We love nature walk Friday!!!

We went to Roper Mountain Science Center today for our Nature Walk. We enjoy doing this so much and always learn a lot and have a lot of fun. I wanted to spend some time around the pond today observing the "habitat" (they have been learning some about habitats), specifically the insects that inhabit the pond this time of year. We were looking for dragonflies and damsle flies.

They were everywhere and in beautiful colors!!! Here is a picture of a dragon fly we saw sitting on the bridge.

Rebekah stoped and pulled out her Nature Journal to draw a picture of the dragon fly. We also saw some very pretty blue damsle flies but were not able to get a picture of them.

We also observed at the pond some huge fish and turtles.

The kids were enamored with the fish and turtles. Every time we go they love to look at the turtles. A couple of weeks ago they got to see on on the land and got to touch it.

We saw 3 different species of fungus today and had a good lesson. The kids learned that fungus is not a plant that can make it's own food like green plants but that mushrooms must get thier nutrients from decomposing material they grow around. The kids learned that the mushrooms and fungus help to decompose the dead materials.Here are a couple of pictures of the mushrooms and fungus.

While we walked we were looking for signs of life in the woodland habitat. We found some deer prints and a white feather that we think may have come from a dove. We also found the sign that some life will be ending. We found the first of the seasons changed leaves. On the ground we found beautiful red leaves. This was a great opportunity to discuss what that means when we see the leaves change and why they change. We then discussed what the area may look like in a few months after the leaves have all fallen. Here are Keren and Hannah with thier first fallen leaves of the season. I think we may press these.

When we were almost ready to leave we headed back to the butterfly garden where I let the kids test out what they have been learning from thier readings in Paddle to the Sea. They tested how water flows and carries along items by putting leaves in the creek and watching the water carry it along until it got stuck on some object. We discussed how in the book what would happen if Paddle to the sea gets stuck. Would he ever make it to the sea? I like how we can take practical application to what we are reading about.

I loaded the kids up into the car red faced and tired but we all had a great time and had fun learning how God has put our world together.

School at the Pool and Ballerina Girls

Today was a great day of school! We took a step out of the ordinary and met some of our great homeschooling buddies at the pool. While there we ate our lunch and then read chapter 4 of "Paddle to the Sea" (they are also reading this book). What a great book, it really gets better every chapter as the discriptions get more vivid. The kids enjoyed hearing about the beaver pond and we discussed what a beaver's habitat is like. Hannah was very good at discribing why a beaver builds a dam and what it does to help create the habitat. The narrations on "Paddle to the Sea" were not what we would love to have but they did seem to get a lot from the chapter.
I read to Hannah the Wolf and the Kid from Aesops Fables and she did give a good narration on that. She remembered very well what a kid is from our last fable involving one. She was also able to tell me the moral of the story. The kids played in the pool for a while and then Gail called Hannah and Ethen out of the pool to do some math drills. They loved this. Gail would call out some addition problems while the kids stood on the side of the pool. If they got it right they got to jump in the pool. If they got it wrong they had to stand on the side and wait for thier turn to come around again. Hannah did well with this. Though we haven't gotten back into addition yet this year she remembered it well from last year. They then did the same thing with simple spelling words. Hannah is still a little slow on taking words apart phonetically to spell them but was able to get all of her words with a bit of help and most without help. In Fifty Famous Stories Retold we read about Diogenes the Wise Man. I really enjoy this book as I am learning things I never knew right along with the kids. Diogenes was a philosopher who was very well respected. he taught that men should not have more than what they need and that they need very little (this made for a good conversation). He did not live in a house with posessions nor did he have a bed to sleep in. He had a barrel that he slept in would roll it around where he went. He was a very happy man. When Alexander the great came to town everyone went to go see him, but not Diogenes. Diogenes was the only one that Alexander cared to see however so he sought him out. When he found him he was sitting on a mat in front of his barrel enjoying the sunshine. Alexander asked Diogenes what he would like for Alexander to do for him and Diogenes replied that he would like for Alexander to move over as to not block the sun light. Alexander the Great later told one of his servants that he was not Alexander the Great he would like to be Diogenes. It was a great lesson about contentment and happiness regardless of our things. Hannah was able to tie in this story to the one of Alexander the Great as a boy when he was able to tame the wild horse who became his faithful steed. I just love all the books we read because i can see the true value in them in the life of the children for now and for thier life to come. I see them learning things that they would not have learned from a text book in a way that captures their interest. Learning is coming alive, not just for them, but for me too. I am so blessed to be able to give them this gift and I thank God for allowing me to do so.
Anyway, I digress. AT 4:00 today the kids went to their first ballet class. They were so excited. They got to wear thier new leotards, tights, and ballet shoes for the first time. They looked so cute when I dropped them off. Afterwards, I briefly spoke with the teacher and she said they did well. Even though Rebekah is the youngest in the class, she was able to keep up well and her cordination was good. She did say that Rebekah was a bit shy when it was her turn to do something by herself but she quickly got over that. I am glad. Rebekah's shyness in performance situations is one of the reasons we decided to go ahead and put her in ballet this year. I hope it will work as well and getting the dog has for her. :-)
All in all we had a full and eventful day.
Tomorrow we will take it a bit easier and just tackle the 3 R's. We are done with our readings for the week. We may try to squeeze in a free reading of Cinderella from the Blue Fairy Book if we get the mountain of clothes in the office folded and put away.
I will try to take pictures of our activities in the future so that I can post pictures along with my blogs.

