Last summer Seth decided to turn my perennial beds into a vegetable garden by planting and harvesting watermelons (from the seeds in HIS piece of watermelon) a pumpkins. 

This year, he decided to *raise* (as he puts it) Toads from teeny wheeny tadpoles.  We are blessed with 9 acres of woods behind our house in the suburbs where we do many of our nature walks. 

Our new little duck family in the pond out back.

Seth discovers the tadpoles

Seth found some in a pond that comes and goes through the rainy seasons and on one of our nature walks we found tons of tadpoles.  We later learned that the black ones are toads.  We got out our handy dandy Handbook of Nature Studies.  We used an old aquarium and got pond water and rocks so they could eat the algae off of them.  Ever since then (May 24th) Seth has gone out and *raised* them on our deck. 

A couple days ago, we discovered tiny tiny toads!  We have only had to have one burial so far because we didn't have enough land.  We learned that after their legs start appearing, they lose their gills and grow lungs...so he quickly went out back to build up one side of the aquarium.  Thus, the happy results...

Some babies left to be raised!

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Is it possible that Summer is ending in mere weeks?  LindaFay at Higher Up and Further In  wants to know how we spent it.  Where do I begin?  It was anything but organized;)

I try to school through the summer because we take such long breaks visiting family throughout the school year (which btw is so worth it!).  It went rather well this time, but still was sporadic because of what Summer in general brings;)  June was a slight blurrrrrrrr, we stayed schooling, and Seth played baseball.  He is a natural and my brothers (all four I think played baseball at some point of their lives...) wanted me to get him on a team.  So we did, it was machine pitch, and he LOVED it!  It also was mostly homeschoolers on the city team, even better!

Seth also decided early on that he would focus on Nature Studies this summer.   Early Spring, he took seeds from his piece of watermelon and planted them in my FLOWER beds!  I also realized that he planted seeds from our jack-o-latern from last Halloween... Here are the *fruits* of his labor!!!!

We found so many baby watermelons all over the front yard!

	We will keep you posted on the pumpkins!!

There is nature study at its finest!  The funny thing is, the front yard is the only place I get enough sun for any sort of fruit or vegetable, but its not the most optimal spot, seeing as we live on a typical little town street without much land.  But he seemed to make it work!  I did tell him NO corn!  And I guess I will transplant my grasses (there is blue fescue under the pumpkins) to make room for more experiements. 

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