Gardening and The Outsiders: 4/6

 Instead of "school", we built a square foot garden.  We planted green peppers, banana peppers, broccoli, carrots, green onions, onions, basil, oregano and we'll plant two tomato plants this weekend.  The 14 and 7 year-olds planted everything themselves.  We also marked off on the calendar when each plant should be harvestable.  It will be interesting to see if anything grows out of all those seeds!

Because we finished the book The Outsiders, we watched the movie version (1983 - Patrick Swayze, Leif Garret, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, etc).  They LOVED the movie.  They spent the whole movie talking about which scenes followed the chapters in the book and how the ending of the movie left out the final two chapters. 

Build and Grow Woodworking Kits from Lowe's

 We've just discovered these.  Each kit is about $10.  They are very basic woodworking kits for children.  The 6 year-old built the car:

Not the best picture in the world, but you get the idea.  The kit comes with the wood pre-cut and includes nails and stickers.  He didn't put the stickers on correctly and he took the hood off (did I mention he's 6- ha!).  He loved loved loved hammering the nails into the wood.  In fact, after he finished the car, I took out some scrap wood from the garage and taught him how to hammer nails into wood.  He absolutely loved it.  And no fingers were smashed.  He was very, very careful.  The next day, he was begging to practice hammering nails again.

Here are the kits. 

I think I'm going to try to make one of the projects once a month with him.  The castle and airplane look like fun.  Also, the sports arena.