Cripple Creek and Mount Rushmore

This summer we spent time camping at different KOA's around our area.  We headed up to Cripple Creek for a weekend and loved hiking the trails and learning about mining there.  CJ thinks he'd like to be a miner when he grows up.

 Camping and Hiking - what my boys do best.

 In August we enjoyed a long weekend trip to Mount Rushmore, or as EMan calls it, "Mountain Rushmore".  We have enjoyed staying in cabins at KOA's and Mount Rushmore KOA at Palmer Gulch deserves 10 stars.  My boys asked if we could please just live there.  The cabin was comfortable and the grounds had tons of activities to participate in.  There was a swimming pool, splash pad, jumping pillow, mini golf, bicycles and gem mining (the last two had a fee, but the other's didn't).  

Mount Rushmore was simply amazing.  We hiked the trail, completed the Junior Ranger Program and explored all the museums.  It has been great to reference that learning as we're working on our US History curriculum. 

 I would highly recommend looking into the Junior Ranger programs at each of the National Parks.  It has given our family learning opportunities and direction for our visits.  It is phenomenal and I never need to front load the kids with other information and work on a lesson plan on my own.

Options Kindergarten 10-17

I apologize that it has taken me so long to get this posted!  We had such a fantastic time in kindergarten on Friday.  We kicked off our section of the body unit about germs and had a blast doing it!  We started the day with the great glitter germ experiment.  Adding some glitter to my hand before shaking everyone's hands in the class caused our "germs" to spread everywhere!  We all had germs on us, on the pillows, on the carpet!  The glitter germs were everywhere!  We read a few stories explaining about germs and then we set off writing our own stories about germs.

 We spent plenty of time recreating viruses and bacteria, white and red blood cells, and playing with them to recreate what happens.  There were many white blood cell play dough pieces that "ate" pompom germs!  We had "blood veins" made from red rolls of paper and immediately had the good blood cells attacking the bad germs!

 Using gelatin plates we made handprints of each child and I'm HOPING they turn out fantastic for us to examine our germ growth on Friday.  We painted germs and wrote in our journals about germs as well.

We're continuing our "Body Percussion" unit during music time which encourages stomping, clapping, patting and snapping.  That snapping is hard to do!  In math we worked on counting by 10's and explored base 10 blocks.

We had a fantastic day of learning and I look forward to another great day on Friday!

Legos at the Denver Zoo

We spent all our Christmas money a few years ago to buy the boys TONS of Legos.  In their bedroom they have Legos and they have books.  At night when it's bedroom time they are welcome to read or play legos quietly before going to sleep.  They also enjoy playing Legos (and reading) all throughout the day, nearly every day.  The Denver Zoo has an awesome exhibit of Legos through the month of October that is worth checking out if you haven't yet.  There are life size statues of animals and other objects made completely out of Legos.  EMan took "Littler" his baby tiger to see all of the animals.  He really loved the trip to the zoo and wanted me to take a picture of every animal we saw so he could come home and make a book of animals.

Homeschool Writing

I have a variety of journals that we use for our writing throughout the homeschooling years.  EMan's writing is on the left with the larger lines and CJ's writing is on the right with smaller lines.  This writing sample is from August 2015.  I encourage my kids to write about things that they are passionate about or an experience they have had.

This next writing sample is from September 2015.  EMan (kindergarten) has now shifted to writing in the smaller lined journal and CJ (2nd grade) is improving his handwriting as well as adding punctuation.  I love this writing sample because we did it shortly after visiting the nursing home for our Lego activity with them.  CJ really loves going and his passion has shown up in this writing (below right).  Ethan had just visited the dentist and was writing about getting a toy monkey in the token machine at the end of his appointment.  EMan's writing is also showing his passions.  He has told me a number of times now that he would like to be a zoologist when he grows up.  Every time he has the opportunity to get a new stuffed animal or other type of animal toy he asks if he has enough money to take it home.

We have been working on handwriting with size of letters and location on the writing lines.  Since this last writing sample we've also started a focus on making sure sight words are spelled correctly throughout the writing.  I used the writing checklist from the Moffatt Girls beginning writing prompts for a few days but have since made my own.  I was so thankful for her idea of a writing checklist.  It is so fun to watch them grow and by having a journal it is easy to flip through and see their progress.

