I Love It When A Movie Comes Together!

The Man of the House, and I have an anniversary tomorrow (19 years!), and my folks are in town, so we were able to slip away to a matinee. Really, my oldest was the one doing the actual baby-sitting, but don't tell my mother. She likes the illusion, that she's still young enough to handle the whole crew.

Anyway, we went to a movie in the theater - a big event for us. We don't really keep up with what's playing at the theater for a few reasons:

1. Taking 6 children to see a movie is not a lot of fun.


2. Paying for 6 children to see a movie is really not a lot of fun.


3. Movie theaters in our part of Montana, are generally not a lot of fun. Not real clean, and full of people who are...well...not real clean.
   

But, on a sunny, summer day, most Montanans seek the outdoors, and it's a safe bet the theaters won't be crowded. So, off we went to the movies. And our movie of choice, for our anniversary date was The A-Team.

I know it doesn't sound real romantic, but both of us were big A-Team fans as children. My husband watched it for all the shoot 'em up action, I'm sure. And I watched it for the sense of relational brotherhood between the characters.

Alright, really I watched it because it had the guy who had played Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica (no offence to Kara Thrace - but come on!)

Sorry if I lost you, but that's really the point. My husband gets it, just like he gets me, which is part of what has made the last nineteen years so much fun. And, I'm pretty sure it was that shared "getting it" that made the movie so much fun, too - all the silly little inside jokes, that only fans of the '80's show would understand. But, beyond that, it was a pretty good movie on its own.

Please understand, when I say that, that we went to the movie with very low expectations. We've watched the show recently on Netflix, and it's pretty bad - still a lot of fun - but the writing, and acting, and special effects, and everything are just awful. So, we expected a pretty corny movie. Either that, or something like some of the recent remakes of our favorite childhood programs, which turned out to be dark, twisted, violent, grown-up versions of their old selves.

But the A-Team is still the A-Team. The story has been changed a little, the team served in Iraq, instead of Vietnam. And, of course, the actors are different. We were pleasantly surprised at how well they did, though. Instead of playing the original actors, they played the original characters, and it worked.

While there was a tiny more violence in the big screen version, or rather a lot more, it was, for the most part, still the crazy, impossible kind, where you know the characters should absolutely not survive, but somehow they do. And, according to Focus on the Family, the language was pretty severe. I confess, I was so caught up in the movie, I didn't notice.

The sex was turned up a bit more (but only a bit), the explosions rivaled 2012, and the villains were on the dark side, but Face was still grinning at the girls, while B.A. was pitying the fool, and bickering with Murdock, and Hannibal was grinning through his cigars. It's the same old guys, the same old fun, and the same silly plan, that all comes together in the end.

Oh, and by the way, the images above are not mine. I "borrowed" them from around the Web, and am hopefully not violating the spirit of the copyrights, or anything like that.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Magic Air Pressure Pop Bottle Watering Can - Science For Kids

This spring, I gave the girls each a planter box, to use as their own little garden space. The rain has been generously watering their seeds, up until now. Now that the sunshine has arrived (hurray!), it's time to think about watering cans.

Rather than run out, and buy individual watering cans for each of the girls (because really, who could share such a thing!?!), I decided to let them make their own, using science.

We started with plain old, empty pop bottles, hammering a hole in the lids, and several holes in the bottoms.

The girls discovered, when they fill them with water, and put the lids on, the water will stream from the bottom, because air is getting into the bottles, and pushing down on the water, forcing it out of the holes....

...until they cover the hole in the lid. Then, the water stops pouring, because the air pressure outside the bottle is stronger than inside, and because the surface tension of the water, helps to seal the holes. You can read more about this, here, on Steve Spangler's site.

Even with the top hole covered, they still drip a little (we put a lot of holes in the bottoms of the bottles), so I wouldn't want them filling them in the kitchen, and then walking through the house with them. But, they work pretty well for getting water from the outside faucet...

...to their gardens. And, they give that nice, gentle, sprinkle of water, that won't wash the dirt away from the seeds.

For more fun with science, check out this week's Science Sunday link-up at Adventures in Mommydom.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

A Taste of Sunshine (Cookies)

Our forecast for sun is still holding, and we're quite excited. So excited, in fact, that we just had to have a little taste last night.

The site I found these on claimed they taste like sunshine...



...and they do!


They are also:

• Very easy to make.


• Only 61 calories a piece (again, according to the site I found them on).


• And, have a very light, chewy texture.

I've made cake mix cookies before, but these were surprisingly good.

I'm renaming them:

Lemon Sunshines

1 lemon cake mix

2 eggs

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 tablespoon lemon juice

grated zest from 1 lemon

powdered sugar for rolling


Combine the cake mix, eggs, oil, juice and zest, and mix until moist. Roll into 1 inch balls, and toss in the powdered sugar. You can refrigerate the dough for a while, to make it easier to handle, but I did not.

Place the sugar coated cookies on a greased cookie sheet (the original recipe says ungreased, but I found they stuck a little that way), and bake for six to nine minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, or until the bottoms begin to brown.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Climbing Bugs

If our forecast is correct, we're headed into some sunny days. So, this morning, even though it was still raining, or maybe because it was still raining, we made a craft to celebrate the outdoor days we hope are coming up.

We started with a spider, a climbing spider, sort of like the super hero climbing creatures we made last year.

