Asheville, North Carolina

We spent most of the day yesterday wandering around Asheville. I wish we had had more time there, because Asheville is one of my favorite cities.

We went shopping and had a wonderful dinner at Laughing Seed Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant on Wall Street, but soon after dinner, this sign fell off the front of a store and nearly hit DH on the head. It just missed him by inches.



Asheville is such a colorful, entertaining, musical city!

Georgia

This is where we are going this morning:



Drove over 350 miles yesterday and made two long shopping stops along the way. The first stop was at the Bass Pro Shop in Macon, Georgia, to look at camping supplies, and the second stop was at the Dekalb Farmers Market, near Atlanta, to buy food.




I thought our car was over-packed


until we stopped for lunch and saw these people:



Just before we reached the motel in Dillard last night, a bright orange moon rose over the mountains.

Camping Books and Activities

One of the books we are taking with us on our vacation, is Stella and Roy Go Camping, by Ashley Wolff. It is the story of a boy and girl who go camping with their mom. The boy, Roy really wants to see a bear and gets excited every time he sees animal tracks, because he's sure each one is a bear. His older sister Stella has brought along a guide book of animal tracks and corrects him each time, while showing him what animal the tracks really belong to. This book is a fun way to teach children how to identify some common animal prints.



We are also taking Tacky Goes Camping. I love all the Tacky the Penguin books! "Tacky was an odd bird, but a nice bird to have around."



For our read-aloud bedtime story, we are bringing The Boxcar Children, Surprise Island, by Gertrude Chandler Warner



We are also taking Blaze's copy of The Smithsonian Kids Guide to Birds of North America, East



To keep Blaze entertained around our campsite, we are also taking a set of walkie-talkies, a pair of binoculars, a box of colored pencils, a notebook, a few little toy cars, a couple of bendy dolls, a deck of Uno cards, and a deck of Go Fish cards.



Underwater Viewer

We also made an underwater viewer to take with us, because there is supposed to be a creek right next to our campsite.

We started with an empty orange juice carton.


This project gave us a use for some of the clear plastic packaging that we normally just throw away. Blaze traced around the bottom of the orange juice carton, so we could cut a piece of clear plastic to fit inside the carton.



I cut the top off the carton and cut a window out of the bottom of the carton ( the heavy waxed cardboard was too tough for Blaze to cut through it).



Blaze then painted the carton with acrylic paint. It took two layers of the base paint to cover up the words and pictures printed on the carton.



After the base paint dried, we added an ocean scene.



When all the paint was dry, I glued the clear plastic to the inside of the window cut in the bottom of the carton, using strong waterproof glue.

Preparing for a Long Car Trip

We are leaving tomorrow for a car trip to North Carolina and I just stumbled across this video that has tips for educating while entertaining children in the car.

This creative mom has a blog, that you might also want to check out:

Super Mom Central



There is also a nice selection of printable car ride games at MomsMinivan.com:

Car Ride Game Printables




One of the things we're taking to entertain Blaze on the car ride, is an MP3 player that I have loaded with songs I know he likes.




Blaze's Play List
________________________________

Seven Days of the Week (I never go to work), by They Might be Giants

Wabash Cannonball, by Dan Zanes

Follow the Drinking Gourd, by Taj Mahal

Simple Gifts

Down to Earth, by Peter Gabriel from the Wall-E soundtrack

Yertle the Turtle, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

La Bamba, by Richie Valens

Hot Hot Hot!!!, by The Cure

If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out, by Cat Stevens

Campfire Song Song, by Sponge Bob

Playin in the Same Band, by Charlie Daniels

Firefly, by Dan Zanes

Rock Lobster, by the B52s

Iko Iko, by Sabastian the Crab

Give a Little Love, by Caren Glasser

the Scooby-Doo theme song

The Lion Sleeps Tonight, by Ladysmith Black Mambazo

All the Pretty Ponies, by Kenny Loggins

She'll be Coming Around the Mountain, by Pete Seeger

Ring of Fire, by Johnny Cash

Baby Beluga, by Raffi

Little Red Caboose, by Sweet Honey in the Rock

We Will Rock You, by Queen

Golden Years, by David Bowie

Monster Mash

Low Rider, by War

Man of Constant Sorrow

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), by Taj Mahal

The Light of the Sun, by Richie Havens

There Ain't No Bugs on Me, by Jerry Garcia and David Griman

Rainwater, by Scooter

Pay Me, by the Jolly Rogers

We Do Have a Moat

It rained pretty heavily this afternoon and Blaze's prediction that the workmen outside our apartment were digging a moat, came true.