Tin Foil Art - A Change of Pace

One of my favorite aspects of teaching Kindergarten at Options is that I get to think outside the box and be super creative.  I'm excited to explore different forms or art and materials throughout the year.  We're going to be talking all about our bodies for the month of October as we continue talking about who we are and where we are in place and time.  I have so many activities set up that I decided to let one of our art projects jump to a week earlier :).  First, we talked about different types of art.  There are paintings and clay pots and drawing and statues.  Statues was the one I was looking for.  We talked about what statues are and then made our best statue poses.

 Next I showed them a pipe cleaner statue that I had made and we slowly worked through the steps together so each child could make their own statue.  1. fold a pipe cleaner in half for the legs. 2. bend and twist a pipe cleaner to become the body and turn over the top and twist to make a head.  3. use a slightly shorter pipe cleaner to twist around the body to make the arms.

 After our pipe cleaner statues were made we worked on a step by step tin foil statue.  Using this precut template we slowly crinkled the legs together, then the arms together, then formed the head into a ball.  There were some tears as the project was rather difficult and we accidentally ripped off legs, arms, and heads along the way.  Nothing a little tape couldn't fix though!

 After the two demonstrations the kids were turned loose with the tools for the day - pipe cleaners, scissors, tin foil and tape.  The creativity was fantastic!  I love providing an opportunity that they may not have considered (or would not be allowed at home).  So, if you haven't yet, check your child's backpack for the tinfoil and pipe cleaner villages, families, and plants versus zombies characters that were lovingly made in school on Friday.

A quick review of the rest of the day:

 We're still practicing how to shake hands, playing with play dough, loose parts and toys while building friendships, practicing finding letters and reading, as well as practicing drawing and writing in our journals.

 We are so busy and having so much fun that I'm taking WAY too many pictures all day long.  I tried to share with you an overall vision of our day in these 10 pictures.  We continued exploring different science themes and instrument families.  We did so much awesome learning!

Rock Climbing

Today we went on a new type of adventure.  We went to a rock climbing gym.  We have a rock climbing wall on the side of our garage that we built a year ago.  I'm certain I took pictures of it to blog about it and just never actually wrote it down.  But trust me that it's cool.  It is 16 feet wide and 8 feet tall.  It's actually a traversing wall, though I didn't know that until our climbing gym lesson today.  Anyway.....

We set up a mom and kid homeschool lesson at the climbing gym to learn the details of what they have to offer and how to climb with ropes safely. The first action of business was to warm up and get an idea of what we'd be doing.  We learned about traversing, in basic terms: going across the wall rather than up it.

 Just a side note: CJ walked into the climbing gym and the first thing he said when he saw the 40 foot climbing walls was "I'm not doing that!"  However, the instructors were awesome and made it fun step by step.

 Next we learned about harnesses and how to put them on correctly.  At that point one of the instructors took the kids to an auto-belay and let them take turns climbing.  My friend K and I sat with the other instructor and learned how to tie all the ropes and belay correctly.

 It was very exciting then to have the opportunity to climb the wall next to CJ.  One of the instructors belayed me and CJ was on an auto-belay.  He made it pretty far and I was able to make it to the top.  Super fun and honestly very scary.  I hid all my fears because I didn't want to pass them to the kids.  I made myself keep going up and make it to the top, though I'm sure if it were just Mr. Steve and I, I would have been a little more vocal about my nervousness.

We had a wonderful time taking turns climbing and belaying the kids.  They LOVED the experience and even though CJ thought at first he wouldn't do it he discovered that it was an activity that he loved.

Actually, he loved it so much that he started asking to go back before we even left the gym.  I think we may have found a new favorite sport and way to get PE credits.  Climbing, here we come!

The Bloodmobile

A week ago our homeschool group, LEARN, had a fun activity based on They Might Be Giants Here Comes Science The Bloodmobile.  My boys have loved that album forever and we decided to explore some of the songs for deeper understanding.  My hope is that when they listen to the songs in the future they'll remember the hands on activities that made the lyrics make sense. I've written a little bit about the development of this lesson idea already the origin of the idea in Finally Looking Forward and a midweek blog Schoology, Minecraft and Fitbits make Science. I decided to put together a quick video of how the project turned out, I hope you enjoy it!

