Friday Nature Walk 11/28

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

Friday Nature Walk

Let's go for a walk.

We took our Junior Ranger program and worked on the plant study, here's what we found.


A flower with more than 5 petals


A fuzzy seed that can be carried on the wind


Spanish moss (flowering plant not really a moss)



A vine and a hiding critter


Look Mom, red berries!
Junior Ranger- a red flower or fruit
and a berry- look inside for seeds (Camille did)


Camille pointing to Sparkleberry


A fruit with hooks, sweetgum
and Danny wanted his picture taken too




Danny's holding Magnolia leaves



A fern


Ground lichen, looks like dirty snow but it's not.


and a close up of Cladina evansii ("powder-puff lichen", or "deer moss")


This was light green, the lady at the park said this was greybeard moss but Spanish moss is also called greybeard. Sigh. I need a book on lichen.



Camille says this is an insect's nest


Pink all over the tree? Lady at the park said it's called pepto-bismol but I can't find it in either my field guides or online so- yes, I need a book on lichen!


More pink lichen?

Camille completed Level III of the Fruits & Flowers section of her Junior Ranger program, finding 9 of 12 items.

Week 7 Report

It has been a busy week! Dh had surgery on Tuesday which added extra stress to the week and I didn't think this week would end. A lot of books came from the library that I've wanted to look at and I've received a few books through the mail, I have reviews I want to post so that will be coming up soon. I will also be posting more about our 5th-8th grade science plans as I have had a chance to see the resources.

Explorer's Bible Study Genesis: This week we read in Genesis 6 and completed the work orally. Camille is getting better and better at finding the answers in the text and I'm feeling validated about not having her write the answers to the questions anymore.

Horizons Math 3: Going well, she completed through lesson 35 this week, right on track. We have had some comprehension problems lately, maybe I was just impatient. I explain step-by-step and she went, huh? and I struggled to find a different way to present the information. So I repeat the step-by-step instructions, sometimes I think she's looking for me to provide the answers for her so she doesn't have to do the work. Like I said, this was a stressful week- we'll start fresh next week.

I do wonder in the back of my mind if there is a better program for us than Horizons, although when I looked at other programs nothing else clicks. Math-U-See tempts me a lot because of others' reviews and the success Camille is having with Prima Latina DVDs. She really enjoys having Mrs. Lowe as a co-teacher. My nagging feeling is that Horizons is moving too quickly, that she may need more time on one concept. My instincts are usually dead-on but my fear in this one is that I've bought Horizons sets 1, 2, and now 3 and if it isn't working out for Camille- I'll have to start buying a new math program. Writing it out, it seems silly but I'm also very convicted not to switch programs unless there's a problem and I'm not convinced there's an actual problem yet.

Prima Latina: This week we learned about nouns. Confession: the prayers are not going well for us- I think the problem is that there's too much new words in the prayer to memorize and pronounce. From lessons 1-4 it was The Sanctus and in lesson 6 it's The Doxology which we know very well in English but the Latin? Glori Patri is about the only thing that is manageable. Lol.

Otherwise Camille is doing very well in Latin, she's memorized her vocabulary and doing well with the practical Latin. We've dropped French completely, I decided to wait until after Latin studies are done to pursue another language. This was a weight taken off my shoulders, now I have to decide what to do with all our French books, especially the elementary level ones.

Primary Language Lessons: Camille is blossoming and enjoying the writing assignments in PLL, this week she wrote a story about a robin coming back in the spring to build a nest and two letters between friends regarding dog-sitting. She struggles with putting her thoughts in order before she writes, she wants to write and then organize her thoughts, she has not made the connection of being able to orally narrate a story and write it the same on paper-as she writes, she changes it. I've made no changes to what she wrote.

A Robin's Story
A robin is going to go and get some food and also make a nest of twigs for it and pine straw. The robin is going to lay some eggs in seven weeks. After the eggs are hached the robin is going to get some food.

