I cannot believe how much time has passed since I last wrote! We have been one busy family with one busy school! As I write this we are in the beginning of our 6th week of term 3 in year 1! We have six weeks left! Six weeks! Unbelievable! It is "quiet time" in the house right now, so I will attempt to write all that I can in a short amount of time.
Let me think back. We started experiments about four weeks ago. Those have gone okay. The first, and main, one has by far, been the best. We planted beans in four different types of soil. It's been quite obvious what the answer is going to be. However, we also have four different things happening with this one. For another experiment, we were thankfully able to use the bean plant to prove this point - the leaves turn toward the light. The other two experiments have kinda gone to the wayside. He gets the point that plants need water and not too much. Also, he can tell quite well that plants need light. But, we have six weeks left, we just might get to those other two experiments after all.
We have been on some great Nature walks in the past month. One, we went with our CM homeschool group to a river preserve. That was fantastic! All of the kids sat down to draw in their journals and so my kids got to see that other people participate in this too. That has actually been helpful in their attmepts at nature journalling. Little Flopsy has just taken off with her journal. She asks several times to draw in her journal and I never tell her no. I feel that it is important to allow her to express and draw what she wants. Some times, the pictures have been tiny and other times, they have been a good size and filled with color. Benjamin has done pretty much what I expected, doing good enough to get by, but he's getting better. After the river preserve, even little Peter Rabbit has started getting into the whole idea! That excites me the most. Occassionally I have taken some time to draw in my own and I'm making some progress toward better drawing. In part of our nature books, we are doing something along the lines of lapbooking. By the time the semester is over, they will have pressed flowers, pictures they have drawn, and lots of little tid-bits about flowers and plants and their parts and the life-cycle of them! It's so fun!
The kids are enjoying the composer study this term with Maurice Ravel. So far, the favorite song is Bolero. Flopsy said that it made her think of Egypt. Benjamin said that it sounded like Spanish music. He was pretty close!
We have also started a book for Benjamin to keep after school. It will be sort of like a lapbook, but our own compilation of it. We are printing out pictures about different things from the Buffalo Bill book. That has been a fun one. Today, he asked me when we are going to go to the Register Cliff and when we will see Ft. Laramie. He has the impression that we are going to go! I love that! What a field trip that would be! I might just have to mention that to my DH and figure out if we can plan for this some time. After studying Tree in the Trail next year, I'm sure that a trip including parts of the Organ and Santa Fe trails would be quite in order!
Oh, on another note for nature studies: During Easter weekend, we were at the home of a friend of ours. During the egg hunt, I found a nest with white eggs in it. It was my favorite find of the whole weekend! Flopsy actually asked if she could take those as Easter eggs! Silly girl! Today (hopefully) we plan to go back and see what bird it could be and if there has been any activity. I think I'm going to have the children draw in their nature journals, despite the fact that this is not pertaining to flowers or plants. It's still so cool! And we have gone on one more nature walk.
There are a few families in our church congregation that are homeschooling or definitely will be soon (on the account that their children are still very young)! A group of us got together and went on a hike in one of the mountains around here. It definitely was not on the scale of nature walk that we normally take, but it was so great to have those families with us! This brings me to my next personal journey. I'm going to start a homeschool group with our church. I've mentioned the idea to a few moms and they like the idea. After getting this group together, I knew this was something I need to do. I've felt the urge to do this for some time now. Since several of the families are still young yet, I'm letting the idea ruminate for the next several months. I'm still going to plan field trips, nature hikes, and zoo trips for everyone. However, by next spring, we are going to begin the planning stages! And by next fall, we will be a full fledged group of some kind. My personal hopes are that we will have a co-op. Hopefully more words about this little adventure in homeschool groups will come later on.