My  ultimate favorite quote from the interviews of the kids, "I killed germ-bies." (pronounced like zombies, just "germ" instead of "zom")

And because I'm growing tired of listening to myself explain how cool this project was and how it became an inspiring and energizing activity that will lead our future activities, I asked another mom what she thought:

From the perspective of a homeschool mom:

"The bloodmobile was a wonderful educational experience that used multiple platforms of hands-on experiential learning and the utilization of technology.  Schoology listed the assignments and provided instructions including an amusing video and book.  My children are in the beginning states of using an iPad and enjoyed exploring Schoology.  I was impressed at how simple the process was to use and was grateful for the step by step instructions.  One aspect of the blood mobile learning experience was a virtual Minecraft Realm where the kids got the opportunity to explore the human body.  My children have had little to no computer experience and have never used a mouse.  It was awesome to watch my oldest learn to navigate through the human body and recognize the brain, heart, lungs, intestines, stomach, etc.  The last component that brought the entire experience to life was the Bloodmobile homeschooling group session where the video was watched again followed by a red water bead sensory activity that ended with all the students exploring the Minecraft human body simultaneously.  The song from the video is constantly being sung throughout my home as the girls discuss blood cells, plasma, antibodies, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nutrients.  At dinner, my girls explained to my husband how broccoli turns into nurients that feeds the cells.  They were so excited about what they had learned that they wanted to share the video, book, Minecraft body and sensory learning experience with him. I was very pleased with the entire experience."

EdVentures: a #5Sigma Take-Away

I spent the last two days at Anastasis Academy and learned how their out of the box education format is empowering students. Part of that format is weekly EdVentures (educational adventures).  In the past, I've planned our Friday Field Trips for the school year every February based on the themes we'd be learning and talking about each week in preschool. This coming year I will not be teaching the 3 year old theme based preschool group anymore.  This leaves our Field Trip Friday options open to a new interpretation for the coming school year.

I'm looking forward to incorporating many of the ideas from Anastasis into our LEARN group for the upcoming year. 

Here are the specific types of EdVentures I'm thinking through:

1. Experiential Education - traditional field trips but think outside the box.  Interested in car mechanics?  Visit a mechanic shop.  Interested in food diversity?  Tour behind the scenes of different grocery stores, specifically different cultural grocery stores.  Attend performing arts, theater, speakers and events. Etc.

2. Service Learning - Once a month I'd like to do a service project.  At Anastasis they go to the same location each month (soup kitchen, homeless shelter, retirement community, etc).  

3. Outdoor Education - Sand Dunes, Camping, Black Hills, Local Parks, rock climbing, bike riding, hiking, swimming, etc.

4. Cultural Immersion - Religious Pilgrimages (mosque, Buddhist temple, Hindu temple, go to the experts to learn from them), Local Artists (photography, Music, Spoken Word), etc.

5. Community Building - park days, ice blocking, lunches out, team building activities at each event

Anastasis doesn't plan any of the EdVentures prior to the school year.  They  develop plans for EdVentures based on the direction the kids are taking their learning conversations.  I think it would be a good starting place for the LEARN group to plan a few key activities and perhaps an outline (like Service on the first week of each month, etc).

One of the key components to EdVentures making an impact is allowing purposeful, natural interaction between students and the experience and then reflecting on the process.  Currently, our field trips are more like a fun activity that we get to do.  It was purposefully planned (we'll fly kites the week we're talking about wind and weather, etc.) but it isn't purposefully being reflected upon.  I'd like to take the opportunity to allow ourselves (the adults and the kids) an opportunity for reflection.  Discussing the interesting content we learned (any facts?), discussing things that we were surprised by and how we reacted to different situations and sharing questions and ideas we're pondering after the EdVenture would give the experience a reason to be important in our lives.  And then, just as Anastasis Academy, we need to share our learning.  It's highly likely that in the near future Nexus Homeschool will host a variety of new posts by guest bloggers CJ (6 years old) and EMan (4 years old) about what they are learning. 

Though I'm still developing an understanding of the process of embedding EdVentures with powerful meaning and connections into our school year a little framework will aid in a big change.  Thanks #5Sigma! 

Castle Blocks - A Lakeshore Learning Product Review

When is the last time you witnessed 4 boys, ages 4, 6, 7 and 9, play with blocks for hours on end?  Today happened to be one of these occasions.  We got this really nifty set of Castle Blocks from Lakeshore Learning and the boys are in heaven.  The blocks are high-quality wooden blocks that are printed on every side with realistic details.  The doors can be laid down and flipped over to make a bridge. There are cubes and cylinders, pyramids and cones.  Certainly enough pieces to make the grandest castle.

Upon opening the package, EMan was immediately enthralled with the blocks.  He was excited about the possibilities and focused on how many different ideas there were presented on the back of the box.  CJ quickly returned with the neighbor boys and all four of them really dove into exploring the possibilities.  

