Bases Loaded with One on Deck

My Longhorn has a long face

As you know, we have four boys.  Each boy was born in a different state.  Matthew is our Texan. 

He loves all things from Texas.  His favorite pro team is unfortunately not the Cowboys (that would be mine!), but the Texans.  Today they played the Falcons, in Atlanta, and after some begging and pleading from Matthew to go to the game, Kent was able, after some begging and pleading of his own, to secure 4 tickets to the game today from his work.  If you look at the picture below, taken at the end of the game, I think you'll be able to figure out who won.

Autumn Treehouse

Keeping with our theme of fall, this is our "deceptive" picture study for the day.  This is "Tree House in Autumn" by Rob Gonsalves. 

We Did it for Johnny!

So can you plan a whole day of school around Johnny Appleseed Day? 

Well..........

For Math you could work with fractions, time, and temperatures and end up with Apple Strudel Muffins.

In Geography you could see the world.

Brother Bartholomew could teach religion class.

Arts and Crafts could always use a little help from Martha.

In Science you could start your very own Apple Pie Tree.

For History why not read about the man himself.

Give the kids a day of from Latin, Spelling and English (although it would certainly be easy to include those if you wanted to) and I believe you certainly could!

*And just a note, some of these were planned for when Dad got home, but John's coach called a practice for tonight, so we didn't quite get to do everything, but all will be done by the weekend!  Certainly can't leave them out of  the fun!

Mr. Holmes would be proud

It took a bit of time on our part.  We gave our thinking caps quite the workout, maybe even wore out one or two.  There was some trial and error involved, and a bit of cheating, but not much, from the back of the book on my part when we all were just absolutely stumped.  And even though we know who the culprit is, they boys are still pouring over the pages in the books, reliving the excitement of the whole experience.  Talk about a book that's worth it's weight in gold! 

Random Ramblings

I'm not quite sure where my kids learned the song "Eye of The Tiger", but if anyone knows of some kind of pill that would make them forget it, PLEASE send it my way. 

James, the sweetest little guy in the world, has decided to start helping his brothers unload the dishwasher.  So if I happen to invite you over to our house for dinner please bring your own silverware, drinking glasses and plates because I can't seem to find mine anymore. 

And a big thanks to all of you (Granna and Aunt Christy) who sent musical cards to Matthew and John for their birthdays.  The boys love them and play them all the time, over and over again!  Sometimes they play them all at once, right at the kitchen counter, me standing there with a knife in hand cutting vegetables. You'd think after hours of "We Will Rock You" and "Star Wars" those cards just wouldn't be able to play another note, but much to the delight of the boys they just keep going and going!  I'm beginning to suspect they are equipped with Energizer batteries. 

Although now that I think about it when they do die (the card batteries not the kids), I'll be stuck with 4 boys constantly singing "Eye of the Tiger", so maybe you should send them new cards, just make sure they have different songs!

Make Sure You Visit the Water hole

School was wonderful on this, the second day of fall.  After getting the daily grind (Math, English, Spelling) out of the way, we focused on the season at hand.

Matthew chose our fall book today.  It was "Leaf Man" , by Lois Ehlert.  All the pictures in this book were made with leaves, just like the picture on the cover, so it was a perfect one to go with our new art study as well.

This book also helped us to identify something we found on our nature walk yesterday.  Apparently what we have here is a sweet gum fruit.

   

After we read, I introduced the boys to their poetry memorization for the month.  I thought "Autumn Fires" by Robert Louis Stevenson, was more than appropriate.

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

This next book and author I just can't say enough about.  I discovered him at "Lapaz Home Learning".  His books just sounded like something the boys would like, and let me just say we hit a home run with this guy!

I recently checked out a bunch of his books at the library, and it just so happens that we can use "The Water Hole" by Graeme Base for our art study.  Had I known we were going to read "Leaf Man", I might not have picked this for today, but I couldn't take it away once the boys knew we were going to look at it, and no one really complained that we had 2 books for art study today!  It's an animal counting book, but it's also a work of art, a tour of the world, a lesson on animals, and an absolute treasure to behold.  We actually did our geography and science using this book today.  So even if you know how to count to ten, you MUST read this AMAZING book!  And all his other books too! 

We were going to go out and collect leaves today for an art project later on this week, but Michael is hobbling around the house due to a badly jammed toe, so we'll wait and see how he is tomorrow.

All Things Fall

Yesterday marked the first day of fall, so we at the Bases Loaded house decided to fill our day with everything autumn.

