A Day Late & a Dollar Short

Well, actually more like 3 days late, and really money has nothing to do with this post!

I talked about making a cake of the Olympic Flag for the closing of the Olympics. So, life got in the way, and the cake didn't get made on Sunday. Instead, we had the "3-days After the Close of the Olympics" party last night.

Brian and Sean helped me add the ingredients to the cake mixture and mix them all together. After the cake was done baking and I had frosted it, they helped me add the "nem 'n nems" (as Brian calls them - or M&Msto the rest of the world!) As you can see, the boys were really more interested in eating the M&Ms and the frosting. That would be Sean's hand sneaking a taste!
Brian told me last night that this was the best cake he has ever had - it was incredible (his new favorite word of choice)! We had a lot of fun learning about China and the Olympics and this was a sweet way to end our unit.

Indoor Olympics

Well, my plan was to have some outdoor Olympic Games for the boys to play, but T.S. Fay had me rethink my plans. Instead, we opted for out Indoor Olympics, and boy, did Brian, Sean & even Colin, have fun!

We began our events with the Towel Scootch Obstacle Course. The object was to sit on a handtowel and scootch your way around the chairs to get to the finish line. I forgot that I have 2 very competitive boys, so we ended up having each boy make his way through the obstacle course on his own rather than race through it. Fun for them, sanity for Chris and I.
Next up, Cloud Blowing. The boys used straws to blow the clouds (cotton balls) off of the sun and off the table. Chris was trying to get Colin to blow "out" instead of sucking in!
We then took the straws and used them for the "javelin" toss. The boys all stood against the wall and threw the "javelins". They then counted how many tiles they threw the "javelin".
Finally, we had Cloud Catching. I think they enjoyed this one the most. Here they are in anticipation of the clouds falling.
I went upstairs and tossed scarves over the wall to the waiting boys below. They scrambled to catch the scarves before they hit the floor. Then they would trek back up the stairs, hand me back the scarves, race down the stairs and be ready to start all over again.
After playing our Olympic Games, we read Ms. Frizzle's Adventures: Imperial China. We talked about the different things that were invented by the Chinese: kites, paper, paper money, umbrellas, fireworks, steel.

Food, food and more food

Today, even though our county is off because of Tropical Storm Fay, St. Anne's Academy was still in session!

Today's focus was on food - how much food we need to eat, the types of food we need to eat to be healthy, and comparing that to what an athlete needs to eat. We also talked about how we need to exercise to stay healthy as well.

Brian and Sean colored in a food pyramid while we talked about the different food groups. Later, Chris "quizzed" them and asked them to come up with food items for each of the different food groups. We are also tracking what the boys are eating today to see how they are doing with getting all of the right amounts of food in their bodies. Tomorrow we will review how we did today and see where they need - since I know what they eat already I can tell you they are not going to "pass"!

The boys divided their wooden foods into the different food groups, and later today we are going to play a game on My Pyramid.gov.