma Territorial Museum and Carnegie Library.

 We've been reading about the land runs and how Oklahoma became a state, so this was a great place to visit!

 They had dress up clothes for the kids, too!

 I was interested to read this in one of the exhibits because we were just talking about how Mary is always wearing purple in this season of Downton Abbey.

After lunch, we went to the Oklahoma Frontier Drugstore Museum.

 There were all kinds of weird things there.  Who would even buy this?!

 And this?  This is just bizarre.  How did this man-baby get malaria?

 This pencil sharpener held your razor blade still for you so it could hack off pieces of wood.  I'm pretty sure I would have lost a few digits using something like that.

 Jack got to learn how to be a soda jerk!

 Next we took a historical trolley tour.

 Alice loves to watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, so she was really excited about this!

 Our last stop in town was the Oklahoma Sports Museum.

 We took a different route home and met a friend for dinner at Joseppi's!

Today's mileage was 267.5, which brings our total for the year to 554.4.  That number is about to explode in the next couple of months!

Surprise!

 Wednesday morning when the kids woke up we surprised them with the news that we were going to spend the night at a hotel.  Jay's sister had a free room at the Hard Rock she wasn't going to use and asked if we wanted to use it, so we said yes!  When we got to the hotel, though, there had been a fire and all the rooms were taken, so they gave us a room at the Holiday Inn across the highway and we could go back over to swim if we wanted.  The kids waited fairly patiently for the shuttle to come get us.

 They thought riding the shuttle was fun, but Jack didn't want any strangers to sit next to him!

 At first I thought the kids weren't going to have much fun in a small pool, but then we discovered that it connected to the outside!

 It was kind of chilly, so we didn't spend too much time outside, but Jack liked going back and forth.

 Alice liked the hot tub!

 We went back to our room for a while.

 Then it was back over to the Hard Rock for dinner.

 We ate at Toby Keith's.

 Alice was so worn out she didn't even make it through the meal!

 When we got back to our hotel, Jack had a tooth to leave for the Tooth Fairy--and he has another one tonight!

It didn't take long for him to fall asleep, either!

We had such a fun time!  Thanks, Shannon!

Cook with Books!

If you've read this blog for very long at all, you know we like to work cooking projects in with school whenever we can, so I'm so excited to tell you about a new feature at the Homeschool Share Blog:  Cook with Books!  We're kicking it off this month with dog bone pretzels to go along with Harry the Dirty Dog.  Each month there will be a book with a go-along recipe to enjoy with your kids, so I hope you check it out!

Valentine's Wrap Up

 We had a lot of Valentine fun over the last week or so and here are the pictures to prove it!  Alice and Jay went to the Daddy Daughter Dance the Saturday before Valentine's Day.  Her bear was dressed up, too!

 Ready to go!

 Jack was my date for the evening--well, for the first part, at least.  Jay and I had his work party to go to later in the evening.

 We went to see The LEGO Movie for the second time.

 

 When there's just one kid, Mom will spring for nachos!

 This week the kids had a Valentine party with their PE group, too.  This was the first year we've done premade cards and there was no way to convince Alice she didn't have to write her name in the From and the To sections.  I figure it was good handwriting practice.

 We found these cute (and really easy to put together) boxes for their cards.

 Passing out cards to friends

 Playing a Minute to Win It game

 On Valentine's Day Jack got a new G.I. Joe figure in his mailbox.

 Alice got a new Build A Bear outfit.

 In the afternoon, we went skating.  Alice didn't use her Skate Mate the entire time!

 Going every month has definitely helped them improve!

 One of the treats in their mailboxes was going to the cupcake shop where they have this make your own bath stuff.  We were going to go on Thursday, but we stayed at the party too late to fit it in before swimming, and when we tried to do it on Friday, the shop was closed because they had sold out of cupcakes!  So Saturday morning we went in to make the stuff and have some cupcakes!

 Alice made the ice cream kind.

 Jack with his mad scientist creation!

 You could pick a certain number of icky things to include in your jar.

Alice added sparkles and sprinkles to hers!

We had a great two weeks but now that we're out of winter holidays I'm ready for spring to get here!

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

 Alice recently did a unit on We're Going on a Bear Hunt.  This is such a fun book, and you have to listen to the author read it!  If you go to the unit page at HSS (which we used), you can see the video.

 We learned about bears with Bears and Their Cubs...

 ...and Bears and Their Dens...

 ...and Why Do Bears Sleep All Winter?

 One day we had a bear lunch:  fish, blueberries, a peanut butter and honey sandwich, and mud (which is in the story).

 Alice mixed up the mud!

 We used this felt board set that I made when Jack did the story several years ago.

 Alice also made a scene showing all the places they went through in the story (idea from here).

 The finished product!  We used fake grass (the grass), blue aquarium rocks (the river), playdoh (the mud), Playmobil trees (the forest), cotton balls (the snowstorm), and rocks (the cave).  Our bear came from a Toob set.

We also used some of the printables from Homeschool Creations.  Alice has been working on number recognition and matching letter sounds!