Arianna turning 8

Arianna at about 1 in Indianapolis

Arianna now!

Our beautiful little girl is turning 8 on Wednesday.

Here's Daniel, the girls, and some good friends after a celebratory silly string war.

 

We got her a zip line for her birthday. It was a surprise and she was so excited.

 

Birthdays are so fun, a lot of work, but fun! Friends and family come together, we play games, laugh, and eat good food. It makes me stop and think about how blessed I am to have such wonderful people in my life. I am so thankful.

Music Lessons

Want to know how to save tons of money on beginning music lessons for your kids? Learn to play the instruments with your child. So far I have been able to stay about 1 or 2 steps ahead of the girls on piano and violin. I read books and watch videos then teach them what I know and encourage them to practice. Usually they get to know the pieces better than I do since they are practicing more (and focusing on one instrument). For a DIY family like us, this is the way to go.

Our kids are surrounded by music on a daily basis. Daniel plays the guitar every day and sometimes, in the evenings, I play with him. They were born in a musical family. My parents have always played instruments and are now in a band. Daniel's dad is also a musician, music lover, and instrument collector. All of these things have helped make them into the musicians that they are. Most importantly, they practice every day and they are proud of the sounds that they can make.

Daniel is learning a classical guitar accompaniment to go along with a duet that the girls know. The kids love when we all play together:)

Here's Arianna playing 3 songs from her Suzuki book. Ellen is playing Red River Valley. They've both been playing for almost a year. The sound that you here towards the end of Ellen's video is a helicopter.

Here are the books we are using for piano.
Alfred's Basic Piano Library. Started with level one. Now going on to level 3.

For violin I ordered this Suzuki book and CD from Amazon. I had to watch a lot of videos on youtube to learn how to hold the bow and play the violin. This is my favorite guy and he has a whole series of beginning violin tutorials.

Happy Birthday Ellen!

 

Our little girl turned 9 yesterday. She wanted an ice cream cake so I made one with soy ice cream and whip cream. Mimi came down to celebrate with us.

  

She was so excited and surprised to open her new aquarium. We took her to the pet store to pick out all the decorations and live plants last night. We'll go get the fish later tonight. We've set it up in their room for enjoyment all night long.

Graduation and Dance Recital

We have had such a busy weekend that I'm actually glad it's Monday! Our homeschool group has a graduation ceremony at the end of every school year to showcase the students' work and award certificates of achievement. Here is a link to what Daniel wrote about the event last year. This year's graduation just happened to fall on the same weekend as our dance recital so we had two long rehearsals and 2 beautiful shows to attend!

For the homeschool graduation Ellen and Arianna were in a writing class which wrote and performed 2 skits for the crowd. They were also in the recorder class and performed a solo, a duet, and another song with the whole class. All of the students set up their science projects and artwork so that the family and friends could browse around look at their work. The event also included dinner and other performances by the preschool group and the highschoolers. Here they are all together.

Here are the girls playing the recorder. This is their second year playing.




Sunday afternoon was the dance recital. Ellen and Arianna are in different ballet classes but take a contemporary class together so they each performed 2 dances on stage. They were also on stage as assistants for one of my preschool classes. They have been helping me with 2 classes this year and so I needed them onstage to help the little ones. Ellen and Arianna both are very graceful and confident on stage. They absolutely love it all and danced like stars this weekend.

I had 6 classes in the recital this year so every few minutes I was ushering another group of little ones on and off the stage. I was so proud of all my classes and really had fun being a part of their lives this year. For most of them it was their first ballet class and recital. I hope they'll have fond memories of me and that whole experience. I wasn't in the dressing room with Ellen and Arianna since they were in the "older girls" room. I didn't take any pictures of them but William came to the recital will be posting some soon, right? :) Here is a picture of one of my cute classes. They were spring fairies.

The studio that I work for and we all take classes with is called Columbia Ballet School. It celebrated its 30th year anniversary this year. The recital was excellent and the older ballerinas who are really, really talented were a pleasure to watch.

We have a break from dance for a few weeks until we start back up with camp and summer classes in July. I'll be teaching ballet, tap and the mommy and me class while the girls take ballet and contemporary.

Science and art presentations

Last week the girls had to give presentations on their science and art projects for our homeschool coop. For science, we worked together to build a cardboard box solar cooker.  Here are the directions for the cooker that we built. We took pictures as we assembled it and tested it out on a sunny day on our back deck.

Gluing foil to the inside of 2 boxes.

Here's a picture of the big box with a whole cut into the top and crumpled newspaper in the bottom.

This is the oven all assembled and cooking on the deck. Just as the oven got up to 200 degrees we put a pot of chocolate, peanuts, and raisins inside. The hottest it got was 215 degrees.

We checked on it in an hour and it was nice and soft.

The girls wanted to be able to serve their chocolate treats to the class so they spooned it out on wax paper, put sprinkles on top and let them cool.

