Book Sharing Monday - Hello, Bumblebee Bat

 What a simple way to introduce an animal to children! Hello, Bumblebee Bad by Patricia J. Wynne asks the little bat easy questions that a child might ask and the bat provides answers.

This book is great for small children but also has enough information that an older child can find it interesting.

Hotel Window Nature

Believe it or not! We did nature study right from our hotel room while away for lacrosse tournaments. This little guy and his friend were rummaging around on the ground in the alley way outside of our window.

  The kids sat in the window and watched.

Book Sharing Monday - Lost! A Story in String

I wish I knew about this book about a month and a half ago. We were participating in a Homeschool Co-Op and one of the subjects I volunteered for was Pioneers. One of the activities we did in that class was learn how to use string to play and tell stories. This book would have gone excellent with that theme. Lost! A Story in String by Paul Fleischman is a story about a little girl who thinks that she is going to die because her electricity went out. 

The grandmother tries to calm the child and tells her a story about a little girl who really was in danger and for each page of this story there is a string picture made to illustrate what was happening in the plot.Using string to tell a story is one way to pass the time when there are no computers or TV's to entertain us. This is one of the ways that pioneers entertained themselves during their leisure time.

At the end of this book there are instructions on how to tell this story with string.

Travel Sports

We have been traveling more often lately due to both kids being in Lacrosse. Summers seem to be like this for us. If it's not sports, it's racing. In either case, this is what the house looks like each week. Suitcases are sprawled out and clothes are being folded into baskets from the laundry room to just be packed up for the weekend away. Sometimes I wish we weren't so busy but other times I'm surprised at how much fun we have together when we go away. Family time in the hotel pools, chatting in the van on the long drives, eating snacks together in the room, spending time together but with friends in the hallway have all proven to be good for us as a family. It's a great deal of work but it's all worth it.

Strawberry Picking and Nature Study

 We went strawberry picking with some homeschool friends. The kids had a great time! The weather was great for it and there were a ton of berries. Many of them weren't even rip enough to pick yet, but we did well.

While picking we noticed some interesting weeds. One was large and fluffy and the flowers were tall and similar to a dandelion. The name of this one is Goat's-Beard. 

Here is a better picture of the flower. 

"Goat's-Beard shoots are edible raw or cooked, the same way as asparagus, and the plant bases are sometimes cooked like artichokes. Also the fleshy roots of first-year plants have been roasted or boiled like parsnips." ~ Ontario Wildflowers by Linda Kershaw

 This weed is a Tufted Vetch. I know they are weeds but I think that these are so pretty and have even left them alone in my garden before.

 The kids looked for fossils when they needed a break from picking.

 This is a pretty cool one that Austyn found. It's scaly, round and has many circular markings on it. It may be a pleurodictyum. Most of the fossils found here are from the Devonian Period. If you don't know anything about that period, it was a time of large oceans and seas full of sea life. Much of that sea life settled to the bottom and their bodies were preserved in sediment. When the ice burgs were here during the ice age all of the upper layers of the earths crust was pushed aside and this is why we can't find dinosaurs here. The fossils here are much older than the dinosaurs.

 Austyn did some photography while there. Here is one creative attempt. I think it's great!

 He also took this picture of the two containers we brought to fill up.

 There is a story behind this picture that he took. All of the kids were wondering through the berries and Zoe spotted a fluffy thing that looked like a toy. She couldn't resist and picked it up. She started to scream and run with this poor little baby kill-deer. I told her that she shouldn't have touched it and instantly she dropped it in a strawberry patch. I went over and picked it up and it was a good thing one of the kids stayed in the spot where the baby was picked up. I took it over and placed it in the spot where the kids say it was found. The parents were not happy and were flying all around and making a good deal of noise. While I had the baby in my hand Austyn took this picture and it gives you an idea of just how small it was sitting on my two smallest fingers. The parents returned to it after we walked away.

We froze some of the strawberries and with some of them we always make some freezer jam. The best part is taste testing. Fingers always work best for this! LOL!

He is Writing!

I don't know if you can see it or not, but Austyn has been practicing script. This is his choice and not my suggestion. He has been practicing his name so that he can have a signature. This idea came from hockey cards. He has a couple of cards that have signatures on them. Deciding to write is a touchy thing for him, normally, because he is such a perfectionist. He doesn't like to see anything that isn't up to his own expected standards. He is covering up the writing that he doesn't like as much and trying to only show me the best one.

Creative Expression

Zoe loves to do her make-up and hair. This also includes creative expression made with face-paint. Here she is posing to show her look. I don't know where she learned to pose like this. I guess she is a natural model. LOL!