Yesterday, I felt the kids & I REALLY needed a break from the books. We're wrapping up our 7th week of school, and we can't usually make it more than 6 weeks without losing motivation and needing a break. (That's part of the reason I start in late July/early August - so we have freedom to take breaks fairly often and can still finish in mid-May.) Since we haven't had a break other than Labor Day, I decided to do a field trip day and take a hike. Living in Colorado, I reasoned, it makes no sense to sit indoors all the time and not enjoy the beauty all around us. We ended up at a creek not far from us. While there, we enjoyed seeing a couple of beaver dams (but no beavers around - the dams are old), a man-made dam with water flowing through the sluice gate, and a woolly bear caterpillar. We don't see woolly bears around here very often - this may be the 2nd I've seen since living in Colorado for 12 years - so it was cool to explain to the kids how we used to predict our winters by the woolly bears we saw when I was a kid growing up in Maryland.

Then today, my son & I took the dog out for a walk, and she found us another very cool item:

I think the snake must have finished shedding its skin not long before we found it because the dog kept reacting like it was a live animal. And it wasn't totally dried out. So we brought it home, did a little internet research on why and how snakes shed their skins, and put the skin in a jar to preserve. Gotta love how great learning opportunities show up on the days when we're taking a break from school!