A Totally Rad First Day of School ~ Cowabunga, Dudes!

Typically our first day of school consists of an extra good breakfast and some photos. Then we get right into our schoolwork. But I love a good theme, and Sheri at Traveling the Narrow Road gave me the idea for a full First Day of School theme day ... Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The kids were greeted with a white board welcome and we started the morning with TMNT pancakes, mini sewer rat donuts, and sewer sludge chocolate milk.

These are just regular pancakes with food coloring. I poured the green onto the
griddle first and let it spread, then poured the red mask on top of it shaping it
with a spatula. Pretty easy.

The planned activities were fun!

Since April O'Neal is a reporter, the kids started out completing an All About Me Gazette. Then Brynne said, "Did you know that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are named after real artists?" ... Why, yes I did. That's why we next watched a fun video about Renaissance artists on Youtube. It included a good introduction to Leonardo, Rafael, Michaelangelo, and Donatello, as well as other artists and art mediums.

Our spelling words were all related to the theme, and they wrote sentences including each of the words.

Math was fun as we incorporated the theme into our current topic of fractions. First I gave the kids each a package of M&M's and had them sort the blue, red, orange, and brown (acting as purple), which are the colors of the turtles' masks. Then they computed what fraction of the whole each of the colors represented.

While they snacked on the M&M's they completed a couple of fractions worksheets. (I got the pizza printables HERE.)

We took a break for lunch. What did we have? Pizza, of course!!!

After lunch we made glowing mutagen. I got the recipe for the mutagen HERE, and then we put it into clear plastic water bottles with a yellow glow stick inside. Pretty darn cool!

We then snuggled into the living room to watch the newest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. It has just been added to Netflix, but I don't know for how long.

We ended our day by riding our bikes to the park for some Ninja training, aka play time. The kids played on the equipment while I ran. We also took our First Day of School photos.

Although I doubt you will ever get them to admit it outloud, I think they actually enjoyed their first day of school.

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.

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.

Last Child in the Woods ~ Chapters 1-4

Welcome to our book study of Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. To be honest, I have no idea what this "study" is going to look like. I imagine that when we get together I will post about all of the things that caught my eye. And I would ask that you leave a comment, or a link to your own blog post in the comment, about what caught yours. This isn't anything formal, ladies, just a place to talk about what we have read. I have now read the first four chapters of Last Child in the Woods two times. It is just so good. Several things have specifically hit me deep, but in general I just realized that "times, they are a changin'." Things aren't the way they were when we were kids. Chapter 1. Gifts of Nature ~ "When I see birches bend to left and right ... I like to think some boy's been swinging them." ~ Robert Frost What is your definition of nature? What feelings, visions, senses does it conjure up? For me, it's not a

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