We loosely did the letter "A" last week, or was it a few weeks ago?  I vaguely remember writing "A" on the board and then Rowan drawing penguins....letter "A" fail.

So on to "B"!

This week we made some origami boats to float on the water.

I thought the kids might get a kick out of this because they got to see paper boats float AND play with water.

But mostly I was pretty excited because while boats aren't my favorite (I'm more of an airplane kind of girl :)), I never pass up an opportunity to reference Archimedes, the Greek mathematician who ...hold on while I geek out....among other things, was a forefather of Calculus, figured out the actual value of Pi, and also discovered that when an object is in water, the buoyancy force is equal to the weight of water displaced by the object.  And if the buoyancy force is greater than the gravitational force, then the object will float.

This is known as Archimedes' Principle.

It's my second favorite principle, mostly because it's named "Archimedes".  (Bernouli's Principle is my most favorite, and not because its named "Bernouli".  Look it up. Coincidently, it does start with B!)

To make the boats, I looked up a few different instructions and I found these to be the most straightforward.  I still had to help the boys.


And they were a little disappointed that I had to help. But ultimately, we did end up with two paper boats.


Though they didn't last very long.

Cid the Leviathan sunk his pretty quickly by pulling it down to the "sea" floor with his ten massive tentacles and Rowan's slowly took on water over the shallow sides.

We also made bees, using the letter "B" as the shape of the wings.


For this, I cut a bee body out of yellow construction paper and three stripes out of black construction paper. Then I marked letter "B" wings with dash marks for the boys to trace.

I attached templates for this activity below.


- Print the B Wings Printable and the Bee Body Template
- Fold a piece of yellow construction paper and use the Bee Body Template to cut out a bee body
- Cut 3 or 4 stripes from black construction paper

Have the kids:
- Trace the B's
- Paste the bee body onto the B Wings Printable
- Paste the stripes on

B Wings Printable

Bee Body Template

Last week Rowan got to bring home Ollie Owl, a stuffed owl from his preschool that the children take turns bringing home.  You include Ollie in your activities and write/draw about what things you did with Ollie in his journal.

Rowan was very happy to get to bring Ollie home and when Tuesday came, the day he had to return Ollie to school, he was upset.

I told him not to worry as I'm sure we would get another chance to bring Ollie home after the other kids got their turns.

This was no comfort to Rowan.  He began to break down a little,

"No Mom, it doesn't work that way!  It's doesn't go in a circle.  It goes in a line.  A LINE, Mom! Like this!" 

And he waved his hand in a linear motion.

Does Ollie cycle through the children's houses or does he only move forward, crossing paths with each child once?  I don't actually know Ollie's pattern of travel.

But that's not really the point. 

Here I was at 7:01 am, realizing I'm having a philosophical-physics discussion with my 4 year old regarding the dimensions of time.

Rowan and Cid sharing their popsicles with Ollie the Owl while pondering the universe

~Sarah

We had to push Cid's 3rd birthday party out a little bit, but it was worth it for a visit from two of our favorites.

André (Opa) and Shelley!

We didn't know Shelley was coming too, so when saw her peaking over the fence we were so surprised and so happy to see her!

We just had a small party with WAY too much food, since well, two of the four invitees were sick.  After a little bit of a rough start due to a grumpy-pants birthday boy, we partied Thomas and Pirate style.

Then hit the road to Sandy River Fish Hatchery, in Sandy, Oregon to look at the baby fish and take a (very small) hike. It's a great place, wide open for the public.  We didn't go fishing this trip, but I'm sure we will someday since the boys got new fishing rods from their Opa!

And, we found another geocache! This one is maintained by the rangers at the hatchery. How thoughful is that?!  So, if there are trinkets in the cache, you are supposed to take it and replace it with something of your own.  As usual, boys decided to leave the trinkets that were already in the cache and "choose" the trinkets that we were trying replace those with.... we try.



 ~Sarah

"Ah, THIS is a mystery!" Rowan solemnly exclaimed.

There was a brightness that lit his face as he picked up the Brach's candy wrapper from off the carpeted staircase leading to his Apartment door. He reveled in the complexity of it.  A wrapper.  The stairs.  Not a single trace of who may have left it there. At least, not to the average fellow, but Rowan, the Great Boy Detective was not your average fellow. No.  

I didn't comprehend at first, the importance of this empty candy package.  There's no candy in it, so why did it matter?

"Someone left this wrapper on our stairs. That person is a Litterbug. This wrapper is a CLUE.  And WE must collect all the clues to find out who this litterbug is." Rowan explained, half disgusted by my lack of brains and half eager to share his own superior intelligence.
 
I felt his conviction even if I was not yet entirely keen on this plight.

What vile miscreant would do this?  What does the clue mean?  What's for dinner?

Only by accompanying him on this pursuit would I begin to understand the ways in which the mazes of his mind twist and connect to expose seemingly unrelated information for what it truly is.  I am merely an observer in his quest for answers; his game of wits.

