Kites, syrup and Vermont

We have had a busy week!    On Wednesday, Levi went to his "Mr. Science" class.  The kids learned "How to Take over the World", using balloons to represent their own world.   We went to the park afterwards as well, and as usual, Levi had a great time.    In the evening, we went to a local park for an evening of listening to music, and looking though some amazing telescopes.  We could see Mars, the moon, a star nursery and a lot more in incredible detail.   Levi also got one of the musicians to play "Oh Susannah" and sing along with him, its still one of his favorite songs.
Thursday we went to story time at the library and listened to some stories about spring.
Friday we went to a MOPS meeting, Levi got the chance to hang out with some friends while I had some mom time.
And Saturday was back to the library for an etiquette class and a book sale (we came home with 22 new books and have read half of them already)

Its been windy this week, so of course we took the opportunity to test out Levi's new kite. 

For our postcard project this week, we received two postcards from Claire from Vermont.

First of all, we located and colored in Vermont on our map of the United States and then looked at a map of Vermont and labeled the capital, Montpelier (which I still can't pronounce).

Next, on the inside of our lapbook from top to bottom:
Top: A picture of the state flower (red clover) and state bird (hermit thrush), a mini book where Levi wrote the capital, bird, and flower, and some green mountains, for the green mountain state.

Middle: the two postcards we received, the first showing Burlington, and the second showing Mount Mansfield. 
On the right is a mini-book with the state quarter on the cover.  Inside Levi drew pictures of the process of making maple syrup.   We watched a video on youtube about the process, and checked out some books from the library to read about it. 

Bottom: The Vermont state flag, which we looked at a picture of and talked about all of the symbols on it. 
And on the right, is a recycle symbol -  whats that for?   We learned all about Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream!   Ben and Jerry's is the only ice cream place Levi can eat, there are 2 flavors there that he isn't allergic to and they have 'non diary scoops' to prevent cross contamination from the dairy. 
Ben and Jerry's is a great company, based in Vermont.  One of their focuses is helping the environment.  On their website we learned about their efforts to "reduce, reuse and recycle". 
Did you know that they feed their food leftovers to local pigs?  And the pics don't like the mint ice cream, but will eat the cookies out of it!  

And of course, we had to have maple syrup on waffles for breakfast:

Because it was the last waffle, I had Levi write "waffles" on the grocery list.  I think I'm going to put him in charge of "the list" because he seems to like to practice his writing for practical applications like this one, and I can have him read his writing to shop at the store later.    The only thing is, we will have a much bigger list with the size of his handwriting!

More postcards arrived in the mail today, so on Monday we start our next postcard!