2012 Syttende Mai in Stoughton, Wisconsin

May 17 is Norway's Independence Day. Stoughton has a Norwegian heritage and celebrates Syttende Mai in a big way.

I took the children to visit Stoughton, Wisconsin for the yearly Syttende Mai celebration. I was raised in Stoughton and have missed this special time only a few times. I wanted to share it with the grandchildren. We made a fun day of it. My friend Kristi Brekke joined us.

 

Taking the back roads from Janesville to Stoughton is much more fun than the Interstate. We did several stops along the way. 

 

 

 
First we stopped at the dam in Indianford. There was lots to watch here. The children enjoyed watching the water rush over the dam. There were several people fishing. They asked if we could come fishing here some day.

 
Further up the road we stopped at the alpaca farm to view all the animals. Besides the fun alpaca we saw horses, a donkey and even a peacock.

 
Grandma loves these longhorned steers. These babies have yet to grow their horns, but I stop to watch them every time I drive to Stoughton.

 

 East Side School has been turned into an apartment building. Grandma attended this school for grades 1-4. The trees around the building are new and all the fun playground equipment is gone. The children enjoyed seeing where Grandma went to school.

 
Grandma attended the school in the mid 50's - NOT in the 1800's!

 

Our first stop downtown was at the Norse Nook where author Anne Jacobsen was signing her books. Grandma went to school with Anne so it was fun to get three of her books.

 

We enjoyed looking at all the wonderful Norwegian items in the store. Wesley and Douglas are looking at the Rosemaling at the Norse Nook.

The lower level of the Norse Nook revealed a lot more fun things. Here Diana poses as a Viking lady!

The children were very excited to find Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka books. These fun books were some that Grandma had enjoyed reading as a little girl. I had found one at a garage sale and told the children about these books and we read the delightful story together. They also had Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr books - the boy versions of these fun books.



Grandma and some of her friends....Grandma, Karen, Kristi, and Anne. We all graduated from Stoughton High School, though not all in the same year.

 

 
The children loved the rock and gem store. The owner spent quite a bit of time with us. He taught us much about rocks, gems, and fossils. Here he even let the children hold a "rock" which he later informed them was fossilized dinosaur poop. They wanted to buy it!


 
There was much to see along the street. Here a lady let them pet her ferret.

 
One store displayed Norwegian dress items and a doll. Wesley is looking at it.

 
Wesley gets a good view of the rosemaling and the flags of the US and Norway.

 
The flower shop was a wonder to our senses. The flowers/plants were so pretty and full of fragrance. The store was a beautiful place to display the pictures of all the former Kings and Queens of Stoughton's Syttende Mai celebrations.

 

Fosdal's Bakery is a MUST place to stop when in Stoughton. This weekend they put on their finest displays of goodies, including many Norwegian delights.  Wesley choose a cream-filled chocolate bismarck (one of Grandma's favorites) and Diana, of course, had to have sprinkles!

 



 
The streets were pretty quiet and not much for crowds of people because it was Friday. This will all change on Saturday and Sunday! The streets will be lively with music, Norwegian dancers, people in costumes, food stands, parades and MORE!

Walking back down Main Street to where we parked the van. I didn't notice, but of course Charles did,....we had parked our car right in front of a gun shop. So our last place to visit was this store. The clerk was very patient with the children as they looked at everything in the store. Charles was especially excited as he is our resident hunter-to-be. He had just gotten a BB gun for his birthday in April and was drooling over the many hunting rifles and the trophies on display.

Stoughton...we WILL be back! Next time we will probably face the crowds and come on a busier day to see all the excitement.

A WHALES Unit for Young Children

This is an old article I wrote about Unit Studies. I still believe the same - that I need to write our own units. Douglas is currently 9 and Charles 7.

 

I make up all of our units now. The main reason is that most units have information that is not at the level I currently need or is missing materials that we feel led to cover. I believe that the truly best unit for my grandsons is one that we put together ourselves.

 

Most units just evolve on their own--following the questions and interest of the child(ren) involved. Take our unit on whales as an example.

 

My daughter found a video on oceans at the library which the boys loved. Douglas (age 3 1/2) just kept talking about the whales. So I got out a book he had on whales at his level. We read it and he wanted more. How do I know? He was willing to re-read this book, pointing and talking about all the pictures. I asked him if he wanted to know more about whales and I got an entusiastic YES!

 

The only "planning and preparation" I did was to collect materials. I went through all the books that the boys had and pulled out several on whales and oceans. Then I went to my files and pulled out four folders I had on oceans. I went through the material and pulled out information/books/etc that I thought would be of interest to Douglas (and Charles, 22 months, IF he wanted to participate, which he has done for short spells and then he wanders off to do his own things).

