Blogging Through the Alphabet (Favorites Edition) ~ J is for July 4th Traditions

With the exception of a few years in my entire lifetime, we have spent the 4th of July the same way. We attend our town's celebration at the park where kids and adults participate in frog and turtle races, egg races, sack races, egg tosses and water balloon tosses. This event has been happening at the park for over 100 years. It is an incredibly meaningful and fun tradition!

Although we claim to go for the kids, the main events always seem to be the adult three-legged race and egg toss. Most of my family got in on the action this year.

Collin smoked us all for the blue ribbon.

Collin won first and Kyndal, somehow, won third!

Brynne got second in her heat of the sack race, but fell in the finals.

This was an intense race, and so fun!

Dawson and his friend won first in the three-legged race; Kyndal and I won third.

Brynne and her friend won third place in the egg toss.

Eli didn't put enough power behind his throw.

Rick and I always have a lot of fun competing together.

This year we additionally enjoyed spending time with Collin's parents. Our 4th of July traditions have forever been changed with the addition of Collin to our family. His birthday is on the 4th of July and Collin's parents came to spend the day with us. We are so happy they will be joining our family!

After we leave the park we continue to celebrate the 4th either with friends or family. This year we headed to my parents' house at the lake to spend time with my family, including my brother, sister-in-law and niece, Bell, who just got back from their 6 month trip to South America. Bell is one Spanish-speaking cutie!!

Eli and Brynne were excited to get in the water, although they spent the majority of their time trying to throw each other off the dock.

We came back home in time to go back to the park for the city fireworks display. It was a great show and a great way to end a really fun day!

The 4th holiday is one of our favorite family days of the whole year. I look forward to it every year and it never ceases to deliver a bang of a good time!

Cells ~ It's What's for Dinner

Dawson made edible cells on Friday. He made an animal cell pizza ... and a plant cell chocolate chip cookie ... He reviewed what he's learned about cells the past two weeks, and I had dinner made by someone else. Win, win!! I am linking up at Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

ABCya

Eli's reading resource teacher shared a website with me yesterday that I would like to pass along. It's called ABCya . There are separate educational sections with fantastic games for ages kindergarten through 5th grade. I browsed the 2nd grade level, and it includes age-appropriate games about Letters, Numbers, Shapes, Geometry, Patterns, Mouse Manipulation, Art and Holiday games. There are lots and lots of fun and creative games for children to play. They are fun, but oh, so educational. Eli's favorite, in his short time playing it, was Create a Car . A lot of the games also have Apps available for purchase (99 cents for most of them) for the iPad and iPhone. I have been looking for another free website for games similar to Starfall , for some time. I think I have found it. I can feel confident having Eli and Brynne play these games.

How to Build a Homeschool U.S. History Curriculum from "America: The Story of Us"

FINAL UPDATE (JUNE 2012): We completed our entire U.S. History course last month using the America: The Story of Us video series and the resources I had planned. We officially covered Episodes 1-9 which got us through the 1920's. We plan to use the remaining three videos when we study the World Wars in a couple of years. I just want to go on record as saying that I believe whole-heartedly that the use of this series with my resources would more than qualify your child for a full credit of U.S. History. And, it was exciting and enriching. Feel free to follow all of my lesson plans. You can see them all at this link: http://journey2excellence.blogspot.com/search/label/America%3A%20The%20Story%20of%20Us Update: America: The Story of Us is now available as an InstaStream through Netflix! We also had it available at our local library. If you didn't receive a complimentary copy, you won't have to pay the $30 for it! Many of us received a complimentary copy of "...

Journey to Excellence

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