Wordless Wednesday: The Joy of Playing Outfield

Bird Banding

Today we went on another field trip to Prairie Ridge Ecostation. The kids got to follow the museum's scientist around to check the bird nets. They put nets out in various places and when birds get caught in them, they take them out and attach a band to the leg.

We checked four nets and found one bird, this female summer tanager. It took awhile to loosen her from the net and I donated my water bottle to feed her. I dipped my finger in the bottle and dropped in her mouth. Once she had some water, we put her in a canvas bag, to help calm her as well as for ease of transportation. The nets were rolled up for rest of day and we took bird back to banding station. At the station, the bird was identified, weighed, measured, banded, and logged and then set free.

Weekly Report 4/24

We enjoyed our one week of Spring here in the sunny South. Now it appears that Summer is soon to be in session. It is going to be 90 degrees for the next three days!!! I am ready for our park playdate to move to shadier park LOL.

School-wise we made some progress towards acclimating Melissa into our routine. Things went smoothly this week for most part, even with me working and two field trips!


Literature: We read The Tempest by Shakespeare from Tales of Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb. Harrison and I co-read his weekly Pilgrim's Progress chapter. We listened to another chapter of The Wind and the Willows. We have not picked up our evening read-alouds in weeks though. I have to get that routine started again.

Reading: Melissa read all The Seeing Stone and most of Lucinda's Secret (Spiderwick Chronicles Book #2 and 3) and continues Spy for the Night Rider. Apparently, one chapter is so interesting that she keeps rereading it. She also started reading a book called Dolphin Song but I am not sure if that one will make it to conclusion. Harrison continues Two Towers and read all of Twenty and Ten. The bulk of his attention has been reading the background information to our Legends of Druidawn game.

Writing: The bulk of our writing this week has centered around the Legends of Druidawn game. Harrison, who normally hates anything that involves picking up a pencil, is obsessed with writing for this game. I would recommend it for reluctant writers who like to read fantasy novels. He wrote his character sketch and has written his account of the game as a story. He's also worked on copywork and has been chatting with his pen pal about the game.
Melissa worked on her Megalodon report, wrote another email to a stable, emailed with a friend about horses, did her copywork, as well as her Druidawn character sketch and story work.

Language Arts: We did Rosetta Stone Spanish, typing, and Word Roots. One of our favorite things right now is playing Babble. One of the kids will start the game and find as many words as they can and then the other takes over and finds some more and then I try to finish the game.



We also did the spelling bee last Saturday. Harrison got first place for third grade and Melissa got third place for fourth grade. Now before you think she is a great speller, I have to admit there was a huge disparity between the level she got out at and where the final two ended. On the otherhand, Melissa has made great improvements with her spelling in the short time we've been homeschooling her. I have introduced a few spelling rules and continue working with her using SWR.

Math: Melissa did the chapters on graphs and time from Singapore 3B. Harrison continued working on subtracting decimals in 4B and played Lure of the Labyrinth. They both did chapter 19 (dividing by zero) and a bridge from Life of Fred.

Nature Studies: We finished Tale of Reddy Woodpecker and started Tale of Jasper Jay, both by Arthur Scott Bailey. We compared the blue jay and the bluebird (again) and did some bird behavior observations here at home and on our nature walks while collecting data for E-bird. We also took a trip to the NC Museum of Natural Science to study their marine life and bird exhibits.
Melissa had a pen pal email her a report about a horse breed (I believe it was Friesians?) and critiqued it.


Science: Our main science project this week was our shark dissection. It fit in well with Melissa's research project on Megalodons. To follow up we visited the historic ocean life and current marine life exhibits at the Nature Museum. They also had fun this week playing Plant Tycoon and Spore.

Geography: We continued our Marco Polo book. This week we studied the three main religion/philosophies of China: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. We even tried out the practice of qigong. We also read about Mongolia, Kublai Khan and his niece Khutulun, and Musk Deer and musk perfume. We did our normal mapwork too.

History: This week was all about the reign of Queen Elizabeth. We read about her, Mary (Queen of Scotland), the Spanish Armada and Admiral Drake, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Sir Sidney Phillip, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth. Harrison watched an episode of The Deadliest Warrior on Apache vs Ninja.

Civics: We had an interesting discussion on taxes and what they pay for as we admired the new signs that have gone up in our downtown area.

