My picture of a duck

I made this picture of a duck for a contest. It was very very fun, although getting the outline of the duck was a lot of work. Once I got to put the colors in it was getting funner and funner and funner. After I got the duck all drew in I drew water around it and the trees, little island. That's what I did.

This is a mallard boy duck.

Addy entered the Junior Duck Stamp contest, which we heard about when checking into good places for nature walks in our new area. It is put on by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Children learn about conservation, then create a portrait of a North American duck, goose or swan. We use the Usbourne "First Book of Nature" as part of our science learning and happened to be reading from the section about birds anyway, so it was a nice tie-in.

Earlier this winter we had twice tried to see the wildlife artist Michael Glenn Monroe at a book signing in Big Rapids, but his visits were postponed both times (once he was commissioned to create ornaments for the White House and went to meet President and Laura Bush as if that is somehow more important than going to Big Rapids, and the second time a snowstorm kept him away). Addy had been looking forward to it, so we found a signed copy of his "The Wonders of Nature Sketchbook: Learn About Nature and How to Draw It" at a local bookstore. In the book he demonstrates how to put together simple shapes to create animals, including a duck. She practiced his method to make her duck, then used bird books to figure out how to color the mallard.

Addy titled her work "Nature Picture of Boy Mallard." Students are encouraged to write a conservation message to submit along with their picture. She wrote, "Take care of the earth, and take care of the things in it and around it."

My first time watching lunar eclipse

One day I watched the lunar eclipse. And at first the left bottom side of the moon got darker and darker and darker. Then when the lunar eclipse was actually starting I saw it got bluish-blackish, and then it was getting kind of orangish. And then it got red. Then it was finally almost over and I had fell asleep.

Temptation in the wilderness

This is me and my friends and we're coloring Jesus in the wilderness.

This day in church we learned about temptation. Temptation is when you really want to do something, but you know you shouldn't. Once we learned about a lady who made cookies and she told her son to wait and he didn't wait. He was feeling temptation. But he snuck one, and then him and his friend snuck another and another and they said that wouldn't be too much. But they didn't eat their dinner. Her mother said, "You ate some cookies, didn't you?" So what I learned is you should wait.

This is the picture we were coloring: Jesus was really hungry, but he knew he shouldn't use his powers to turn anything into food. And the devil came down and said, "If you are the son of the Lord, then turn those rocks into bread."

Whoa. This was taken our last day of church in Big Rapids and Addy dictated this to me 4 weeks later. I can't believe her recall. I barely remember talking about the cookies — and I was the teacher. It sure is nice to know that when I feel like I'm herding cats in the Sunday School classroom, something is actually sticking.

Making teepees

This is me and Dori making teepees. First you take a half piece of a circle and then you like fold it into a cone shape and leave a hole in the top. And you put the straws through the hole. And then you tie the teepees together. Then you stick it onto a piece of paper!

We really like the Usbourne book "Living Long Ago," which is part of our history and geography curriculum. This was part of the unit about houses and homes people lived in. The book offers lots of fun activity ideas for trying the concepts learned in the reading. Of course Addy wants to do every single one. It's nice that Dori can start to participate now, too. This was back in Reed City.

I went to see John McCain

I went to see John McCain, but I ended up seeing Mrs. McCain. We had a book for John McCain to sign, but when we found out Mrs. McCain was there we didn't ask anybody to sign it because John McCain wasn't there. I learned a lot. It was very very very very very fun.

The night before Michigan's Super Tuesday, it was more important for John McCain to be at the Auto Show in Detroit rather than in Grand Rapids, so we met Cindy at a rally at the Kent County Republican Headquarters instead. The next day Addy wondered if we could go door-to-door campaigning in Reed City for McCain. We let her hang a poster in her room instead.

At the rally we made her shake hands with U.S. Sen. John Thune from South Dakota and with Cindy McCain, telling her she would appreciate it later. At left is Addy with Cindy, at right we're standing in front of the Straight Talk America bus.

Pilgrims

This is my Pilgrim village. Their boat to get here was the Mayflower. Actually the Mayflower wasn't the first boat to get here.

I built this village by myself. I put everything around where I wanted. I let Mommy and Daddy help me. It was very fun, but after we took a picture of it we had to throw it away.

We're obviously behind on the blog; she made this village before Thanksgiving with a paper punch-out kit Aunt Carol found somewhere. I did make her sacrifice it when we were packing for the move. : ( It had been up for three months by then.

Note from Mom

It has been wonderful to watch Addy learn and grow this year. We were off school a couple weeks while I was in and out of the hospital, so once we got back into things it allowed me to see her in a new light. I suppose it's sort of how you never notice your own kids getting taller, but the kids you see once a month shoot up each time.

It's the little things this week that shed light on what's going on in her mind. We opened her art book and she recognized a painting by Picasso, something I couldn't do until ... oh, about three years ago. So what if she called him Kipasso?

Bob and I were talking to each other and mentioned something about the numbers 7 and 5. Addy, who wasn't really part of the conversation, piped up in what I did not believe was enough time to do any addition and said, "Oh, so there are 12 of them?" I had to use my fingers — no kidding — to figure out what she was talking about.

I read from the Bible and began to tell about a famine. She interrupted me: "Oh, I know this story! It's about the seven fat cows and the seven skinny cows and the seven fat cows meant seven good years and the seven skinny cows meant the people would be hungry!" This happened to be a different famine story, but I was amazed at her recall. Soon enough she'll learn there are plenty of famine stories in the Bible!