As you know you can melt chocolate outside on most sunny days in Columbia. I used this recipe because it was quick and easy and fun for the kids. I did some research and found that a typical slow cooker cooks at 200 degrees on its lowest setting. Later in the week I put a pot of lentils out in the oven and left them there all day. Yes, the lentils were cooked when I got them out in the evening!


In addition to the science presentation, the girls also had to choose 2 pieces of art that they worked on during the year and present them to the class.

Here is Ellen showing her acrylic sunflowers painting she made after studying Van Gogh.

Here is Arianna showing off her tree that she painted using textured paints.

This shows another student giving her presentation. You can see that the group is a variety of ages from preschool to high school--about 20 students in all.

Ambrose Farms and Capers Island

Friday we took a field trip to the Charleston area. Our first stop was an organic farm where they offered u pick strawberries. It took us about 30 minutes to pick about 30 pounds. The farm was amazing. The plants looked so healthy and the farmer was very friendly. He explained how the main things he uses on his plants are compost and fish emulsion. The plants were so healthy and the berries were huge.

The main reason for the trip was a tour of Capers Island. The island is a barrier island that was bought by the state in the 50s. It is protected and very primitive with no water or electricity. They do allow primitive camping but it is only accessible by boat.

The tour guide was very enthusiastic and started sharing interesting facts about the fish right at the marina. He really never stopped talking and answering questions. He started out explaining these stone crab and blue crabs that he had in the tank on the boat. We stopped and looked at some traps in the water.

 He used his "overhead projector" to show us exactly where we were on the coast--the inlet between Dewees Island and Bull Island.

 We floated around in this section of the inlet for a little while waiting for the dolphins to surface. We saw several all around the boat. They were so fun to spot and of course Arianna was excited to see her favorite animal in the wild.

 It took us about an hour to slowly cruise over to the Island from Isle of Palms Marina. Once we got to the shore, the guide walked with us and stopped every so often to name and explain all the different shells and marine creatures that we are all so familiar with. He also talked about how and why the trees are fallen and how to tell the difference between pine and oak skeletons.

I loved learning all those little facts. Here's Ellen showing off the welk shells she found.

 I think that lots of schools take this trip but it is open to the public. For more information on Barrier Island Eco Tours check out there website here.

Another canoe trip on Cedar Creek at Congaree National Park

Saturday morning we took a break from gardening and spent the morning on a canoe trip at Congaree National Park. The Park is an amazing place just a few miles out of Columbia. They offer free guided canoe trips on the weekends. All you have to do is call 2 weeks in advance (right when they open at 8:30) to reserve your spot. We took this same trip last year and posted more details about the park and the creek here

On this trip we saw a pileated woodpecker, barred owl, lots of sparrows, great blue heron, and a baby box turtle.

It is always so refreshing to be out in the middle of the forest away from all the city noises and technology toys.

Safe and sound after the 2 hour trip (with no stops or breaks). No one fell in the water this time--that's a first!

The big snow

The girls had a slumber party to go to on Friday night but before we all went over to the party it started snowing. See if you can find anything unusual in the picture below.

 

Daniel ran out in the small snow we had last year. This year there was more snow and the girls and I were laughing hysterically when we saw him running through the yard in his shorts again this year! We ended up getting around 5 inches. I couldn't believe it snowed that much in Columbia. I took the picture below on Saturday morning.

  

The kids and Daniel had a great time Saturday building 2 enormous snow men. 

  

Happy Birthday Arianna

Arianna turns 7 next week. We had her birthday party sleep over last night. The kids all had a great time and they are still playing hard this morning.

Above, Arianna and one of her best friend's Ayla admire the beautiful cake last night. Ellen and Arianna decorated the top. Didn't it turn out nice?

There's our home-made pinata. Arianna decided she wanted a simple round one this time. The last few birthdays we all felt bad beating down the elaborate dolphin and dog pinatas.

Our girls. How and when did they get so big?!

Playing around

I wanted to post some pictures of us playing with some of the new Christmas toys.  We have gotten the Duo Scope out a few times and looked at all of the slides that it came with. Then they made their own with some water and dirt from a plant. We actually spotted a tiny single celled organism in the plant water. The microscope is a "Duo Scope" which means it can be used to look at microscopic things on slides as well as bigger objects like bugs, dirt, and other small objects. Here's the link if you are interested.

 

 

Here's a picture of Arianna using her new digital camera. You can see the face paint on her cheek also. I got them a pack of face paints and they have already used almost all of it. I've been impressed with all the designs they have come up with and drawn on each other's faces. This was a great gift idea (they had been asking for it) so here's the link if you are looking for something creative to get for a child.

Alley cats in the garden

I'm combining more Halloween photos with a garden update. I got my camera working again thanks to Do it yourself digital camera repair blog. I'm afraid it's a temporary fix so I sent Daniel and the girls out to take some pictures while it was working yesterday.