Art History: We continued reading Michelangelo's biography and our picture study this week was of his painting in the Sistine Chapel called The Last Judgment.

Music: Harrison continued guitar lessons and practices. He is now on the fourth string. We all played "Find the Beat."

PE: Harrison had football and baseball games/practice this week. Melissa had tumbling and a cheer clinic. They both had gymnastics class. They also tried out for the Junior Olympics but only the winner got to move on. Melissa was 3rd and Harrison 5th. We had a lot of trampoline jumping and few after dinner walks that turned into hikes.


Another highlight was our company had a bowling outing for the employees and families. Harrison decided to play with the adults instead of the bumper lane that was set for the kids. He did surprisingly well.

Religion: Awanas, Church, memory work, devotions, etc.

Other: They both played Virtual Villagers this week. Harrison played Empire Earth with his father and Melissa's godfather but ended up killing everyone when he closed the game to go play (as the game was hosted from his computer).

Shark Dissection

Today, we had our first dissection opportunity! Melissa loves ocean animals and currently aspires to be a marine biologist. So of course, we jumped at the chance to dissect a dog shark.


The kid worked in pairs. They teamed oldest kids with youngest. Melissa was middle of the pack so she got paired with same age boy.

The boy's father commented that Melissa definitely didn't approach this like a "girly" girl but jumped in with full enthusiasm.

She didn't get grossed out by the glorious guts.

or the lovely smell of formaldehyde.

Harrison didn't want to do the dissection initially and chose to observe casually. However, by the end of the session, he was excited about it and can't wait to do it again.

Which will be soon. We brought the shark home to show daddy and plan to boil the head to remove the jaw this evening. Anyone want some shark head soup?

Wordless Wednesday: Home for a Gnome

Weekly Report 4/17/08

We really had a difficult week getting back into the groove of homeschool after a week off. For one thing, we had a guest move in on Monday that I didn't expect until Friday. Love him to death but it did throw me off guard. We are also still adjusting to having Melissa at home.

So we compensated by having what little school we had in interesting places. We had school on the trampoline one day and at the laundromat another day (thanks to dryer breaking when we are ultra-behind on laundry lol).
Literature: We finished another chapter in Wind and the Willows. I have to say these are the longest chapters. It takes days to do one. We didn't get to any of our other literature books though.

Reading: Both kids read Minstrel in the Tower. H reread parts of Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare. Melissa continued Spy for the Night Riders.

Writing: Melissa made a new outline for her megalodon report, wrote an email to one of the stables to request a tour and wrote in her journal. H wrote a paper comparing Samurais and Vikings. He also composed a multiple choice quiz on Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare.

Language Arts: Our homeschool group is having a spelling bee this week so they took the list of words and divided how many words per day to study this week (after subtracting words they studied last week) and made flash cards for words they had missed in pretesting each other. They did this own their own without any input from me! They practiced typing several times.

Spanish: Rosetta Stone

Math: Melissa worked on capacity and did some review in Singapore 3B. H worked on adding and subtracting decimals.

Logic: M did an analogy exercise from Logic Countdown. H played a strategy board game about Samurais. We seemed to on a riddle kick this week.


Science: They played a game of Elementeo. We also dug for fossils, sorted and classified them.

Nature Studies: We read a chapter from Burgess Bird Book on oven birds and red-tail hawks. We continued identifying birds from our window and on a nature walk. We went to a pond study at Prairie Ridge Eco-Station and also went there for a walk in the aroborteum with a naturalist. They pretended to be prey and predator in the tall grass. We discovered a cocoon and a crysalis too. Our most fun was noticing that there were two types of buttercups. One had more white and was slightly more open and a lot shinier than the typical buttercup. We also went to a horse show.

Geography: We read about the Mongols in our Marco Polo book. We also located San Diego and several of the West Indian Islands on our map.

History: We read about Queen Elizabeth, Bloody Mary, Anne of Askew, Columbus and the Viking presence in North America.

Art History: We read more from our biography on Michelangelo and did a good study on the Sistine Chapel.

PE: They had gymnastics this week. Melissa had tumbling and a cheer clinic. Harrison had the father son football game and a baseball game. Of course we had some trampoline time as well and a playdate at the park.

Religion: Melissa had Awanas. Harrison has decided to just read by my classroom instead. We went to Easter services. We also discussed some variations in different protestant beliefs, why different people have different tolerance levels of different things, etc.