 

Then all we did was to re-read the original whale book and as we did we talked about some of the information that I felt he could understand and retain. I wrote about 25 question/answer cards while we did this. These will be used to play a board game I plan to make. Then Douglas wanted to watch the whale movie again so he did that while taking his afternoon "rest" -- quiet time while Charles naps.

 

Next we read several more books, and some we just looked at pictures. Douglas noticed numbers on the Table of Contents page which led to a lesson on reading numbers 11-30. He had so much fun asking what was on a given page by seeing the number and having me tell him what he would find on that page. Then he would turn to the page and be so excited that what I had told him was really there. We had to do this for every page listed in the Table of Contents of this and one other book. The second book also had an Index and he wanted to know what that was, so I explained and showed him how things listed there were in the same order as the letters in his ABC song...teaching him the term alphabetical order. Does he really understand all these concepts? Maybe/maybe not, but at least they have been introduced and we will review them every chance we get.

 

In another book he found a fold-out map showing the continents and oceans and a variety of animals that live in each. He loved naming all the animals and learned the names of two new animals (weasel and lynx). While we were looking at the whales and dolphins pictured I told him there are four oceans, told him their names and showed him their locations. We repeated this information several times and as we drill it he will memorize them and we will then work on the names of the continents. He brought up how the map was like his globe which he loves. He was able to find the general location of Wisconsin which he can do by finding the Great Lakes.

 

A couple of the books we read Douglas was able to sound out many of the words. After I told him a couple of the words (whale, ocean) that were repeated on many of the pages he was able to read these as well. He also noticed page numbers in one of the books and we had to turn every page and state the page number to 36.

 

He colored a picture of some whales. He cut out some pictures from my files and pasted them on a sheet of blue construction paper. Then he had me spell "Whales" so he could write it on the top of the page.

 

While he was doing this art work, I cut out some pictures from an ABeka math book of whales in 4 different colors. I put them on little 1 1/2 inch squares. We used these to make some sequences (red, blue, green, red, blue ____ - What comes next?). We also did some story problems (Here are two blue whales and here comes one more blue whale. Now how many whales are there? --- did some subtraction ones also.) Then we talked about more and less. I would make two piles of whales and he would count them and tell me which pile had more.

 

At "rest" time he watched the Veggie Tale movie "Jonah and the Whale."

 

The only other "school" we did most of this time was to drill some phonics and read a few phonics readers. But our unit covered: Science, math, reading, geography, logical thinking skills, art, language arts, and vocabulary. Pretty good for just time of fun with Grandma.

 

And we will continue it as long as they stay excited about the topic. Then we will revisit this topic again as they get older and dig deeper into it.

Grandfather Tang's Story

A Tale Told with Tangrams

 

This morning we read a delightful book by Ann Tompert. Grandfather Tang's Story tells the story of two fox friends who begin a game of changing themselves into other creatures. It becomes dangerous and a game of chase when one becomes a rabbit and the other a dog.

 

The children enjoyed the fast pace of the story and the exciting changes made by the characters. As each change is made there is picture of the tangram creatures Grandfather used to tell his story.

 
When the story finished Charles used his tangrams to create the different creatures from the story. Here he is making the goldfish.

Diana and Wesley used a little easier book of tangram designs to make...

 

Then the children had some fun creating creatures and other designs on their own. 

 

WE LOVE TANGRAMS!

 

The children and I would recommend this fun book. The children found the story exciting and anxiously waited for me to turn the page and see what new creature was there. I found the story enjoyable to read, and love how it captured their interest. It would be a great book if studying shapes or China. It is also a wonderful "just for fun" book.

Roman Numeral Coins

After reading Fun with Roman Numerals by David Adler, Charles was all excited about playing Roman soldiers and thought it would be cool to have some coins. So.....we made some.

 
Using Air-Dry Clay we formed our coins.


 

We used a stamp set I had and added images of Roman Numerals to each of the coins. We made I, V, X, L, C, D, and M coins.

 

 

 

We placed them on a cookie sheet and began the drying in a low temperature oven.

 

 

 Next we painted the coins using...


which I bought at WalMart. This paint was great because it washed off and it has pretty gold glitters.
 

 

 
 


Diana



Douglas

 

Wesley



Charles






 

Our fun time with clay and paint and a couple days of patience for things to dry and we ended up with..... 