I was not sure what to do, to correct her to leave it alone and allow her to grow in this area as she practices. I decided this week to leave it alone. She was supposed to write the story from the robin's point of view and PLL even gave her a prompt to use but she chose not to use it. This is hard! Do you force a child to follow directions or allow them to be creative and go with the flow? We'll be using Writing Tales 1 next, we're Lesson 121 of 164 of PLL.

Explode the Code 7: Completed Lesson 7 this week

Camille's Poetry Notebook

Poetry: Foreign Lands by Robert Louis Stevenson is almost completely memorized! Camille needs to work on the last stanza and she will be done. A homeschooling friend's son is memorizing it alongside Camille although he already has it done. The kids are going to video themselves and share them with each other. Camille is thrilled to be doing this with J! We will move on to Windy Nights after reviewing ALL of our previously memorized poems.

Tapestry of Grace, Redesigned Year 3: This week has been a doozy. I found my enthusiasm again, South America is a refreshing change from U.S. History! We are still reading Once On This Island, which we are enjoying very much. Camille did wonderful map work this week on Ecuador, Venezuela and Columbia, colored their flags and we watched Wild South America from Netflix, we loved it. We did not get to Adoniram Judson, Camille is still reading Johnny Appleseed by Will Moses. We'll read Adoniram Judson next week and finish Johnny Appleseed before reading Ox-Cart Man.

from Easy Make & Learn Projects: Human Body by Donald Silver and Patricia Wynne

Life Science: Head to Toe Science
We learned about the muscular system this week and Camille wrote some vocabulary words and enjoyed it. Guess who now has weekly science vocabulary to accomplish? I went ahead and made vocabulary worksheets for her so that she doesn't have to write the word and the definition, as we study each day she'll write the definition of the vocabulary we covered. In reality it isn't much in a day but in one week she'll be defining up to 20 words. We'll see how it goes. My public school trained brain thinks she should be doing this while my CM side isn't quite comfortable with it yet. Here's her muscle project from this week.

Extras:
Afternoon Tea & Fairy Tale: skipped, Camille was reading Johnny Appleseed so I let this slip this week.
Draw Squad: very cool, we love it.
Needlepoint: We ran out of white yarn from the little kit, very frustrating.
Composer biography: I, Vivaldi came in this week so we'll read it next week.
Piano Lessons: Camille has started working on Christmas songs.
Field Trip: none this week due to Halloween



Independent Reading: Camille is reading The End of the Beginning by Avi and loving it.

I know it seems like we've done a lot even with the stress of dh's surgery -he had bone spurs removed and a few of his cervical vertebrate fused together and Halloween this week with it's extra activities like carving a pumpkin, I just have a hard time letting go of stuff that we could have done.


Too many times this week, I felt rushed to finish and I really dislike that feeling.

Nature Study
Oh, before I forget- for nature study this week, we observed Red-Tailed Hawks from our backyard, a few different types of butterflies (thanks to the blooming milkweed plant) and I've been keeping an eye on the mantisflies.

Danny, 20 minutes after finishing Trick or Treating. Yes, the lollipop is stuck to his forehead. Lol.

Wordless Wednesday Oct 29

Backyard Observations

There's a danger when you engage your children in nature study, they may want to do it ALL the time! Three different occasions since our Friday nature walk...

Monarch Butterfly
Camille found a monarch butterfly on the ground and brought it to me. The poor thing's wing was broken so I didn't see the harm in allowing her to hold it. I had her put it back on the milkweed plant we have which has bloomed again since the monarch caterpillars left.

Spider Eggs?
We have a lot of spiders in our yard, Camille noticed there are spider eggs on a handle of their backyard playset. We will be looking at these through the microscope later. The kids have been more in-tune to the spiders in our yard since our nature walk Friday. We suspect these are spider eggs but we are not sure.




The Mystery Bug
Camille observed this bug yesterday, we spent probably an hour looking through the field guides and observing it. This morning, we found two more underneath the playset, one next to a cocoon which we aren't sure belongs to it.

The one Camille found-




Different one, at the playset, an empty cocoon...


We finally found the answer this morning in our field guide, it is a Mantisfly! I kept telling Camille the front of it looked just like a Praying Mantis. We learned about Mantids but not Mantisflies during our invertebrate studies.

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.