The garden is just beautiful these days. Daniel works hard out there and his work is paying off extremely well. We are still eating from these huge eggplant. (Arianna is holding one of the smaller Japanese eggplants but we have the globe variety also.) The lacinato, or dinosaur, kale that is in the front of this picture is so big. We have been harvesting from it for about a week now and loving it.

The cats are hiding behind the lettuce that are providing fresh salads every day!

They are standing in the middle of the garden and you can see the large broccoli that is forming some nice little heads. The cabbage is in front of them. The tall plants with stakes behind them are our second try at tomatoes.

Collards are in front of Arianna and lupine cover crops just starting out in front of Ellen.

Here's the whole crew dressed up and ready for trick or treating last night. We enjoyed a lovely potluck before heading out  in  our friend's neighborhood in the 78 degree temperature. Thankfully it was not raining yet, but we were all sweating by the end of the night! I love the South.

Spooky Halloween Story by Ellen

First of all, my camera broke this week and so Ellen has been taking pictures with her camera for me. I also wanted to post this story that she wrote for her writing class. She came up with it all by herself and I helped her with spelling and punctuation. They had been learning about how to write conversations and spent last week sharing Halloween stories with each other in preparation for writing their own. We carved pumpkins last night and this is a picture of hers. She hasn't come up with a title yet but here is her spooky Halloween story.

One October evening on a Halloween night I was getting into my costume for trick or treating. My parents and sister were across the street talking to our neighbors. When I was done getting dressed I suddenly heard the back door creek open. I went to see what it was. I saw nothing but I heard a deep scary voice. It said, "Follow me." I asked, "How can I follow you when I can't see you?" He told me "follow my voice!" So I followed his deep voice. While me and the voice were walking I was trying to think who or what this voice was. I thought that it might be a ghost. But before I could think about it any more the voice said, "We are here." I looked up and there towering above me was what looked like a haunted house. It had creepy vines winding in and out of windows and bats flying around the top. I asked, "Do I have to go in there?!" It said, "Of course you have to go in there. Isn't it beautiful!" I thought, "He is definitely a ghost!!!!!!!" Then suddenly I found myself off the ground and sailing through the air. Before I knew it I was in the haunted house! A witch had carried me through the air and set me down in the Haunted House.


It was very creepy inside. There were spiders hanging from slimy walls. I saw vampires making evil potions. I saw skulls all over the ground. Four vampires were sitting around a table drinking blood. They said, "This blood is good! Come have a drink with us!" I said, "No thank you," and I walked on. Soon I came to a big group of ghosts watching tv. My Halloween costume was an alley cat. When they looked at me they thought I was a real alley cat. They whispered, "Here Kitty Kitty." I don't have any idea why, but I went to them. Then suddenly a werewolf chased me out of the haunted house and back to my home.


So, if you don't want to see a real haunted house with creepy things inside it never listen to a scary voice on Halloween.

Flu

The girls had the flu last week, or at least that's what I think they had. First Arianna started feeling bad with a headache and fever, then she got nauseous and started coughing. She was sick with a fever for about 3 days. Ellen came down with the exact symptoms 2 days after Arianna and had it about 4 days. I watched them closely and kept them home to rest. I gave them these natural remedies:

Starting from the left, I gave them echinacea and elderberry syrup. They are both immune boosters and elderberry is specifically good (studies show it shortens duration) for colds, flu, and bronchitis. Then there are the vitamins--the regular dose of multivitamins and the zinc and vitamin C combo for extra immunity support. I also gave them an assortment of homeopathic remedies. We also sat outside in the sun for Vit. D and had them drink tons of water. I told them to drink water even though they weren't thirsty. I believe that probably helped them more than anything.

The girls really did not like taking all these remedies, or drinking all the water. It is nice that they are old enough to understand that when you're sick you just have to do things you don't want to do. I'm not sure what if any of these things helped them get better. I'm just glad to be through it!

A Dog Party

Ellen wanted to have a potluck/sleepover party to celebrate her birthday this year. We invited our group of friends to come over Friday night. They all brought vegan side dishes to go along with the big pot of chili that I made for dinner. (I had separate dog bone shaped pb and js, tings, and fruit for the kids.)

We have a tradition of making a pinata for every birthday party. I posted instructions here last year on how to make a pinata with kids. I got this year's design from a picture of a puppy pinata online. The girls and I started on it about 2 weeks ago and worked on it a little bit every few days until Friday morning. The girls wanted it to look like our dog Blue and I think it came out pretty nice! Ellen said next time she wants to make a simple pinata so that we don't have to destroy something that we love:)
The kids played dress up, watched the movie Hotel for Dogs, played in the dark on the trampoline with glow sticks, and stayed up late. Most of the kids/families left between 10-11pm. We only had one sleep over. They've been playing quietly all morning.

I love having parties mostly because I know how much the kids enjoy it. They have the best time with all their friends over. There are toys everywhere and I've washed a ton of dishes, but it is all worth it to see those big smiles on Ellen's and Arianna's the entire time.