Friday Nature Walk 11/28

On Black Friday, instead of heading to the stores- we headed outside for a nature walk.

Fire Safety Field Trip

Firefighter dressed completely, they turned on the air tanks and talked through their speakers. I'm so glad they did that because as a child, I would be scared of a giant figure walking towards me breathing and talking like an alien. Lol.

The kids holding hands, waiting to enter the smoke house to simulate how to safely get out in case of a fire. Danny is still pointing at our smoke detectors and teaching us to crawl out!

Camille is whizzing past me and Danny is crawling behind her. He has red eye from the camera.

Now here's the demonstration that we witnessed, sorry about the picture quality- it's from my digital camera.

Saturday's Excursion

We went to a Public Safety Day where the kids met local firefighters, police and other community helpers. We learned about fire safety, emergency procedures and toured different types of emergency vehicles including a mobile communications center. We watched firefighters pry open a wrecked car with the jaws of life and the kids rode an antique fire truck. Then we headed over to a Fall Festival where the kids loved a petting zoo (poor animals) and I was able to talk to some of the major environmental groups in our area such as the marine extension from the University of Georgia, Savannah Tree Foundation, USDA, a few historical sites had booths and a few others. My poor dh had the kids while I asked question after question and only moved on because there were other people around who wanted to chat and the kids and dh were pretty restless. It was a fun day. We have a few more 'Fall Festivals' to attend this year, the kids are really in for a treat.

In the pictures:
Camille held and petted a snake. Without flinching at all and she wants one, she even wants to feed it live mice. I could barely pick up the snake to hand it to her at the festival but I did it. Proud personal moment.


Danny and Camille loved the marine extension's area where they let the kids touch whelks, clams and hermit crabs. We were at the table for about 30 minutes.

Week 5 Report

This one is jam-packed with pictures because I'm including our field trip from yesterday (Friday).

Explorer's Bible Study
Studied Genesis 4 this week. Other than the map work, we're going to do this orally. Camille has a lot of writing in her day and I'd rather discuss this anyways. It is going well, although we have had a hiccup about understanding the scripture. Camille had a hard time understanding Genesis 4:11-16 on her own. I've struggled with that, whether she should do it alone, I don't want her to. I feel like it is my job to do this with her. How I'll do both Danny and her will be whole other problem next year.

Horizons Math 3
It's time to get the coin out! I wonder if it's normal for other 3rd graders to be adding up money by writing out 25 + 10 + 10+ 5+ 5+ = 55? Camille has dawdled this week in math, even with the Nobility Record! On the days that she did, we weren't able to do something else and I gave her an extra chore to do in the afternoon.

Prima Latina
We are on the Review Lesson I for Lessons 1-5. I am very happy with how this is going although Camille is having a problem with the prayer. I am so glad I bought the DVDs, I feel like I'm learning alongside Camille instead of teaching her.

Primary Language Lessons
We are doing Primary Language Lessons every day because we will be starting Writing Tales 1 this year. We're up to Lesson 110 now and there are 164 lessons in PLL. We have 54 lessons to go which will take us 13 weeks at 4 lessons a week and that is if we don't skip any. We're not rushing, one lesson a day is fine- rushing would be 2 lessons a day plus Camille would revolt.

Explode the Code 7: Finished Lesson 5 this week.

Poetry: We reviewed all our previous memorized poems from last year and now Camille is working on Foreign Lands by Robert Louis Stevenson. We worked on illustrating it together and Camille has copied the first two stanzas. We have company now in our poetry memorization, a friend's son is memorizing the same poems as Camille and we'll videotape the kids reciting them. He already has the first stanza memorized. Camille is thrilled because she feels like she's memorizing with someone else and it's a contest. We'll see how our little experiment goes.

Tapestry of Grace, Year 3 Week 5
This week we read and learned more about Thomas Jefferson and the Supreme Court. Camille read Marshall the Courthouse Mouse on her own and she would have read A Picture Book about Thomas Jefferson but I misplaced it and I was unable to find it. It's here somewhere... She also made her own moccasins this week which was a HUGE hit. A picture of them is here. Here's her notebook page for the branches of government. I typed and printed out the text and had her piece it together, matching up the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches.

