Colors the Sky Over Macomb

It has been several years since we have taken the girls to see the hot air balloons in Macomb. The balloon glow on Saturday night is always a lot of fun, as the balloons glow so brilliantly. We couldn't go to the balloon glow this year, so we went to Macomb for the fly-in on Friday evening. Eli is STILL talking about all the "hot balloons" and all the different colors we saw. It was a hit with the girls and Eli, and we hope we can take them to the glow next year. Here are a few photos we took of the many magnificent 

"hot balloons!"

Experimenting with the Sun

How hot is the sun? We have been learning about the solar system in our study of science this year. We learned that the sun is 9900 degrees Fahrenheit. And you thought we have had some hot weather lately!!!!! 

That is so hot that, when you direct the heat from the sun using a magnifying glass you can burn a hole through a leaf. And keep in mind that the sun is almost 93 million miles away from us!!! Emily has had lots of fun with this trick. We have a lot of leaves with holes burned in them. 

The girls also melted Hersheys bars, which didn't take long at all! Science is fun!!

Busy Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day weekend is traditionally a busy weekend for us. We don't have any family cook-outs, but we spend the weekend enjoying the outdoors. 

I love to run in the Nauvoo Grape Stomp 5k on Saturday morning. This year I ran and it was HOT. The past two years we have played softball with a fun group of friends on Saturday, so we finished Saturday with three games of softball. 

On Monday, Matthew ran a 5k race in Stronghurst, and the girls and I ran the 1-mile race, while Kathy walked 1 mile with Eli in the stroller.

We got home and had nothing to do for the rest of the day. We decided that since it was so nice outside, we'd take the kids (and Grandma Kathy) to the park in Bushnell to play. We had never been to their fun park, and we all had a great time. It wore them out! 

I didn't get any pictures at the races or softball tournament, but here are some from the park.

Graphic Organizers

My girls love to write little stories, and I admit that I have enjoyed reading their stories and not focused much on paragraph organization. They write great sentences, but we just haven't worked on putting the sentences together to make great paragraphs. Many stories are one HUGE paragraph. It reflects the way they retell a movie to me, or a book they read. It is difficult to organize so many details!! Details get omitted and many unnecessary details get repeated.

So, this year we are utilizing all sorts of graphic organizers and focusing on pre-writing in the writing process. I wanted to share a great website I found full of different graphic organizers for different genres of writing. I hope it is as helpful to you as it has been for me!

http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/