 It was interesting to listen to the collaboration and sometimes dictatorship that was unfolding before me.  I was simply a spectator intrigued by what would happen with this group of boys and the castle blocks. There were strong opinions about how the blocks should and shouldn't be used.

  "This is looking so cool!" says EMan as he jumps with excitement onto the sofa.  Apparently their game has now included Minecraft characters. They have built a castle and a barn and are utilizing their Minecraft toys to make it into a full game.  Each boy is responsible to be one character from Minecraft.  I'd highly recommend either small dolls or characters such as these Minecraft ones to make the building of the blocks into a game of creativity.

 I love how they put "Steve" on top of the castle with a sword.  He is the defender after all. Oh, and the skeleton is trying to get in but can't.  You best still watch out for him though because he might just shoot you with his bow and arrow.

 We were down in the basement (the dungeon of amazing stuff that is disorganized and slightly overwhelming) when EMan noticed the Lakeshore Learning catalog next to my desk.  It featured the castle blocks on the front and he excitedly said, "MOM! Is this where you got the idea from?" It was so cute.  He and CJ then spent the next hour taking turns flipping through the catalog and deciding what we should save our money for next.

Thanks to Lakeshore Learning for making such a fantastic product and letting us test it out for you!  If you want to head on over to get your own castle blocks or find something handy for your classroom be sure to use our coupon! 20% off your purchase good through 3/31/2015

EdCamp Denver

A while back a good friend posted about an education "un-conference" she was going to be at.  She was wondering who would join her.  It peaked my interest and I spent yesterday at edcamp Denver.  BEST un-conference I've ever been to! Ok, honestly... it's the only un-conference I've ever been too.  Nonetheless, it was awesome!  I went in wide-eyed, a little like a dear in headlights.  I wasn't sure what was going to happen or how but my iPad was charged and I was ready for anything.

A great group of people met me in the "newcomer lounge" to help me get set up and ready for the day.  Then I headed to watch the unfolding of the day with my friend by my side.  A shared Google Doc with the schedule was projected on a large screen and everyone with their computers and tablets created the day by adding session titles.  People could add what they wanted to share about or what they wanted to learn about.  Then we looked through the schedule and picked topics that were right for us.

The first session I attended was Minecraft Instructional Design.  The perfect place to be with my Minecraft obsessed children.  It was a fantastic session where we heard about how others are using Minecraft in their classrooms.  Students are teaching the teachers, they're creating book reports, settings, building models of numerals for number sense and recreating Jamestown.  I learned about Minecraftedu.com, WOW! All of these ideas that Steve (husband) and I have been talking about could be created seamlessly through Minecraftedu.  Yay!  Also, a fantastic list of bookmarks were made available.  Plus, I had something to share.  Skrafty, a Minecraft for Homeschool set of classes are a great springboard for more thoughts.  We plan to enroll CJ in Skrafty's beginner class in March.  Maybe you should join us!

The second class I attended was led by my good friend Deanna Duray.  She shared about how she is teaching K/1 with Jeffco Virtual Academy.  As one of very few (if any) teachers who are teaching K/1 online with one contact day a week she had some great insight.  It was interesting to look through her lesson plans online to see how each day was set up.  I love that she has an audio element for students to listen to the written instructions.  She has many assignments where kids do their writing in their writer's notebook, take a picture of it and post it to the class. It is homeschooling made easy for the parent with a teacher leading each step of the way.  I was very impressed and my brain started thinking about how I could use Schoology with Minecraft.  The possibilities are endless.

The third session I attended was about Schoology.  Jeffco Virtual Academy uses Schoology as their platform to share lessons and receive assignments from their students.  The great news is that I loved the platform and realized that Cherry Creek uses the same platform.  Yay!  Now I can learn one system and be literate among many Schoology users. Schoology is the platform I've been looking for.  It is a learning management system.  I've played around with iTuneU and though a great platform for older learners it's not young learner friendly and I'm a preK-6 teacher.  The small session (5 of us) was the best work session of the day.  There were specific questions regarding how to use the system so we spent some time learning how to actually set it up.  I even started making a trial run class.  We also talked about the capabilities of Schoology vs other similar platforms for 2 gals from a district that is considering using it.  It was a helpful session to get me started and now I'm looking forward to spending some time playing around with the system.

After a delightful lunch I witnessed the "Demo Slam" an opportunity for attendees to spend 2 minutes sharing anything innovative they'd like.  What a great time!  The last session of the day for me was about Flipped Classrooms.  An idea I had been reading about but not able to implement yet.  The best clarity for me came from a comment about how a flipped classroom in the primary grades may look more like a video explanation of a center so you don't have to repeat instructions for each group.  This inspired me to start making some of my own screencasts of lessons that I give OVER and OVER and OVER again as a way to help my students and parents.  The first screencast that I made this morning is simply not good enough to be shown, but as I get better I'll be sharing them here.  Yay!