Life Science: We studied the respiratory system this week. We didn't have any additional reading but here's a project Camille did. It shows how the diaphragm expands to help us breathe since our lungs do not have any muscles.







Afternoon Tea with Fairy Tales
Camille loves Earl Grey tea and I'm enjoying Vanilla Chai, we didn't use our tea set this week, opting to just have our own mugs of our different teas. We did read two fairy tales this week from our Brothers Grimm collection, The Three Spinners and Cinderella. Camille requested Cinderella thinking it would be like the Disney version, but found out quickly it was not. We are still filling out our chart for elements in a fairy tale as we read.

Drawing With Children is being replaced with Draw Squad because we were not getting it done. I have too many involved subjects and I need this to be easy and enjoyable for both of us. We will start Draw Squad next week.

Needlepoint: Camille worked on her project this week and I think she'll finish it next week and I'll provide a picture. She will be giving it as a gift to her Sunday School teacher. It is a picture of a Bible with the words Holy Bible on it.

Composer Biography: I am condensing our Vivaldi biography and I have I, Vivaldi by Janice Shefelman on its way so we can read it before the quarter is over. I think we'll work on a timeline of Vivaldi's life and compositions. I'm grateful we have Opal Wheeler biographies to read for the rest of the composers this year. I have seriously considered dropping this from our week and just relying on Tapestry to provide the reading assignments. I'm still considering this.

Independent Reading: Camille is reading The Golden Goose by Dick King-Smith. I've been reading curriculum books. I'll say why in another post coming soon.

Other: Piano is going well, Camille's teacher returns from his 3 week vacation in Italy (so jealous) this coming week. Danny loves his Montessori preschool now and even protested Friday when I said he wasn't going because we were going on a field trip. We have quit soccer for Danny, he's just too tired and uninterested- I'm sure it would have been fine if he wasn't going to preschool but he has a full day there and the soccer was too much.

I am currently trying to figure out which organization would be best for Camille: Girl Scouts, American Heritage Girls or Roots and Shoots. I hope to have answer by the next Weekly Report. I've decided against putting the kids in organized sports at this time. Camille wants to make friends above and beyond any interest in playing a sport and it's hard to make friends when there is little social interaction.

Now for our field trip. There are so many pictures but I couldn't leave any out! It was so beautiful and we saw and experienced many things.

We went to the Savannah Ogeechee Canal and walked the trails there. Here is a picture of the many birds' nest inside the nature center there.

Outside in the butterfly garden

The one of the left is a Cloudless Sulphur butterfly, the one on the right is a Harris' Checkerspot and we also saw Zebra butterflies but weren't able to take a picture.
















I don't know if the picture on the right is the same butterfly that I somehow took a picture of it flying and landing in the same frame or not. Still an amazing photo even if it is two butterflies.

I love these flowers, so beautiful!

Now for our spider encounters of the day. Here's a Crablike Spiny Orb Weaver's web, I couldn't take a picture of the spider.

This is a Golden-Silk spider, it's web when seen in the sunlight looks golden. I finally took good spider pictures! I'm so thrilled. We have seen many of these but they will be gone come the first frost.

This is a Mabel Orchard Spider. I'm sorry the picture didn't come out but it had an irridescent orange color which caught our eye as we were walking.

Here is one I haven't identified yet. It was red, black and brown with white spots. Maybe a Argiope? I didn't have much luck with photographing it. It was different from the other spiders we've seen though.


Now for general pictures of our walk. The trail bordered the canal so there were areas that were flooded and we had to carefully try not to walk in the water which was about 30 inches deep.

Camille wanted me to take a picture of this River Birch



















And now for observing and feeding the Gopher Tortoises, the kids had so much fun! The lady on site was very kind to use and made our day by talking to me and allowing the kids to feed the tortoises.