Music: Harrison had a guitar lesson and practiced.

Other: We watched Quest for Camelot and compared it to the Arthurian legends that we read earlier in the year. We went to of DH's softball games and tonight, Melissa and I are going to see her friends perform a play. Harrison got a deck of marked cards in his Easter basket and practiced with those all week.

We also had various social experiences. Melissa's godfather is living with us temporarily while he househunts in the area and he arrived this week and his mom came with him for the drive. He just had surgury on his neck and can't eat alone. So they had plenty of time learning how to be polite with older adults that they don't know as well as those they do. We had a park playdate with multiple ages (ages 1 to 12). Melissa impressed my by playing catch with a 4 yo and a 3 yo at the softball game.

Pond Study

We spent a lovely afternoon at the Prairie Ridge eco-station doing a pond study. The weather was glorious compared to last week's e-bird outing.

The kids used nets of various sizes to collect pond samples. They just loved sweeping the pond.

After gathering up the matter, it was time to study it. We sifted and sorted and looked at assorted creatures under the magnifying lens.

We found numerous tadpoles.

And several dragonfly nymphs (as well as mites and a red-eyed backswimmer).

Father-Son Football Game

Today was the father-son football game for our homeschool football league. What a blast! Harrison was looking forward to this game. He couldn't wait to see his father play football. Rich has been his coach for football and baseball and they play catch quite frequently. However, they had never actually played a game together. It really made a difference in Harrison's attitude. He was more attentive and more focused on the game than usual. He played harder too. He was so proud of himself after the game.


The game was fun. Our side scored the first touch down and the other side tied the game at the last minute. It looked like there was a lot of comraderie on the field and the weather was absolutely perfect!

Weekly Report 4/10

We had spring break this week so not too much going on. It was truly an "unschooling" week. We spent two days at my mother's house and then started spring cleaning! Melissa has been MIA some as she had a birthday party and a sleepover during the week.

Literature: Finished disk 2 of Wind and the Willows. We read a bit of the Grimm Sisters.

Reading: Melissa read a little bit of Spy for the Night Riders. Harrison finished Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare, read all of Swords, a bit of Two Towers, and started Twenty and Ten. He and I also had a discussion on Rover Saves Christmas that he read back in December.

Writing: Melissa did a DSI chat with another kid while we waited at guitar. They both wrote in their nature journals.

Language Arts: They quizzed each other on spelling words to prepare for spelling bee. Melissa needs a lot of work in this area as her school didn't stress spelling. They learned a few new vocabulary words while studying. We played "Correct Mom's Grammar." We went to the library and worked on library skills.

Math: We read various charts and graphs in e-bird. We did a lot of impromptu word problems with milage to Grandma's house (how many more miles, estimate how long will it take to get there, etc)

Nature Studies: We went on a nature walk. We followed a naturalist and collected data for e-bird at a local eco-station. We finished up the lessons requiring a chicken from Handbook of Naure Studies. Melissa and I also went to a horse show. Harrison watched a show on great white sharks.

Science: Harrison played World of Goo this week.

Geography: We located Cincinnati on the map. (Let's Go Mets!)

History: We had living history by attending the Renaissance Faire.

Music: Harrison went to guitar lessons and practiced. We played "find the beat."

Art: Drawing in nature journals. Melissa made earrings with my sister.

PE: Football practice and baseball game. Gymnastics class. Trampoline jumping.

Other: They watched the newer parent trap movie with Lindsey Lohan and compared and contrasted it to the one with Haley Mills. They decided they like the older one best.
Harrison watched Eragon with his father and they compared it with the book.

Wordless Wednesday: Last Day with the Chicks

E-Bird

This semester, we are focusing on birds for our nature studies. We've been reading the Burgess Bird book and several books by Arthur Scott Bailey. We've kept chickens and studied them. We've made a bird feeder and have been keeping a list of birds we see in our nature journals. Now, we are ready to go up a notch!

Tuesday, we went to Prairie Ridge Ecostation to count birds with a naturalist. We learned some birds songs and how to identify some birds. We found new birds to add to our list. After an hour of walking around the preserve, we had identified 13 species. That's not to bad considering it was 48 degrees with 20 mph winds. Harrison was first to spot the Carolina chickadee and Melissa found the turkey vultures and mourning doves. I found a scarlet tanager and a downy woodpecker. We also saw a tufted titmouse, an American goldfinch, a white breasted nuthatch, several house finches and white throated sparrows, an eastern towhee and lots of cardinals and robins.

