handbook of nature study

We are starting a new unit/curriculum for the spring/summer.  The kids have their annual school exam next week and unless there are areas that NEED improvement, we'll be done with formal school for the spring.  Whats that you say?  Done with school in March?!  Ok, ok, we won't stop doing schoolwork, but we are going to stop the FORMAL stuff.  I'm guessing test results will show X is not super great at spelling and writing, but I'm not particularly concerned about this as our spring/summer projects will be addressing those weaknesses that I'm already aware of.  We are going to be using the Handbook of Nature Study as a spring board for starting a notebooking project.  The kids love being outside.  I love having them be outside.  So its only natural (pun intended) to go on outside!!!  I'll try to show what the notebooks look like as the kids get started on them.  But here's a little of what we did on our nature walk today.

I wasn't entirely prepared for this adventure as we had only planned on going to the children's museum, but they wanted to go to on a nature walk too at Buffalo River State Park (which is 20 or so miles from the museum) so we went there on a whim and I only had my cell phone to take pictures.


We went down to the river and just sat on the rocks for quite a while, watching the river flow, throwing in twigs to see them float, and tossing in stones to see them drop.  I did have snacks in the car for the kids, so we sat down and ate our snacks there.

We saw moss growing on the trees.

Yellow and green moss!

He says "take a picture of me pointing at the moss" (clearly, moss was an interesting highlight of our walk!)

A is showing how the grass is starting to come in on the path, we'll go back in a couple weeks to the same spot and compare what it looks like :)

And on the other side of the path the trees are bare, again, we'll go back to compare this later.

Diggin'

Well, spring is here and we are back out spending time at Buffalo River State Park. They must be prepping the pond for summer because there were several loads of fresh clean sandpiles sitting in the swimming hole. The kids seriously enjoyed climbing and digging. Its supposed to rain the next couple days, but hopefully we'll be able to make it out here again soon!

Lemonade

Well somehow we ended up with a beautiful 70 degree day here so the kids set up a lemonade stand.

Swimming

The kids are doing fantastic in swimming lessons.  A is not as enthusiastic about it as she had been a couple years ago when she went, but their skills have improved dramatically.  We stopped going to lessons because they were so far away downtown and twice a week was a lot of running.  There is a new YMCA near us now with a pool and so we signed up again.  The last session they were the only two kids in the class and had two instructors.  AWESOME.  X went from not really even dunking under water much to actually being able to swim.  A can jump into the pool on her own now and with goggles will go under water to get toys.  I'm impressed.

dr seuss - the lorax

I forgot to blog about this a couple weeks ago even though I very purposefully took pictures to document all that we did- d'oh!  So here's a quick rundown on how we celebrated the release of the movie The Lorax and Dr. Seuss's birthday....

First the kids read the Lorax (after a bit they got bored of the reading part, we switched to the nook and they used the read to me feature ha ha ha)  Also, you'll see that A is "reading" along with the story.  She has read it so many times on the nook that its pretty much memorized!

Then they started working on some projects drawing a Truffula tree.  It was using multiple mediums...

Crayons...

Paint....

And we even sprayed perfume on them so it would smell like "fresh butterfly milk" as stated in the book :)

The fluff for the trees was, of course, raw wool that I had cleaned and dyed  :)

 

In the book you have to pay to hear the story, we used coins to figure out how many different combinations could be used to come up with 15 cents.

Little A likes drawing more, so she took the opportunity to draw a picture of the Lorax.

Remember, this was BEFORE they saw the movie, in the book there is no picture of the Once-ler, so they each drew a picture of what they thought the Once-ler would look like.

Below shows (left to right, even though the subtitle on the pages may differ...) the Lorax by A, the Once-ler by A, and the Once-ler by X

 

We also used the some of the main themes of the story and talked about the difference between NEEDS and WANTS.

valentine preview

A sneak peek of our party decor for tomorrow! My favorite is the pendant banner made from Little A's old shirts that I was having a hard time parting with, I think it turned out so cute :)

Winter birdfeeder

A made a little winter birdfeeder (shape of a heart) today. She also made us a pizza lunch :) Ideas were from her latest Highlights "High Five" magazine