After lunch we headed up to Kennesaw Mountain for our first nature hike of the season.  A few days ago Dawn posted a great autumn nature scavenger hunt, which we decided to take along with us today.  The boys wasted no time in finding things on the list.

Change leaves, including a red, yellow and orange leaf, and a leaf with three colors.  The first picture also features the nut we found.

 

A leaf with holes in it.

  A tree with no leaves or very few at all.

An insect home, kind of.

Some fungus.

It took us to the very end of the hike, and we didn't think we'd find any at all, so we were very excited to find these holly berries towards the end of trail we were on.  The list didn't specify that they had to be edible right?  I'm sure some living creature eats these things.

A conifer tree and it's pine cones

An example of decomposition

Something that lives under a log

Signs of animal activity and presence

An animal home

 

Aside from a few ants, we didn't really see any insects, let alone get pictures of them, but we did find this beetle in our yard the other night.

Had no luck with flowers that were still in bloom, but our neighbors have some beautiful flowerbeds planted in their yard so we took a picture of those.

And what about those autumn sounds?  Well, every time a breeze came along you could hear and see lots of leaves and oak seeds falling to the ground.

Thank you Dawn, for sharing your list, it was lots of fun!

When we returned home it was time to bake our first treat of the fall.  Nothing says fall like pumpkins, so I settled on these "Pumpkin Whoopie Pies" from Martha Stewart.  Kent, James and I enjoyed ours very much.  And just to let you know, should you ever make them, they taste better after they have been refrigerated and the filling has set.  Matthew and John just ate the cookie part and Michael had leftover Hershey chocolate from last night.   

On the blog of my friend Jen, I discovered a painting by Guiseppe Arcimboldo entitled "Autumn", that I thought was very cool.  He has one for each season.

It gave me and idea for our next unit of art study.  I showed it to the boys tonight and told them that over the next few weeks we'll be looking at optical illusions, or "deceptive" type art.  We'll definitely include Arcimboldo's work, as well as some stuff by M.C. Escher, "The Water Hole" by Graeme Base. Hopefully I can find one of those books that have those pictures that were so popular years ago where if stared at it long enough and let your eyes kind of unfocus you could see a 3-D image inside the picture.  Does anyone remember what these were called?  They were all the rage 12 years ago when Kent and I got married, there was even a Seinfeld episode on it.

After our art study we read our first fall book, "Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf".

And to end our night, I popped some popcorn for the boys and we watched "A Bugs Life".  It might be a stretch to call it a fall movie, but they are foraging food to prepare for winter, and they do make that fake bird out of beautiful fall leaves, so it works for us!

Hope you all had a wonderful first day of fall!  We will be celebrating all week, except for Wednesday, because that's Johnny Appleseed Day , but apples are very fallish, so it will be a perfect addition!

S'more Shots

So how does one celebrate the last night of summer?  Well, margaritas (for Kent and I) and dinner on the deck worked quite well for us, followed by a dessert that could easily be made table side.

Michael, who takes after his mom when it comes to eating s'mores, declined the graham cracker and marshmallow part and just ate the Hershey's chocolate. 

Michael's Long Lost Family

When I was coming up with our plans for the first day of fall, I asked Michael what he thought we should do to celebrate the changing of seasons.

His reply,"Let's go to the shooting range!"

"Michael, what on earth does going target shooting have to do with the first day of fall?"

"Well, it is the beginning of hunting season!" (said in that "don't you know anything Mom!" tone)

I suppose Michael would be much happier living in the "Catholic Harvest" household where as we speak the father there is teaching his 8 and 5 year old to shoot with guns and bows AND track!  But, alas he is stuck in Atlanta with all us non hunting city folk.  Oh, woe is he!

We Have Ourselves a Pitcher Folks!

Matthew is 9 and therefore moved up to kid pitch baseball this year.  Tonight he got to pitch for the very first time.  He was a bit nervous, but I guarantee you, there were 2 people sitting behind the backstop fence that were even more nervous than he was. 

He did very well for his first time on the mound.  He didn't walk anybody.  He struck 2 guys out.  One kid got a hit and got to first, another kid got a hit and got out at first.  No one from the opposing team scored that inning! 

Nicole, wife to one of the assistant coaches, had her camera there, and was kind enough to take some pictures for us.  We can't thank her enough for doing this, otherwise we'd be stuck with the blurry camera phone shots Kent took with his cell phone.  Not exactly the way to capture the memories of your kids first time pitching.  I thought having a blog would make me better about bringing the camera places.  Guess I still need to work on that!