After our mini expedition, we entered the data into E-bird. E-bird is a citizen science project created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. Here you can input the kinds and numbers of birds you observed. It can be from a long walk at a preserve, a hike on nature trail, or just what birds you see from your window at home. Scientists then use that data to observe migration patterns, distribution patterns, etc.

In e-bird, you can pull up maps of recent sitings of various birds, look at the migration habits of birds to see when you are most likely to see a bird. We had a lot of fun exploring the various graphs and charts available.

*Photo by Thomas O'Neill

Renaissance Faire

Our family loves Renaissance Faires. We go to one on the fall every year. Unfortunately, we have trouble getting to the one in the spring due to weather but we go when we can. Luckily, the weather was good this year and we could take advantage of it. After all, we are studying the Renaissance times in history.


Of course, we go in costume. Unfortunately, we couldn't find Harrison's ring mail armor that he made in the fall. It fell victim to one of my company's coming cleaning sweeps. However, we had one that he and his dad made two years ago. This scale mail shirt is easy and inexpensive to make. They traced a dog tag on old cereal boxes and cut out. Then spray painted them silver and glued them onto a black t-shirt in a scale mail pattern. My son opted not to wear matching pants lol.

Melissa is wearing a top we found at Goodwill. It has the lace up front and some nice detail up close. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures before she dripped ketchup all over it!!!

Melissa had trouble deciding what to do/get. She was going to get her face painted but decided that for about the same amount of money, she could get a henna tattoo and it would last more than a day.

Harrison took part in a class on pole arms. He was the second youngest to take it and the youngest to complete it. He really enjoyed it and even though the rest of us observed the entire class, he gave us blow by blow details. Here he is marching with his squad. He is concentrating hard on keeping that pole up!

This is the way to deal with sibling squabbles. Just kidding. They did like sparring with each other. Other things they did at the Faire: shoot crossbows (Harrison hit the dragon), ride ponies, hunt for dragon eggs, watch a magic show and a joust and then performed a show of their own with our pet griffin. We also looked at every single weapon for sale and I mean every. single. one.

Arabian Horse Show

My daughter was begging for some alone time with mom. While I love to do it, outings with her can get very expensive very quickly. Fortuately, there was a free Arabian Horse Show in town this weekend. Horses are right up Melissa's alley. She's is clamoring for horseback riding lessons and one of her current homeschool projects is researching the local stables so we can make an educated decision on lessons. She is gathering lesson prices, monthly requirements, distance/approximate driving time and fuel cost, etc. and putting in an Excel spreadsheet.

After we got tired of watching shows, we wandered around the stables. We got to meet Israel, who was also in the first showing that we observed. Israel hails from one of the stables that made the first cut in her stable project.

Melissa really enjoyed talking to the trainer, the owner, and the rider. They were really friendly people. Melissa was able to give Israel a treat too!

Homeschool Easter Egg Hunt

On Friday, our homeschool support group had an Easter egg hunt. It was a special treat for us. Not only was it a chance to get out and socialize with our friends but after a week of rain, it was just a blessing to be outside period! The sky was extra blue and the grass extra green and we just relished every second.

There was a contest for decorating baskets. Melissa made hers to look like a bunny. She did most of the work during read alouds. Harrison opted NOT to make one because he thought the whole concept to be "uncool." Easter just seems a bit more feminine with the pastels, bunnies chicks and flowers.

To make the basket, Melissa bought a basket at Dollar Tree and covered it with cottonballs. She made a mouth with a piece of red pipe cleaner, used a pom pom for a nose and googly eyes. She cut out felt ears and glued to the basket handles. She was going to add whiskers but we were out of white pipe cleaners.

As if finding eggs filled with candy were not enough, they enjoyed a whole bunch of yummy sweet treats!! Besides the egg hunt and basket contest, they had a egg in the spoon relay race and lots of free play with their friends at the park.

Weekly Report 4/3/09

Well, this was my first week homeschooling two children. I have to admit the first couple days were quite tough. They have trouble getting along. However, as the week progressed, attitutudes improved and we are all enjoying each other. I had to lighten academics for awhile so that we can get a groove going.

