A new game!

My husband developed this game and did the wood burning on the little wooden box. It is similar to "Mille Bournes" (the French car game) but of course, it is the French RUNNING game of Parkour! He's been learning some Parkour and the real movements used in parkour are what he's made to over come the obstacles in the game. Then you lay down "run" cards with a number of 5, 10, 20, or 40 and the race ends when someone reaches a certain distance (for three people it's 175.)
Game content is on the bottom of the box...
And the rules fold up and fit into the lid of the little box. He's great at the developing and logic of designing the game and I add the final professional touches that make it look "real"... we'll be selling this game in a month at the Lavender festival along with my artwork. The game will be about $15 (which is a GREAT deal considering that we are the ONLY people you can buy this from AND it comes in a personalized wooden box.. so cool.)
There you can see some of the images on the cards. Youssef did all the art on his computer to create the cards.
We use "momentum chips" that can be spent during the game that don't come with the game... just about 20 pennies. Might as well put those coins to good use right?

There's enough strategy and logic in this game that I really enjoy it and there's enough of a story and a fun time playing that it fits Youssef's style of game play as well. I still beat him more often than not (-insert evil laughter here-), but that goes without saying (only I just said it.. -insert evil laughter again-) Anyway, as you can see.. we're having a lot of fun with this!

Even more homeschooling projects!

I couldn't resist posting this idea. I did it when I was a kid (I was homeschooled all my life as well) and the girls and I were reading last night about photosynthesis and some of the concept seemed a little deep for my 2 and 4 year old so I thought I do something that they could SEE. So, the flower sucks the water up into the leaves and petals, but you can't exactly SEE the results... until now. First, put a LOT of food coloring into several little glasses of water.
Then cut some carnations or daisies to fit in the cup (not too long or it will fall out.. not too short or it can't reach the water) -- Notice how focused Renna is on getting to use her scissors. :]
They took turns cutting the flowers with my help and TA DA! Green, Red, Blue, Purple, and yellow (and some buds just in water to watch them open.)
We put them in the food-coloring water about noon and I took the pictures above at about 5! Pretty fast! I think tonight I'll even re-cut the stems just enough to allow them to drink even more water so that the girls can make arrangements tomorrow, and we can read even more about plants.

The little carnations weren't too expensive and I absolutely love flowers (when I was a little girl I told people that I wanted to be a florist when I grew up) and went to a few classes in college on floral design and so forth. Anyway, Lily seemed just as excited as I ever was about getting to buy flowers and carry them around the store. They weren't too expensive considering how long this kind will last and how kid friendly they are. I wish I could buy flowers more often and this was such a great educational excuse. :]