Now, if they would only build a drawbridge.

Carpentry For Kids

Gainesville, Florida has a wonderful resource for children with special needs. It's called "Noah's Endeavor" and it provides adapted and inclusive athletics, art, and outings for children with disabilities, as well as their siblings. I can't say enough nice things about this program. Blaze has been involved in their soccer program, bowling nights, and planetarium shows. This week he went to a carpentry workshop.

Lowes stores all over the country have special Saturday workshops for children, where each week a different building project is offered and patches are given for completed work. Our local Lowes store donated several of these kits, goggles, aprons, patches and tools to Endeavor for their weekly Summer "paint and play" session. Blaze has been resistant in the past to going to these art days, but now that he's gotten to know some of the other people who attend ( thanks to swimming class), he was willing to give it a try last night. He loved it!



Blaze built a miniature golf game and a time capsule.







explaining to me what a time capsule is and why he is never going to bury it


One of the things that I really like about Endeavor is that it really is all-inclusive. I spend a lot of time in the waiting room while Blaze is in his various therapies (O.T., Speech, and P.T.) and often times there are children who do not attend therapy, sitting around waiting for their siblings who do. They stare at cartoons, fidget, and ask their mom or dad a few hundred times what time it is. At the Endeavor activities that never happens. Anyone who wants to play can play. No child has to sit, wait, and feel left out while their sibling has all the fun.



If you are in the Gainesville area and have a special needs child or would like to volunteer, I highly recommend that you check out the Endeavor website and get on the mailing list.

Noah's Endeavor Website

Honest Scrap

Aayla do! Montessori has passed on this award to me. I looked up the award on Google and found this description:

"This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant. This award is about bloggers who post from their heart, who oftentimes put their heart on display as they write from the depths of their soul."

Conditions of this award are: Tell your readers 10 things about you that they may or may not know, but are true. Tag ten people with the award, and be sure to let them know they have been tagged (a quick comment on their blog will do). Don’t forget to link back to the blogger who tagged you.

Lets see if I can think of ten things I haven't already written on this blog.

1. I have given up on my garden for this summer. It has been too hot and the weeds are too aggressive.

2. I am a disorganized slob in a small apartment with two other disorganized slobs, so my blog is a way to bring order to my life.

3. I used to sew clothing for my daughters, their homemade rag dolls, and myself, but in recent years I've done a lot less sewing.
The last garment I made was Blaze's costume for Halloween last year.

4. I would like to make soap again. It has been many years since I did that, as well. The last batch I made fell from a high shelf where it was sitting to cure, and fell on my husband's (now ex-husband's) head, burning him with lye. I think I'm brave enough to try it again, and wise enough not to set it on a shelf.

5. I learn along with my children and tutoring students, although I'm still pretty weak in math.

6. I have always liked thunderstorms.

7. I didn't have very many books when I was a child, and when I was a teenager, my mother didn't allow me to read books that were not assigned by a teacher, so part of my teenage rebellion was secretly reading The Lord of the Rings books. I am now a compulsive book buyer and my children have always had more books than we really have storage space for.

8. I have "met" people through this blog, who I consider friends even though we have never met in real life.

9. I don't worry when Blaze is making noise. I only worry when it's too quiet, or if I ask him what he's doing and he answers, "nothing."

10. Most of the useful skills I have, I learned in extracurricular classes, clubs, camps, and from my mother, not from school.




The people I would like to pass this award on to are:

Homeschooling in the Rose Garden

Mountain Pulse

In These Hills

Renaissancemama

Laugh, Live, Learn, Love

5 Orange Potatoes