Literature: We continued reading Sister's Grimm and listened to Wind and the Willows on audio.
Harrison and I continued with Pilgrim's Progress, Queen of Sorcery, and Robin Hood.

Reading: Melissa is reading Spy for the Night Riders, a Trailblazers book on Martin Luther and she read some picture books aloud to a dog at the library. Harrison is read Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare and most of Minstrel in the Tower.

Writing: Melissa made a birthday card, wrote a thank you letter, and has been working on a research report on megalodons. Harrison has been copying Iron Man lyrics for copywork.

Language Arts: We made up new sentences for favorite songs, played Boggle, and went over spelling bee words. They both practiced typing daily.

Spanish: Rosetta Stone

Math: Melissa did some problems with length and weight from Singapore 3B. H worked on 3 reviews in Singapore 4B. They both did a chapter in Life of Fred. They had a decimal hunt around the house and got a lot of fraction practice in our experiments and crafts because for some reason I never seem to have the right measuring cup ;) .

Logic: Melissa did 3 exercises in Logic Countdown on pictorial analogies. Harrison did several exercises on induction.

Computer: Melissa had some lessons in setting up a computer, created a blog (it's just a shell right now- she's working on content), and created an excel spread sheet for her horse research project.

Nature Studies: We continued reading Tale of Reddy Woodpecker. We added a few new birds to out bird list in our nature journal. We continued taking care of baby chicks, they are about 3/4 of the way feathered now. We took dog to vet and interviewed the veternarian. We had a discussion about avoiding bee stings and looked at youtube videos of people who cover themselves with bees.

Science: We made silly putty with a kit and a homemade recipe that uses borax and bought the real deal and learned about polymers. We got a new game this week called Elementeo that we've played numerous times. I will write a review soon. We watched a documentary on prehistoric sea creatures.

Geography: We found our Marco Polo book and we've gotten to China. We learned about the Great Wall of China and the Terra Cotta Warriors. We made our own Terra Cotta Army.

Melissa got caught up on the countriese that once comprised the present day United Kingdom. We located Spain, Portugal, Bahamas, Cuba, Germany, Netherlands (as Holland), and Switzerland in various lessons we had this week.

History: We focused on some of the leaders of the Reformation this week. We learned about Martin Luther and watched the Trial at Worms on video. We learned about William Tyndale and John Calvin too. We continued studying Columbus and Henry VIII, Edward VI, Jane Grey, and Bloody Mary.

Harrison read a book on Medieval weapons and another book on swords around the world. We watched part of the Passion of Joan of Arc but the silent movie format was a bit too "boring" to hold their interest too long. They did like discussing how much movies have changed though.

Art: We continued reading our biography on Michelangelo (we read about the Medici family and his creation of the Pieta). Our art narration this week was the Pieta.

Craft wise, they worked together to create a bunny basket for Melissa to take to the Homeschool Easter Party. Harrison didn't want a decorated one though (too girlish). Melissa also made some tissue paper flowers.

Music: H had guitar and is practicing his duet. We focused on the hymn Our God is a Mighty Fortress by Martin Luther for music appreciation.

PE: We did a family walk and they played on the trampoline almost everyday. They both did the homeschool gymnastics class and M had tumbling too. Football and baseball were canceled due to rain.

Home-Ec: Major focus on chores.

Religion: Memory work, church history, and Awanas.

Reading to the Dogs????

Have you heard of this? Are library has a "Read With Rover" program once a month where they bring in trained dogs for kids to read to.

Melissa just loves meeting new dogs and really enjoyed it.

Harrison was only boy there and decided to curl up with a good book and read to himself.

Terra Cotta Warriors

We are studying the journey's Marco Polo in geography. We reached the Great Wall of China and discussed the Qin Dynasty. Of course, it's impossible to talk about the Qin Dynasty without mentioning the Terra Cotta Warriors! My kids were already familiar with the warriors from watching the Mummy 3 and were really excited to make their own warriors.


First we made our "Terra Cotta", bascially we made a salt dough and colored it with red and yellow food coloring and paprika. It took A LOT of kneading but the result was close to the terra cotta. We then made our soldiers and horses, using cheese grater, toothpicks, etc to add details. Afterwards we baked at 250 degrees for a couple of hours.



Ta Da! The fiercest warriors to ever come out of my oven! I think they may be closer to "Terra Cotta Buddhas" but we had fun.

Wordless Wednesday; Chick in Progress