Last Friday we had the pleasure of visiting a bird sanctuary at a residence in our town.  The Birder is a fellow homeschooler and offered to teach to children about birding and how to attract birds to one's yard.  The birds were so numerous around her house!! She even had the rare blue bird come for a visit.  

I noticed the distinct difference at our house.  The yard was quiet, the chittering of birds far up in the trees. The thistle seed feeder was hanging forlornly empty.  I promptly purchased another birdfeeder, some black sunflower seeds and a window mounted suet cage.  I'm impatiently awaiting the arrival of some birds. :)  Our local Birder commented that many species have arrived a month in advance of their normal migration.  Interesting.

The weekend was fairly uneventful.  We tried again to go bowling - this time at US Play, but by the time we arrived all the lanes were taken.  We met one of Gen. Deftones friends/co-workers and his little daughter there and played the arcade instead.  The boys had a great time.

Yesterday, we tried to get back on the school track and made some accomplishments.  I was teaching DS8 about square numbers for math and DS6 wanted to learn that instead of his own math, so I let him.  We cleaned up the backyard, as part of our new woodlands unit.   I'm embarrassed to say that we collect 3 bags worth of junk from back there! 

I managed to clean up around the chicken coop too.  The next warm day, I guess I need to hose it down and scrub it out to get ready for the next batch of chickens.  I'm going to get chicks and need to start working on plans to build a little box for them.  And figure out where I'm going to keep baby chicks inside and warm .... Maybe I'll wait until it gets nice and warm during the day and just bring them in at night??? 

For today, I'm afraid, I have lots of work to do.  I'll probably let the boys build their nature notebooks for the woodland project and browse through some of my activity books and find them things to do.  I'll have DS8 work on some pages from the 3rd Grade Test prep.  We are supposed to do a test this year to see where he is, and I want to help prepare him.  He knows a great deal of the material covered (and more).  What he doesn't know is how to take tests.  :)