Don't Eat Pete...Eat a Root

When Luke (my seven year old) was about two, my mother gave us a board book that came with a little tin of Cheerios called, Don't Eat Pete. Each page has pictures of 9 to 16 different faces on it. Faces made out of clay, animal faces, etc. You pick a page, place one Cheerio on each face and have one person leave the room or cover their ears. Then you pick which face will be "Pete." After that person comes back in the room, they slowly eat the Cheerios one by one. Right when he/she is about to put the "Pete" Cheerio in their mouth, everyone else yells, "DON'T EAT PETE!" It sounds like a very simple stupid game, but kids love it! This morning Luke, Isabel and I taught Sylvia how to play. She caught on and was delighted whenever we would shout "DON'T EAT PETE!" at her. The company who made the book is called Klutz and I went to Klutz.com to try to find this book but I guess it is not in print anymore. However, I did find this site that has the Don't Eat Pete game but with M&M's and a printable game board. We will have to play with M&M's next time...yum.

From the February 2008 edition of Friend magazine I had Luke and Isabel make these cute hearts and write or draw what they love. While they were busy with that I put together the one from the magazine that I used as the pattern and showed them what Heavenly Father gave us because he loves us.

Last night I went grocery shopping with root vegetables on my mind and came home with a jicama or a "Mexican Potato" or "Mexican Turnip." That is exactly what they look like too. At lunch today, I was pretty timid about cutting it, but once I found out how easy it is to peel it with a knife and then slice up, I wondered why I haven't been buying jicamas all the time! Yummy.

Isabel and I liked to say "We're eating roots!" Luke was very serious and kept correcting us, "They are root vegetables."

Root Vegetables

A great read aloud chapter book is My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. It was old enough for my seven year old to be interested in it and yet young enough for my five year old to be able to follow and enjoy as well. I love killing two birds with one stone. (Did I just compare a book to a stone, my kids to birds and reading to them, killing them?) I have already put Three Tales of My Father's Dragon also by Ruth Stiles Gannett on my library request list! This morning we worked more on our comic book, more Math on the white board and had a lesson on braiding. I got some yarn and tied three strands together on one end. Luke was so not into it. I guess it's a girl thing. We then got a potato in some water and are waiting to see if it sprouts. I had them name vegetables they could think of that are roots. They thought of carrots, radishes and onions. We then looked up more on the internet, garlic, yams, sweet potatoes, Chinese water chestnuts and a lot of Latin named vegetables I've never heard of before.

Basketball Solar System

Today at the park we did a science experiment or lesson. I found this great article on the internet about astronomical distances and time that shows the size and distances of the solar system if our sun was the size of a basketball. We brought a basket ball (sun) four seeds (Mercury, Mars, Pluto and the our moon) two peas (Venus and Earth) a golf ball (Jupiter) ping pong ball (Saturn) and two small bouncy balls (Neptune and Uranus.) Thirty eight feet from our basketball sun I had Aden place our Mercury seed. Next Luke placed the Venus pea sixty seven feet, and on until we had to stop since Jupiter would have interrupted a football game in progress. I at least showed them the sizes of the rest of the planets and let them know that Pluto seed would be three thousand more feet from our basketball sun. Also that the closest star from our basketball solar system would be from here to New York.