The Abla Family Updates: Fun at Home

We try to do some fun stuff at home, whether it is part of our homeschooling or not (but really, isn't it all?). Isabella would say it doesn't happen enough... I say there are just not enough hours in the day to get everything done and do the fun stuff!

Anyway, here are some of the fun things we've done lately!

Isabella found a book at the library sale that has fun activities for kids. Of course she wanted to do one of the food/sweet related activities first. I was not feeling up to making sugar cookies so I picked the caterpillar cupcakes. It took them about 5 days to eat all the cupcakes but they made it. :)

Another fun thing we've done is watch ants dig tunnels in our ant hill. This was part of our homeschooling week on insects. We purchased the ant hill awhile back and finally got to use it! The ants came in the mail and we followed the instructions for setting up their new (temporary) home (which included sticking them in the fridge for 15 minutes to slow them down so we could transfer them into the hill!). Isabella was a bit paranoid about them getting out while transferring and coming to bite her but I did my best to exude confidence (and not be afraid myself!). All was successful. I taped the lid closed (which was a bit over cautious but I had visions of Jackson knocking it off the counter & large ants crawling around the house). They quickly started to dig tunnel after tunnel and it was really exciting to watch. We fed them every few days (a carrot the first time which they didn't seem to like very well and apple the next time which they loved) and watched them eat and carry the food around in the tunnels. After a little over a week I decided it was time for them to be free. I didn't want to be the cause of their death in this fake ant hill and that is precisely what would have happened if we would have kept them much longer (I think the company said 20 days??). So the pictures below are on release day. Isabella was a bit grumpy for some reason (although she wasn't bothered by letting them go). I tried to get her to do a video to tell about her ants but that didn't go so well.

On another day I decided we'd have a green food day. Jackson is totally into green and wants to turn green like the incredible hulk. Now if only that didn't include horrible anger outbursts, we'd be doing good! Anyway, I made green avocado hummus (with some power greens blended in) and green smoothies (again w/ the power greens). Jackson loved it and ate it all up. This is one way to get him to eat spinach & such willingly w/o any hassle. We checked his belly periodically throughout lunch to see it's progress on turning green. ;o)