Our week

This was an incredibly busy week for us and I’ll be lucky to remember just what we accomplished.

 

History: Nineveh, Habakkuk and Huldah, Babylonian Captivity, Nebuchadnezzar II and the Hanging Gardens, Daniel and Aesop’s Fables. I made them draw the Hanging Gardens and do the pretest and post tests.

 

Science: That didn’t happen for the youngers this week, so I might read some of chapter 2 in Zoo 2 tonight to them. We are on whales. The Ark listened to days 1-3 and answered the questions. I also made him draw two of the cells.

Math~ The Princess took week 19 test and started week 20. The Peanut also did math. The Ark finished up week 9, he did ok on his exam.

English~ The Ark did 2 lessons in grammar, 4 days of spelling, wrote a book review on Theras and His Town. Ace did 3 lessons of grammar and 4 days of spelling, wrote me two book reviews. The Princess did 2 lessons of grammar, and only 4 pages of phonics, she did read for me this week.

Both of the boys drew almost every day, as did the princess. The Ark did a music lesson on Music Ace.

Latin~ is going slowly, I made the boys review the chapters that they have been struggling with. I make them get on the flash deck that is offered by the publisher of their latin, to practice their vocabulary. They will take the test for those chapters on Monday and then start the next chapter.

The Ark made it to confirmation class and went to a concert at our church last Sunday night. Swim team practice on monday night was cancelled.

I have been reading the Prayer of Jabez to them and we finally finished it, now we will start on the devotional book for the next 31 days. I also have been reading them The God King and The Black Ships Before Troy.

We also took our first fall nature hike last saturday. The kids loved it! We hiked 1.8 miles and it was a level 3 hike that had lots of ups and downs to it. I will post some pictures when I get a chance.

While I still see the need for more improvement we are not doing so bad considering the amount of time I have to be away from them. Just have to keep up the momentum, I guess.

 

Nature Studies

The husband and the little ones found this bird’s nest abandoned last week on one of their walks down our street, they brought it home to show me and of course I took photos of it, isn’t that what homeschooling moms do?

Nature Hike

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A real covered bridge, the kids thought it was cool

We were in the landing path of many airplanes that day.

Our walk wouldn’t be complete without the outhouse.

NO!!! You may not creek walk today in that skirt…..I don’t care if all the other kids are, they are not wearing a skirt.

Can you say lignan?

I love the look of moss on rocks.

Summer Schooling

We will be going back to schooling year round, since there is too much I want the kids to learn in a year. Ace will be doing latin starting next week, we had panned it for The Ark after 5 lessons because of his dyslexia, but now it is improving to the point where he shouldn’t get confused. So hopefully next week we will begin again. I told The Ark he had to listen in to review his vocab and the grammar. Then once Ace is on chapter 6 we will just keep going. I truly believe that our 2.5 months of summer vacation is outdated in our society. After all, adults don’t get that much time off unless they are public school teachers.

We switched Ace to MUS and I made him repeat the second grade math as he just wasn’t getting the concepts at all. So here we are after the first week of MUS and he really likes it, did his daily work without complaining and correctly in a decent amount of time!!!! He will not get a summer break for math since he now has to catch up. But as long it is continues this way I think he will be fine. I think the best difference is less problems and no pictures or color to distract him. Senory Integration Disorder is a different teaching challenge for me but I think we are finally getting it right.

The Peanut and the Princess still have way to much creativity going on lately. I won’t share the latest but it was interesting, just not as safe as I would like and I had to put a stop to it. *shakes head* where do they come up with these things? The Ark and The Princess want to start their MUS as well but I told them to finish what they have and take a short break from math, so we could do some other things for a bit. The Peanut told me today that he is going to bury me in South America. Why there I have no idea and we haven’t talked about SA for months now.

We took a hike this week and had a great time but the kids were sad to come home. I hope to be able to take a hike every other week. Since we are doing Zoo 1 we are paying lots of attention to birds these days. I really need a better lens for distances though. I am going to price them but it will be awhile I think before I can get one.

We have listened to the Magician’s Nephew on cd in the van while driving to the kids chiro appointment and now have new Jonathon Park cd’s to listen to.  After that we might listen to the other Narnia cd’s and we have Island of the Blue Dolphins, the Sign of the Beaver, and a couple of other’s that I can’t remember the name of right now. I’m really trying to get them to look at learning in a different light.

Well, I’m off to unwind it has been crazy here lately.

Maple Sugaring~ edit

Today was a beautiful sunny day in NE Ohio and it wasn’t too cold for a change so we went to the metroparks and went on a tour of maple sugaring. First thing though you need to tkae cash with you so that you can sample the maple sugar…

Then the tour guide comes up and it was a friend of ours from our church!!! So he leads us off to learn all about sugaring. Did you know that 5% of the maple sugar comes from NE Ohio? No??? Either did we, last year they collected 118,000 buckets of sap from the metroparks. They are doing well this year as well. So the first thing we saw was……

Sinzibukhud~ Native American for maple syrup. Next on the list was of course the buckets that were used to catch the sap and did you know that the sap is clear?