This time, we cut two circles, using two different sized drinking glasses for a pattern, out of thin cardboard (construction paper would work just as well).

We glued them together, overlapping slightly, with the small circle on top. Then, we cut two pipe cleaners in half, and taped all four pieces in the middle, to the back of the circles, at the overlap, for legs.

We cut a couple of half inch pieces from a straw, and taped them, about an inch apart, angling in diagonally, on top of the legs. At first, we didn't get the straws set evenly, and they weren't pointing in, quite right...

...this is really how they should look.

Finally, we laced a piece of yarn up through one of the straws, and down through the other, making a loop at the top, and added some google eyes to the front.

I tied a couple of knots in the loose ends of the yarn, and we hung them on a doorknob to play with.

If your straws are placed correctly, as you pull on the loose ends of yarn, alternating back, and forth, you'll watch the spider climb, gradually, to the the top. Then, when you release tension from the yarn, he'll speed back down to the bottom (a lesson in friction).

Of course, not everyone likes spiders. So, we made a ladybug, as well.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Math Themed Story Books

I went on a math binge at the library, and checked out a number of math themed stories, that also looked liked fun picture books. The five below have emerged as this week's favorites with the children.

Minnie's Diner, A Multiplying Menu by Dayle Ann Dodd, and illustrated by John Manders, is a comical, down-on-the-farm, rhyming tale of a father trying to get some work out of his hungry boys, before they succumb to the lure of the local diner, that just also happens to teach the concept of exponents.

Tryannosaurus Math byMichelle Markel, and illustrated by Doug Cushman is your typical dinosaur story, with T-Rexes, an Ornithomimus, Triceratops, Ankylosaurs, Hadrosaurs, volcanoes, meteorites, and earthquakes. But, it also has a fun dose of addition, number sentences, skip counting, ordering and comparing, subtraction, inverse relationships/operations, symmetry, multiplication, reasoning, organizing data with graphs, geometric shapes, arrays, division, fractions, nonstandard measurement, and estimation. Not to mention the fact, that it's a pretty cute book.



The Sundae Scoop by Stuart J. Murphy, and illustrated by Cynthia Jabar, is a sweet, simple story about combinations.




The Monster Who Did My Math, by Danny Schnitzlein, and illustrated by Bill Mayer, doesn't teach any math at all. Instead, it's a cautionary tale about what happens when you try to take short cuts to get through your math lessons, without bothering to learn them.



And finally, my favorite, The Real Princess, A Mathemagical Tale, by Brenda Williams, and illustrated by Sophie Fatus, is a clever retelling of The Princess And The Pea, teaching counting, and number recognition. On the publisher's website, you access an audio version of the story for free, as well as an activity page, and a key to the math test at the end of the book.



For additional children's book reviews, and recommendations click on over to The Adventure's of Motherhood's weekly, Feed Me Books Friday link-up, or the What My Child is Reading blog hop, hosted by Mouse Grows, Mouse learns.





It's great to be a homeschooler.

Art's Supplies - A Party in the Studio

It's a rainy afternoon in Chris Tougas's Art's Supplies, and Art has been having a party with all of his supplies. He claims that, "paper started it by inviting everyone to her pad". We substituted a cut open, paper bag for the pad, but the party was the same.

It started with the pencil.

The crayons arrived next, thinking "outside the box".

They were followed by the markers (some of whom were "magic").

Then, came the pastels, blending in "smoothly".

In the book, ink made a lasting impressing. We opted for something a bit less permanent.

But, we didn't leave out the tape, scissors, glue...

...or paint!

All in all, it was a pretty good party. We didn't really end up with a masterpiece, but we had a lot of fun exploring the supply cupboard.

I should probably note, that this book, while lively, fun, and filled with clever puns, does dip into potty, or adult humor a few times. After objecting to Robert Munsch's use of the word "bum", it seems only right to note, that Chris Tougas uses the word "butt", or at least one of the pencils does. And, there is a sickly greenish, yellow marker, who is said to have "the runs", while another marker comments, "I've been dry for quite a while now...and it feels great!"

However, from the moment we picked the book up at the library, the children have been pouring over it, and absorbing all the imaginative chaos, that takes place when art supplies are given a mind of their own.

For more story stretching arts and crafts, be sure to visit this week's stART (story + ART) link-up at A Mommy's Adventures.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Soap Powered Mini-Racers

Here's a fun, quick idea, for rainy day (or sunny day) fun, that not only teaches a quick science lesson, but also uses up some of those bread clips hanging around the kitchen.

Sadly, I can't remember the book, that inspired this boredom buster, but I did find a similar, but bigger, version at PBS-Kids' Zoom site.

Basically, all that is needed is a piece of plastic lid, cut into a boat type shape, with a bread clip glued to the back, a pan, or pool of water, and a drop of soap.

We originally tried making our boats out of card stock, but found that even a heavy covering of waxy crayon would not make them water proof.

But, the plastic boats work quite nicely. When you place one in a pan of water, it sits on top of the water, until you add a drop of soap, in the hole of the bread clip, breaking the surface tension of the water, and propelling the boat across the pan.

Once the surface tension has be broken, a fresh pan of water will be needed for each race. And, don't forget to wipe the soap off the bottom of the boat, or as soon as you put it into the water, it will take off, and zoom around. Of course, that's interesting, too.

It's great to be a homeschooler.