If we’re studying Vermont, it’s pretty much a given we’re gonna eat some Ben & Jerry’s. Don’t worry, Daddy, we left a half-pint of Chunky Monkey for you.
Notice that Junior was too "into" his B&J’s to even look up at the camera. Typical Junior. But look at the happy results:
We watched an Animal Planet documentary about beavers a couple weeks ago, and here’s the result:
Monday, October 30, 2006
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| From Beavers |
If you subscribe to Animal Planet, do check out the airing schedule of the documentary. It was full of amazing video footage and the kids (and Mom and Dad) just loved it. For those of you who live nearby, we’ve burned a copy onto DVD, and you’re welcome to borrow it.
I’m excited about school this week because I’ve found a lot of hands-on activities to go with our reading. Worth special notice is the book Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin, which opened up a whole unit-study-within-a-unit-study on snowflakes. Those of you who want to study Kentucky should also be sure to spend time at the National Parks Services website for Mammoth Cave, paying special attention to the excellent curriculum materials available in PDF format.
Here’s the list of what we’re using:
And for those of you visiting from the Notebooking Yahoo group, I’m including the complete lists of resources and ideas for Vermont and Kentucky.
Enjoy!
Baba: Hey Mom, you know on Reading Rainbow today they talked about trading . . .
Mom: Uh-huh?
Baba: Yeah. I’ll trade you some money for some time on your computer.
Who says TV isn’t educational?
Ringmaster and I packed five kids into my van this afternoon and headed to field trip at Interstate State Park. We had an excellent naturalist who spoke about trumpeter swans and the conservation effort in Wisconsin. After the indoor slide show we took a short hike down to the St. Croix River. Despite the sub-40-degree weather, we enjoyed being outdoors and the kids enjoyed climbing on the rocks.
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| From Interstate Park |
We’re back on schedule with two states again this week. In case any of you are wondering why we’re studying the Roanoke colony with North Carolina (it was technically in land claimed by the colony of Virginia), it’s because Roanoke Island is part of modern North Carolina. I found more material for Virgina than for North Carolina, so it made sense to move Roanoke to the latter.
This afternoon we have a field trip to a state park, so I’ll share any interesting pictures I bring back.
When a mom’s a homeschooling mom and she’s out kayaking and she comes across perfectly preserved duck innards lying in shallow water, what do you suppose she does? Free anatomy lesson, right? I did the finding, Daddy did the dissecting. We’re a larnin’ family, that’s what we are.
If you’re strong of stomach, view the pictures. If you’re even stronger of stomach, watch Margie explain duck anatomy:
Baba has a special request to make of my blog readers. He started a postcard collection today, and he’d like to start adding to it right away. So if you’d like to give a smile to an 8-year-old boy, drop me an email and I’ll give you a mailing address. If you want to write a little note on the back that would thrill him even more. It would be great if he could get postcards from several different states (do I dare hope for all 50?), since we’re studying them this year.
