Playing Chicken Dominoes

This is a great domino game- and my boys can play it as young as 5! Yeay for games everyone can play!!! We use double 12 dominoes and the little barn hub. Everyone draws {8 or 10, I can't remember right now..} and the one with the highest double places it in the barn {officially, you are supposed to play each double once to complete a game, but we are done after 3 or 4 rounds!}. As you take turns playing, you put the same number on the barn hub to "get into" the game. You cannot play until you are "in" but someone else can use their turn to put you in if they have the domino and they want to... ;). If you can't play, you draw one domino and the next person goes.

You proceed to play your dominoes until someone places a double out- then you have to make a "chicken foot" placing 3 toes on the double. You cannot play anywhere else until the foot is complete. If you cannot place a toe, you have to draw and sometimes you get stuck drawing a looooong time- especially if you are playing with only 2 or 3 players. The game continues until someone runs out of dominoes and they win! This is a favorite at our house!!

Organic farm tour

We went on this tour of a local organic farm in October. They did a fantastic job keeping the kids interested and busy! The boys loved the tour and the information and of course, all the moms were soaking it in! We moved from station to station- learning about things like bee keeping, square foot gardening, square dancing (!), chick hatching, and making your own flour for bread and baking.

The boys planted lettuce in the square foot gardens and learned ways of naturally keeping the pests away. At the chicken coop they learned about the realities of coyote invasion and how quickly and completely they can destroy a flock of chickens.

The earth oven was very new to the farm and they had only begun using it earlier that month. They were having some trouble cooking in it because of all the moisture {it had been raining a lot in Texas} but they were getting the hang of it and baking their own breads now. Kids were able to take raw grains and try their hands at grinding it with 2 different grinders. One very old fashioned hand crank {highly difficult} and a new motorized grinder {simple!}- but I love that it really gave them the idea that food has not always been so easy to obtain. AND that using nature's ingredients as intended is a completely different process than what it has become in our processed world. This was a morning well spent and very enjoyable for all ages!

Landform maps

The boys needed to make land form maps using topography so we used play dough. I didn't have the best colors, but we went with it anyway!! They were able to make several different forms- mountain ranges, hills, lakes, rivers, plains, etc.- and we used the different colors to differentiate between structures. This was actually for a scouting requirement and my little one joined in just for fun! All the boys enjoyed doing this little project and it was super easy.