A Night at the Beach

A dead jellyfish that Ryan scooped up out of the surf.  

Tonight we went to Misquamicut State Beach.  It was one of the cooler days we've had in recent weeks but still plenty warm for heading to the beach.  As it got closer to dusk it was even a bit chilly.  When we go to the beach it is in the evening because there are less people and it's free!  The kids enjoyed playing in the sand and riding the waves.

Ellie had a great time at the beach!

Ryan, Connor and Emma in the water with Ellie, Jenna and Rob in the sand.

Connor playing with sand molds.

Connor and Jenna trying to get warm.

The sunset as we left the parking lot.

Download N Go

This year some of the children will be doing Download N Go unit studies. We ended last year with the Expedition Mexico unit and we all had a lot of fun.

We learned so many things about Mexico, did several projects and made nice lapbooks. The Download N Go units are designed for 1 week of study but we stretched it out over a 3 week period (which was probably too long but was OK for the first one).

One of our projects was making paper mache maracas. Katie (12 at the time) and I did most of the paper mache but all of the kids had fun painting them. It took quite a while to make them because we did several layers so that the maracas would harden. If I had it to do over again I would do the final layer in white paper so the newsprint wouldn't show through on the final product. We made them with small water balloons.

We also made Mexican sombreros out of newspaper. I'm not sure I'd try that again. They didn't come out that great and didn't last at all. I'd probably do it again with kids that were old enough to do it themselves.

The other big project we made was a paper mache volcano. That was a lot of fun. Sometime we are going to make one with Mentos and diet soda. For this one we used baking soda, food coloring and vinegar.

We also made homemade tortillas.  The kids loved eating them as much as making them.

And a few pictures of the finished lapbooks

I really wanted everything all together in the lapbook so we cut up the worksheets.

I added this butterfly life cycle booklet.

This accordian book was something I did using worksheets that I shrunk down to 1/4 of the original size.  

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