Gold Roman Coins

 
Then the fun began. We played money games with Roman money - making purchases of horses, chariots, supplies, food, and weapons. We made payments and received change.

We also practiced making numbers with our coins. Here we make 45.

 

 

The boys also did a lot of playing Roman soldiers and mostly carried the coins around in pouches they made from plastic zip baggies and fastened to their belts.

 

 

We discovered that Roman Numerals are not difficult. In fact, they are FUN...just as David Adler had said in his book.

 

 

Check out a game we made, Roman Numerals Oh Nuts!

 

 

 

Riverside Park and Devil's Staircase Trail - October 2, 2012

After our game of disc golf we decided to head to Riverside Park and take some pictures of the fall colors...and, of course, play a little. After taking some nice pictures we made an exciting discovery...

First...the pictures of the colors and the kids...

 Fall colors are beautiful along the Rock River.

 I had five of my grandchildren with me...Wesley, Jacob, Douglas, Charles and Diana.

 Jacob

 The children waved at the many passing boats.

 And, of course, they threw rocks in the water. Here is Wesley winding up for a throw.

 And, also played on the playground. Charles and Jacob teeter while Wesley watches.

 We saw this amazing tree and just had to take a bunch of pictures here. They were looking at a lure that was dangling from a branch.

 Some of the other amazing trees along the bank of the river.

Then, we made our discovery!!! Wisconsin Ice Age Trail - Devil's Staircase Segment

The children wanted to climb the stairs. I said they could go up, but I wouldn't.

 We also love to pose on stairs. The children figured it was a given that we would take a picture on the staircase.

Then they begged me to come up because there was a trail and we just had to see where it went. They assured me it was very cool. So up I went. Slowly...but I made it up.

 A picture from the top looking down.

 The children were waiting at the top already posed for a picture...LOL Do I have them trained, or what?!?

 Even the first looks made it worth the climb up the stairs...

 There were several of these "caves" that the children would loved to have explored, but most of them were high in the rocks.

 For the most part, the path was an easy walk with the high rocks to the left...

 While Douglas is the oldest and most often in charge of things, I found it amazing how Charles just naturally became the "leader" of our group. He was the one usually at the head of the line...

 Charles has the knickname "Hawk" because of his sharp eyes and love of birds of prey. Here he spotted something red that had to have a closer look.

 More of the rocks.

Jacob pointed out the "crack" in the rock.

 On we go...

 More to check out and on again...

 To the right along the path was a tree-filled slope down to the river.

 Another discovery was these....

 They were very hard and firmly attached to the tree...and so beautiful.

 Wesley could not resist trying to pull one off.

 Another view of the river. It was such a nice blue through the trees.

 At times the path became a little steep.

 They saw a chipmunk. But it scurried so quickly that Grandma missed it in the picture I tried to take of it.

 It WAS sitting so cute on this branch.

 Marching along...

 Wesley jumped up on this stump and said "It is a toilet."  It was much more understandable when he got off...

 The kids thought this was a path. I explained that it was actually erosion...and area washed out by rain. But they still had to climb it to see what was at the top.
 It was fairly steep and they had a difficult time climbing. At points they were on their knees crawling.

 Almost to the top.

 When I shouted up and asked them what was there, the reply was, "Nothing!"

 So they all slid back down.  In places they were sliding a little bit fast. But they all seemed to think it was quite the adventure. I hope their mothers are as excited when they see the dirt on their knees and backsides.


 Looking back and ahead along the path while I wait for them to slide down.

Off again...

 More views of the river below us.

A man came along from behind us and quickly passed by. He said he had not walked this trail in years so he wasn't not sure how much further it went. So we walked a little longer before turning back.

 It looked like a place begging to be climbed, so up they attempted to go.

 This was as far as they could go...

 ...but they seemed please with themselves.

 Come on, Grandma. Let's go a little farther.

We are on the way back now and Charles was looking more closely and had to check out many of these holes.

 He was walking back by me as the other three boys trooped ahead. He says: "I hope my kids like to do this. It would be lonely if they don't want to go with me."  WOW...I assured him that with his love of nature, if he shared his joy of it with them while they were young, I was sure they would be joining him in the woods. He seemed relieved at that.

Diana stops to rest and pose. It was a lot of walking for a little girl. But she is determined to go where the boys go.

The colors were so beautiful.

Spider webs along the rocks.

Douglas waits for me.

Back down in the park. The kids raced off to get a drink.

The ride down the river on the pontoon must have been so awesome today with the glorious colors.

We will definately be visiting this trail again. It was definately worth the climb.

Diana...  This tree is so pretty.