Oct. 26, 2009 Travelling...Travelling...Travelling
I'm sitting here in the middle of suitcases, sorting laundry and feeling a bit disenchanted by the whole concept of traveling. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed the last three weeks, (Did I mention that we have been traveling for three weeks?) but three weeks is a long time to be away. We've visited three states in three weeks, one week for each state. Plus we've had a layover in a fourth state. We've spent some lovely time with family, including cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, second cousins and great-aunts and uncles. The kids got to ride in a real John Deere combine. (Remember, my oldest son calls himself John Deere Boy... He was a happy little man.) We picked cotton (just a handful). We visited a museum. Went out to eat more times than I'd like to pay for. We drove by two houses that I grew up in. Saw the school that I went to for elementary and high school. (I was in a small rural school.) Met up with my highschool biology teacher. (That was a treat!) Stayed with grandparents in the house that my husband grew up in. Saw the school he went to. (Well, he was homeschooled, so I guess we saw the room where he went to school!! He did take a few science classes at the local high school, and we saw that too.) Drove through the campus of the university that my husband and I graduated from. We visited two cemeteries and found the markers of six loved ones. We visited parks. We learned some geography. We played with cousins until we could drop. We flew on four airplanes and drove around 1400 miles. And last but not least, we did some schoolwork.
Now we're to what has me wondering about traveling. I don't know if you travel so much that on some of those travels, you need to keep working on school work. Well, we do. For this trip, I packed a whole suitcase full of books. Now I'm unpacking and realizing how many of these books never got touched. We did work on the 3 R's, nearly every day. For math, one of the interesting things we did, was weigh suitcases and get them to exactly 50 lbs. Actually my daughter finished up her first math lapbook too. She did spelling a few days. They both read to me nearly everyday. We did do a little nature study, but I had grand plans for that. Maybe I should be thankful for the nature study that I didn't plan though. My kids got to feed, chase and hold chickens over and over and that's something we don't have at our house. They got to harvest soy beans and learn how weather affects the harvest. They picked field corn and learned that each cob always has an even number of rows. They picked cotton and found out where cotton comes from. They learned that there's a big difference between Kansas mud and Nebraska mud. Maybe they learned more from that nature study than what I had planned. I also had great plans for reading some biographies while we travelled. We read part of one. I had three along. That was for history. Maybe I should be glad that my kids had the opportunity to visit so many places that have shaped and formed their dad's and my life. Maybe that's history they'll remember and that is important to them. I took along a book on drawing. We thought we'd have fun doing some drawing. Never opened it. They did draw and draw and color and color with the cousins though, so maybe that was better, especially since they don't get to spend enough time together. One thing, I'm not concerned about is whether they got exercise while we were gone. There were six kids between three and nine and they played and played and played some more.
So now I'm trying to figure out if I should feel guilty that we didn't get more schoolwork done or if I should feel thrilled that we got any schoolwork done. What do you think? What's your philosophy about taking books along with you when you travel? Or do you travel that often?
I did learn a lesson, I hope. No matter what I plan, when we're traveling, it needs to be less. I shouldn't pack quite so much in the way of schoolwork. Then maybe I won't have to mess with weighing my suitcase!!
P.S. Sad to say, my camera broke. So this is a pictureless post. |
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Oct. 16, 2009 End of Gardening Season
We have really enjoyed having a garden this year. This is really our first year to successfully have a garden. To a large extent this was my husband's project, but I sure enjoyed the fruit of his labors. The kids were very involved in the whole process. They helped plant. They helped water. They helped weed. And they helped pick. Every day at lunch, I could just say, do we have any such and such in the garden, and they would race up there to see who could find what I needed the fastest. What a blessing gardens are, not just to the stomach, but also to the soul.
Here are a few pictures taken over the summer of our garden.
Our very own radishes. (They were a bit hot though. So we're going to have to work on those a bit.)
Our first peppers! Woohoo! Maybe next year we'll grow enough to can some salsa.
Three of our umpteen and some zucchini and yellow squash that we harvested. We ate either zucchini or yellow squash nearly every single day for a few weeks, then we just had to have a break. But I've found a couple ways of fixing them that I think are absolutely delicious.
Our squash jungle about ready to swallow G'tums!
We even did some nature study in the garden. Since we were studying about garden flowers, we decided that this eggplant flower could qualify as a garden flower.
Here is our last picture from the garden season. My daughter took this picture when we were in the garden doing some nature study.
They're in the bus and we're in the garden. And now you know why we are--drum roll--homeschoolers!!! |
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Oct. 14, 2009 Autumn Tree Study
We did another nature study from the Handbook of Nature Study blog. For this challenge we were to choose a tree that we are to study through the seasons for a year. We've studied about some trees around our house during the last year or so, but this will be our start to studying one tree for a year. My kids spent quite a bit of time trying to decide which tree they wanted to study. (We have a lot of trees to choose from.) They finally decided that they would each do their own tree.