Stay tuned as the mystery unravels with more adventures of Rowan, the Great Boy Detective.

The city that put Oregon on our radar was not hipster Portland, although its beautiful too, but a smaller destination along the Columbia River Gorge, called Hood River.

I can't remember where I first heard of this adventurer's mecca, but what I know is as soon as I learned about it, it was ingrained in my mind as THE place we should be.  Can you imagine my excitement when I met one of Roger's high school classmates who was living there? And then my shear joy when we befriended a young family (the W's) who recently moved from Hood River to San Jose?!!

As our move to Oregon became more of a reality than a pipe dream, it was clear that Hood River was a bit too far outside of the comfortable commute.  But that didn't stop us from wanting to check it out as soon as we possibly could. And this last weekend was the perfect time, since we got a long weekend and the W's were up visiting their true home.

I imagine  that if San Francisco and Tahoe had a love child, Hood River would be it.

It's a darling little community with a rustic downtown and charming houses stacked on hillsides but its got that crisp, clean, wildly free feeling that comes from being nestled between crystal clear water and a snowy mountain (Mt. Hood).   Dreamy.


We stayed at the Best Western, which allowed us to bring this guy (and might I add, we got upgraded us to a waterfront view!)


Did some exploring of the riverside on our own on Saturday morning.



Our first hunt turned out to be a bust, but the second one yielded a fantastic "treasure"of stickers, keychains, erasers, and other bobbles of kid joy.  We put some of our own trinkets in for exchange and signed our names.  Mission accomplished!  I'm still on a high.
The way back down the trail was no less fun. The locals led us to a little stream full of tadpoles, which the kids got to catch (and release).  We followed the stream all the way down, finding frogs and flowers and all sorts of nature goodness along the way.


Couldn't have asked for a better day.

We weren't stranded for Easter either.  Since this is a fantastic little community, the W's friends invited us to join their Easter brunch and egg hunt.  Clearly, generosity and friendly nature abound in this small town.

It already feels kinda like... home.  And we don't even live there.

Not only will be soon be downloading the geocaching app that led us to our first find, we've permanently marked Hood River as our go to family adventure destination.

Thank you Hood River and a BIG thank you to all the families that made us feel like one of their own!

~Sarah

Super easy!  And to make it easier, I added some templates below.  The sizing should be about right when printed.

You need:
Plain paper
Construction paper
Glue
Brad (or tack w/ some sort of backing)

Instructions:

It's simple. Print the templates below.  Cut the numbers out.  Glue them on the clock.  Cut the clock hands out of construction paper & pin them to the center with a brad so they move.  Done.

Printable Clock Template

Numbers and Hands Template

A few tips:


1) I threw the Sesame Street pinball song on Youtube while I put together my little clock activities (I sing this song in my head every time I count numbers with the kids....yeah).  That gave me enough time to find a free blank clipart clock face online.

2) I was originally going to have the kids trace the numbers (which you can totally do) but since my kids are forced to do a lot of that, I decided to draw some colorful numbers and cut them out for the littles to glue in place.  They LOVE to glue. Probably because I dislike it.

3) Depending on the age, you can have the dotted numbers on the clock or have them figure it out themselves. Mine needed the traceable numbers.  They both did great with minimal help from me, even Cid.

4) If you don't have brads (mom fail!) then you can use my ghetto tack trick.  I stuck the tack through the paper and into cardboard.   A cork would work GREAT for this, which I'm sure plenty of us moms have lying around....I just happened to be fresh out.

Ghetto Brad

You can take a family out of Cali, but you can't take the Cali out of the family!

We love us some beach time.  One of our biggest concerns about moving up here to Oregon was giving up the beach , (I know, we had our priorities right. lol).

I know there's still a coast, buuuuuut........We knew it wouldn't be quite the same.
Still, we were eager to get out there and since we don't have house projects at the moment, we just decided to drive the hour and 45 minutes out to the waves!

Lincoln City was our destination for the day.  We've had an eye on this place, as it looked like a fun, family friendly beach that was closer than any other to our new diggs.

We dressed for a pretty cold day. I guess I expected it to be like the beach in Petrolia.  I didn't even bring sand toys because I was convinced it would be miserable.  I figured all we could do was look at the tide pools.

Well, we were pleasantly surprised!

We drove right up on the beach and it was beautiful.  Sunny.  People (and dogs, and remote control cars) running all over the place.  Traces of campfires.




After hours of fun, we set out to find some clam chowder and ice cream .  Bad traffic and some cluelessness led us down the coastline, through Depoe Bay, and all the way to Newport Candy, in Newport for some delicious Cotton Candy and Tillamook Oregon Hazelnut and Salted Caramel ice cream. Um, YUM!  We never did get our chowder....next time!


We could get used to this.

~Sarah