There were many sessions at edcamp Denver that I would have loved to attend.  Ten sessions happening at one time leads you to have to pick carefully.  I'm so glad to have the notes from all of the sessions available for me to comb through.

Overall #edcampDenver was an eyeopening experience that was as energizing as it was engaging and overwhelming.  I can't wait for next year.  Oh, and another new thing.  I'm now on Twitter @BilesAmanda It's completely new to me so please be nice if you choose to follow along :)

Pirates Book Club

Today was the last day of the indoor sandbox.  Phew!  We certainly used it to its full potential though. Every 6 weeks our homeschool group LEARN has a book club.  We decided in August that we would read the first 6 books in the Magic Tree House series and have book club based on that theme.  Our theme was pirates today and the sandbox made for a fantastic opportunity to dig for treasure while listening to presentations. It's a fantastic opportunity for kids to create a book report in any style that works for them and then share it with the group.  We're getting art, writing and public speaking into a memorable activity every 6 weeks.  I was most impressed with Miss Katrina, who ran this book club.  Her ideas and materials were impressive!  We had personalized pirate hats, treasure in the sandbox, coloring pages, spyglasses, and I'm sure I'm forgetting other things.  Great work creates memorable opportunities! 

Opportunity Taken!

Every Wednesday morning, CJ and I work on his homeschool work until it's time for preschool to start.  Once preschool starts CJ works independently on assignments not finished or is free to play (he generally chooses Minecraft) until preschool is over. Today I had planned to read the first Magic Tree House Book "Dinosaurs Before Dark" to the preschoolers while they were playing with dinosaurs in the sandbox.  I thought it would make a great opportunity for CJ to practice his read aloud on a text that is just above his reading level.  He has heard the book about a million times though and did a great job reading it.  He ended up reading 2 of the 10 chapters to the class, at quite a remarkable level of fluency.  I'm so proud of him for starting us off so well! 

Trees Remain a Passion

It was a lovely 70* day that deserved a walk to the park, where we spotted our favorite climbing trees.  Yay!  I think climbing trees simply doesn't happen enough in the lives of children today.  I wrote a whole post about it just short of a year ago.  Find out why we climb trees here:  http://nexushomeschool.blogspot.com/2014/03/why-we-climb-trees.html 

Minecraft

Have you played Minecraft yet?  I have to tell you, I've never been a computer game player...until now. Even I'm enjoying playing Minecraft.  We gave the game to CJ for his 6th birthday and it has become a family favorite.  We have 2 computers and can play together, wich adds tons of fun to it.  The game is basically a sandbox of bricks representing different elements (such as dirt, stone, coal, lava, water, etc.).  You can play the game on your own level wich means EMan runs around hitting stuff (that's how you "mine" it).  CJ and I make basic houses and try and explore some more interesting adventures.  Then there is Steve.  Mr. Steve as we refer to him with our homeschool group.  He's been playing computer games his whole life and has learned *already* to make circuts and a timed harvesting system for growing sugar cane and a way to make a portal to another world.  It's crazy!  The opportunities this game presents are amazing.  In fact, I've started thinking that I should get a job teaching at my kids Options program and teach a class based completely on Minecraft.  I'm sure it would be a hit.  I guess in order to really understand it though I'll have to play it much more....

Last night Steve and I wanted to play Ticket to Ride (a fantastic board game by the way).  We determined that the kids could watch a movie while we played.  Guess what their choice of movie was?  Seriously.  It kills me that people think kids have to be forced to learn.  Just find their interests people!  Still wondering what the boys wanted to watch for their movie night? The boys asked to watch Minecraft tutorials.  Yup.  An instructional video on how to play the game better.

And they couldn't hardly get close enough to the screen.  They were practically on the piano completely absorbed in the content.  It. Was. Awesome.  They also jumped and squeeled when the man leading the tutorial got attacked by a zombie.  Oh.  There are zombies in this game.  Rock on.

Welcome Back!

So it seems that this blog has been much neglected in the last year.  Homeschooling life is busy and I found that the last thing I wanted to do was head down to the dark basement to write about it.  It became a chore and I didn't have any clear expectations about what I was going to write about and such.  I've decided that I'll let go of any expectations and not stress so much about appealing to a certain audience.  I'll share what's going awesome in our day, I'll share what's not great.  Some posts may be 50 words and a picture.  Some posts may go on and on forever with tons of excitement about education and awesome homeschool stuff.

