Magic School Bus, Native American Style

It's that time again at Normal Park!
Time for our Native American exhibit!

a little background - for the last 9 weeks, our module topic has been Native Americans. We learned all about the 5 regions of Native Americans and as you walk through our halls, you're walking through the Woodlands, Plains, North West, Southwest, and Far North. The walls are lined with art, houses, artifacts, labels of what the kiddos have learned, and a story about the Native Americans, based on The Magic School Bus books, that our amazing 2nd graders wrote. There are also huge pictures printed out of each kid giving their most inquisitive looks with their "i wonder..." speech bubbles above them- too cute. They've worked on all these projects in our class, science, art, and even music. I can't take credit for any of this creativity - the girls I work with are amazing.

anyway, get ready for some picture overload...




































Sadly, the ice has cancelled the exhibit for tonight and we had to move it 'till after the holidays...
Next 9 weeks, we're starting Oceans!!

visitors!

guess who came to see us this weekend...


& Nalah too, of course


on friday, we hit up our favoirte Mountain Opry for some good bluegrass and they didn't dissapoint



Saturday, we found a little craft show at a newly renovated fire house

(james doesn't really like to be serious in pictures...)

I got a little hand painted ornament, james found some locally roasted coffee beans, and grace found some gorgeous pottery


of course, we had to do a little sight seeing from the top of Lookout Mtn

and stopped at an empty lot to take pictures

maybe a little rock climbing thrown in there




We stopped for our favorite stir fry at Ganghis Grill



and then watched the newest Narnia! so good...



we finished up the afternoon at Rembrandt's, our favorite little coffee place at Bluff View



and spent the night cuddled up watching more movies with Nalah


sadly, we packed her up sunday and sent her driving through the snow to get home!


thanks so so much for coming, grace!! we had so much fun with you here!!

o christmas tree

pictures can never catch how pretty christmas trees are in real life.
i think it's the twinkly lights.
i love this time of year!

thanksgiving

better late than never..

we had a great thanksgiving weekend
full of...

fun family

awesome food

cute babies

sweet friends (that we stayed up way too late with)


and now back to the real world

christmas is coming...

I got a package in the mail today!



Before we moved, Emily (and Troy) gave us an awesome gift certificate to Joanna Keith's stationary & paper website



the only problem was that every time I looked at her blog, everything was so cute, I couldn't decide what to get!! I finally decided to get some Christmas tags


how cute are they!!

look at these cute tags she did for MB -

my plan was to use them as our christmas card also, but we totally forgot to get someone to take our pic when we were home so...

thank you so much, em!! i absolutely love them :)