The story of hte next picture is in question but The Husband says he thinks that the Pilgrims would trade the big metal pot to the Native American’s for maple syrup.

I loved the next photo, if you use your imagination you can pretend for a few seconds that you are back in time.

They had a small drying something or another for drying skins.

The was elk, coyote, raccoon, deer, muskrat skins that I can remember. I didn’t realize how big muskrats can get.

Trough that the Native American used to use to turn sap into syrup, they used to heat up rocks and then throw them into the sap.

The back of the drying rack.

We finally made it to the colonial ages….

Unfortunately by this time the kids were restless and and there was a huge crowd by the boiler so we packed up the kids without any photos of that. All in all it was a great day. I almost forgot that when we first got there we saw a red headed woodpecker. I’m still lamenting not having a better lens to get a great photos of him.

Nature Hikes x 2

Our first hike of the day.

It was a beautiful warm sunny day in NE Oh.

This view will be gorgeous in another week or so.

The husband requested a picture of the bridge.

I like this photo

This tree in full fall glory surrounded by green still.

Nature hike #2 for the day.

All of this photos were taken inside the Nature Realm building.

This almost looked liked a bower when you passed under it.

The Left side of the pond

The right side of the pond

Fish? Anyone?

I hope you enjoyed our hike with us. We had a wonderful time and came home tired but refreshed.

Zoo photos

We are blessed with a great city zoo and spent the day there on Tuesday when it was incredibly warm out for January. So I hope you enjoy this brief look at our zoo.

The Princess and her pal…..

We have this equator line in the African Savanah part of the zoo. The water fountains weren’t running since it is winter but one drains clockwise and the other drains counterclockwise. There is a great explanation on how it does that.

Photo of an illegal trap. I would not like to be an animal caught in that. 

We started to go closer but the giraffes outdoor winter place was a bit too pungent for us. 

I love the coloring of these birds, no I don’t know their species name. I’m guessing they are some sort of egret?????

Adrien took this photo, it is in the African Savannah hospital for animals. That is a very cool building to visit.

One of the hospital rooms, we have never seen an animal there though, I’m guessing it is just for showing you what they would look like.

Ace took this picture, so it is a bit fuzzy. This is the other room and they are behind glass.

I have more pictures for your viewing enjoyment to post another day. Hope you enjoy these in the meantime.

comments and caterpillars

We saw this caterpillar today, it was crawling along the metal bench, we sat and watched it as it moved along. Cami thought it moved like a rainbow, I suggested it moved in a wave. We waited until the kids were out of swim lessons and then moved it by a tree so it would be safe and have food. this is what we found out about it

American Dagger Moth, Acronicta americana, one of the Noctuids or Owlet Moths. It feeds on Maple and other hardwood forest tree leaves.

So Noah went down to the van to get his swim trunks and came back up. “the car was locked, and I’m not going back down there again,” he tells me. I look over at him kind of confused. He then says to me ” did you know that concrete is pokey when you walk on it with bare feet? It feels like glass!!”

Stinky Plant

Ok, this is officially called the Titan Arum or Cronus. It is a tropical plant and endagered due to deforestation. It can grow quite large, the sign say 9.5 ft but the man at the zoo said 12-15ft in height. When it opens it gathers energy so that it can bloom again in 2 years or so, after the initial 13 year wait for the blooming. If it doesn’t gather enough energy it takes much longer between bloomings. It didn’t smell too bad when we were there since it had been over 24 hours since the opening. I was so surprised though by how big it was. It was at least 36″ if not a bit taller. The spathe curls up around the spadix and protects it or something. It is similar to an era of corn and the husk. Although the man also said it feels like celery, although I thought it looked more like the feel of red cabbage. The horrid smell is too attract pollinators to pollinate the bloom. it wsa very interesting and we learned a great deal. So that was our science lesson today. Improptu as it was.

Sunday

We went to church and sunday school. Choir ends for the year on Mother’s Day. *jumping for joy* Sunday school ends on May 20. However our church has a summer reading club that starts June 01 and we always do it. *sigh* We went on a nature walk yesterday. We had a blast watching the male Mallards about 5 of them fighting with each other to get to the only female. She finally picked a mate and the other’s eventually left them alone. We saw 6 goslings also. they were so cute. But my battery was dead in my camera so no pictures. We have the battery charging and plan to go back to try to see them again and get some pictures. We stopped and bought a graduated cylinder and some litmus paper so we could do a couple of science experiments.

There was an experiment on the back of the packaging. So we did it. We added 5ml of water, saw the meniscus. then added in the oil which really exaggerated the meniscus. We then dropped some salt into the cylinder. The salt actually stayed within the meniscus for a few seconds while it pooled up and then dropped down into the water all at once in a clump. The salt was actually starting to dissolve while sitting in the meniscus.

So Noah is working on writing up our science experiment form for his portfolio. I did some of the writing for him but made him to do in cursive. His writing skills need some practice. The only sad thing of the day? The soon to be 2 yr old found my cylinder and threw it. Yep you guessed it he broke it. We had washed it out and left it to dry. He climbed up on a chair and found it. I’m so not happy with him lately.