School Days, School Days

John left 4 1/2 weeks ago for Ft Benning for some Army Training. He will be gone for almost 6 months all together. We have really missed him but since he has been gone we have been very busy.We started back to school 4 Mondays ago. We have really been enjoying it this year!!! We are using a Charlotte Mason based approach to education and are loving it. We have fun reading, reading, and reading. The kids have really enjoyed reading about various birds in the Burgess Bird Book, and about fairy tales in the Blue Fairy Book. They have learned some great classic information which will help them in the Great Conversation. They learned about the Brave 300 Spartans who held back the Persain invasion of Greece and about Alexander the Great and his horse. They have learned about the coming of the Romans to England and how the Brittans were so brave and feriece that Cesear left with much respect for them. We are learning about Geography through a great Caldecot book named Paddle to the Sea. So far they have learned about the Great Lakes and how the rivers flow from one to the other and thus on to the Ocean.Poetry is one of their favorites. They love to hear great poetry about children like themselves. Right now Beauty and the Beast stands out as the favorite story by far. At first, as I was reading it, Hannah tried to tell me that that was not how it went (she only knew the disney version), but soon she was very interested and wanted to know how it would end. She told her daddy all about it! For math we are learning with a great program called Math U See. The kids love playing with the blocks to learn place value and figure out problems. I am most excited about our new Spell to Write and Read program. So far the kids have learned all of the sounds of all of the letters and have them well memorized. They are currently working on the multiletter phonograms (or blends) and are doing very well memorizing them. We will start our first spelling list of 20 words on Monday. I dictated the word "apron" yesterday to Hannah and she spelled it correctly!!! The emphasis of this program is to learn all of the sounds of letters and multi letter phonograms first, spell second, and learn to write and read as a result of correct spelling. So far I see the benefit and am excited.On Wednesdays Hannah and Bekah are going to a co-op. They are taking Art, Math, and Spanish there. They spend an hour on each and come home at 12:30. Today was their first day and they had so much fun. We have some Spanish homework to work on for next week.Hannah and Bekah will be taking Ballet on Thursday afternoon. It is with a Christian fine arts company and has a basis in letting our talents be our worship. The kids are so excited about this! We went and got their ballet shoes on Monday and they have been wanting to wear them.Fridays are our fun day.We go on Nature Walks. We usually go to the Roper Mountain Science Center. While there we walk on the nature trails and look for new things to see (bugs, turtles, moss, fungus, etc...), and then head to the butterfly garden and pond. There is lots of great pond life and beautiful flowers to study.This past friday we went to the Childrens Garden in Downtown Greenville. The kids got to look at the river and see how the water flows. They saw ducks and we discussed how the water flows off of their backs. They identified flowers and smelled some of the more fragrant plants in the herb garden. It was a lot of fun for them. Afterwards we made a trip to the interactive fountain where they had fun playing and getting wet.