Here's a little food for thought for those of you interested in education.  I've watched it about a zillion times and I finally stopped to take notes and ponder about how it applies to my life and those I'm helping to educate.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc

Enjoy

Improved Writing

After completing the mid year assessment (report card) for CJ I recognized that he hasn't been doing a whole lot of writing.  I decided to make a change in our every day routine and have him write his narration of the book he read and add a picture.  It helps that EMan always wants to hear a story and I can have him do the same assignment at the same time, on his own level of course.  Today CJ read Balto and I'm so impressed with their writing.  Great job boys!

 

Preschool Blocks

EMan is working his way through the Math-U-See Primer book.  He's gotten bored with the reviews happening in preschool and was ready to move on.  We flew through the first lesson and then stopped short at his instructional level.  He is working on identifying combinations that make ten.  I knew I needed to pull out CJ's old set of blocks and just play with them making groups of ten.  So, this is what I've done with what's on hand.  I happen to have a ton of unifix cubes.  I picked some colors that matched Math-U-See the best I could, stacked them together and then labeled them with numbers.  It was then Eman's job to identify what two stacks of blocks would equal 10.  Though successful, I would love for him to work more on this concept, however he is bored with it already.  Any ideas to make the game more fun?

Junior Rangers - Great Sand Dunes

While at the sand dunes with our Egypt Camp we learned about the Junior Ranger Program that the National Parks have.  I'd never heard of it before but we stumbled upon Junior Ranger Day.  A special day at the sand dunes where kids could earn a Junior Ranger patch for completing certain activities.  At first I wasn't too thrilled about trying to do that and Egypt Camp (Steve was gone sand-boarding and I had to manage it all) but eventually the call of the rangers was just too enticing :).  We got a little form and started completing the activities.  The boys learned a ton and had a fantastic time doing the activities.  They worked with rangers to learn about the surge of the water and how/why it happens by the sand dunes.  They also learned about 3 types of beetles that are common on the sand dunes: the circus beetle, the tiger beetle and the cricket. 

 They also learned about some of the animals by pretending to be the kangaroo rat.

 They rolled down the hill like the circus beetle and learned all about furs and skull bones of different animals in the area.

 They learned to shoot a spear and earned their badges!  I got them the green vests to hold all their badges (another "Egyptian" had one to show off all her badges and it is so awesome!).  When we get home I'll be putting the badges on so they are ready for their next adventure.

Oh yea, did I say badges (plural)? I sure did. We earned the special badge on Junior Ranger day.  Then we learned that each National Park also has a park badge that you can earn by doing other activities.  The next day we went to the visitors center, got the booklet and completed all the work and learning needed to earn the Sand Dunes patch.  CJ has now declared that when he grows up he'd like to be a ranger.  Sweet.

Memorial Day Excitement

We had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend with family in Utah.  It was a wonderful experience to take my kids to the different locations where family headstones are and talk to them a little about our heritage and family members that lived before we did.

We also had a fantastic family reunion at my sisters house.  She has a fantastic yard that she's building into a natural playscape.  She has a path of logs buried into the ground that the kids love walking and playing on.  One of them is even painted with tic-tac-toe lines and cute little bug rocks are there ready to play.  CJ of course found a bug to show everyone, that is quite an interest of his!

 My sister confiscated all our phones at the start of the reunion.  I LOVE this idea.  Even though some family members felt violated having it taken away it took away any distractions they could have been while we all played and had fun together.  Speaking of playing and having fun: she drew a "Sorry!" board on her driveway with sidewalk chalk and we played life size Sorry!  It was such a hoot!  She also had dowels painted for jumbo size pick up sticks on the grass.  That was a ton a fun.

 We played tic-tac-toe on the log (another of CJ's favorite games) as well as lawn twister.  I've done lawn twister before, but with this many people playing we made the board a little bigger and included a side section that was for kids only. It was fun to play with family to see who could be the winner.  She also made a giant Kerplunk game with bamboo sticks and balls from a ball pit.  I'm not sure a family reunion in the future will ever hold up to this much fun.

 After all the fun we camped in tents in her backyard, had a yummy breakfast and visited our Nana who let the boys pick out teddy bears from her collection.  CJ got "Snuggles" and EMan got "Andy Panda".  They both love their teddy bears and held them close the whole car ride home. What a great time!