Besides reading from the Handbook of Nature Study , we also enjoyed looking at our trees in a few really neat books: My Favorite Tree: Terrific Trees of North America and More Fun with Nature . These are both really great books for younger kids. They have really nice illustrations and good, but simple information.
JD Boy chose to study a Ponderosa Pine.
Our Western Ponderosa Pine (Pinus benthamiana). The tallest Western Ponderosa that has been measured was 275 feet tall. Ours is quite a long ways from that.
A close-up of the needles. Ponderosa needles grow in clumps of three and 6-12 inches in length.
My little tree-hugger with his tree.
Zippy chose to study a cedar behind our house.
Our Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata). I don't know if you can tell from this picture that this tree gets brown patches in it during the autumn.
A close-up of the bark.
Zippy climbing her tree. It makes me nervous when the kids climb this tree. If they come down, they'll land on our fence. This is definitely their favorite climbing tree though, so I'll try to keep being brave and watch them climb.
"A wholesome tongue is a tree of life: but perverseness therein is a breach in the spirit." Proverbs 15:4. |
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Oct. 9, 2009 High Desert Museum Again!
We've been doing some traveling again and we got to spend a very enjoyable afternoon at the High Desert Museum again. (See my post about our previous visit to see several pictures from the museum.) We discovered two sections that we weren't able to visit before because they were closed off. One was on science and one was on Indians in the Pacific Northwest. We only had two problems this time: we forgot the camera in the car and we didn't have enough time to look at things as long as we wanted.
The science room was really great. They had all different microscopes set up with prepared slides to look at. The kids were very intrigued with this. But the thing that they were the most intrigued with was the ferrofluid display. I was amazed too. I'd never even heard about it before. Now JD Boy and I are doing some research to learn about this stuff. You should too! It's really amazing. It is magnetic liquid. It was invented by NASA for space travel, but is used in all kinds of things from X-Rays to DVD players.
The other area that we hadn't been able to visit before was the Native American section. We saw the most amazing bead work, you can believe. I wished I could buy some of their baskets and bags. They were so pretty, but they weren't for sale. That's where we really wished we could have spent more time. I guess, we'll have to go back some time. Maybe, we will. We seem to be able to visit Bend, Oregon once or twice a year, due to my husband's work.
We also enjoyed the wildlife exhibits again! This time we especially enjoyed learning about porcupines and meeting and watching two of them. We were able to visit with the keeper about them, so learned all kinds of things. Did you know that their gestation is 7 months? Poor little things, whenever I'm pregnant, I'm ready to be done by 7 months! Hah! And the female that was there was 12 lbs. and gave birth to a 1+ lb baby. Kudos to her! That means even though I'm not a very large person, I should be birthing nearly 10 pound babies. No thanks!
Well since, we didn't get any pictures of the neat things that we saw, here is a picture of my kiddoes proudly showing off their High Desert Museum t-shirts.
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Oct. 7, 2009 Outdoor Challenge -- Cattails
We decided that we definitely wanted to join in the Autumn Outdoor Hour Challenges, but we've been a bit behind in actually accomplishing this, so here is our first Autumn study from the challenges--cattails. Partly why we're behind is that our first attempt to find cattails turned out to be in vain, but we did eventually find some. Actually, we found lots of them along roads that didn't have a good shoulder to pull off on, but now that we've found some, we've found bunches. I guess, we just didn't really pay attention to them before.
However, the ones that we took pictures of are a bit sentimental. A few days ago, I was able to take my kids back to the town I lived in when I was their age and there was a bunch of cattails that I always loved to look at when I was a kid. So I drove right to that spot to see if there were still cattails. Were there! They have definitely been very successful there and had multiplied considerably. So while I'm sure that these won't be the same cattails that we'll study throughout the year, it was fun to have my kids study cattails from the same place that I used be intrigued by them when I was a kid myself.
We read about cattails from two books: Handbook of Nature Study and Discover Nature in Water and Wetlands. I can't remember which one taught us what, but we learned some interesting things about cattails. The part that seemed to be the most intriguing to the kids was that somebody somewhere found a hundred cattails all part of the same organism. Even though cattails produce seeds and can multiply by spreading their seeds, they also spread out rhizomes and send up new shoots from the bottom (like strawberries do).
We all enjoyed looking closely at the cattails and pulling them apart: looking at the seeds, the cross sections of the leaf and stem of the cattail. I remember when I was a kid, breaking apart the leaves just because they were so interesting on the inside; so different from any other leaves that I was familiar with. We even saved a piece to take home and look at under our microscope.
Here are our nature journal entries. (Even I did one this time. One of the things that I love about the Outdooor Hour Challenges is that I get to participate. It's not just an assignment that I give my kids, but it's something that we all do together and we all learn. I have started to really enjoy keeping my own nature journal too.)
By Zippy (age 9)
By JD Boy (age 6)
By Me (age...you thought I would tell, didn't you!!) |
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