Busy, Busy, Busy

Things have been really busy around here! We are rolling pretty good with Aly's school. Her math and reading were both way to easy so we are adapting and adding to and making things work. Tomorrow we are starting "Little House in the Big Woods" for reading. I am excited and hope that Aly enjoys it as much as I always have. She has also started gymnastics which she seems to really like.

This month we are studying pumpkins and Halloween. We have read about them, cooked things with pumpkin, and done lots of art projects. Here are some of them.

Pastel Pumpkin

Skeleton

 

She also planned and cooked dinner for us. She chose skillet chicken parmesan. It was really good and she did a good job.

Cooking dinner

We have also went to the zoo in Seattle and had a great time even though it was slightly wet.

Feeling foxy

Fun with friends-Anna

Looking forward to some more good times together, laughing, learning, and loving. :)

Dice Data

More apple stuff

We painted a picture using an apple. After stamping her apple Aly turned the stamps into butterflies and a ladybug.

She also made an apple tree. This painting was done with a straw, cotton balls, and a cotton swab.

About ready to wrap up apple month and move onto something else. Thinking that we will do tigers next and then Halloween.

Lattin's Cider Mill

We went on a field trip to Lattin's Cider Mill. We got to try apple cider and apple cider donuts.

We also got to see peacock eggs and a quail egg. They are really different in size. We also saw a newly hatched chick.

We pet a bunny, fed some goats, saw some pigs and got to ride on a very special train.

We had a great time!

Apple Fritters

This month we have spent some extra time learning about apples. Aly helped her Poppy make apple fritters and apple cinnamon cake. She doesn't really like apple pie so I don't know if we will try that one. Here are some pictures from when she made apple fritters.

They were very yummy. :)

Our day at the zoo

This is the story that Aly wrote about our trip to the zoo. She also took the photo! She narrated the story and I typed it for her.

Tigers are Fun to Watch

By Aly Bouchard

 photo by Aly Bouchard

On Wednesday I went to the zoo. I actually saw tigers and they were wrestling, playing, chasing and biting!

The tigers were a momma and her baby. The momma chased a big can into the water. She bit onto it to see if it was really alive.

The baby came running out of the jungle. He jumped on his momma and he chased her. The baby was almost as big as his momma.

The tigers at the zoo are Sumatrin tigers. Sumatrin tigers in the wild are an endangered species and that means there are not many left which is sad for people like me who love tigers. I hope someone will save the tigers!

Field trip

Well we went on our first nature club field trip with the homeschool group and had a fantastic time! We made water viewers out of coffee cans (not that you can see any of them...lol). 

 After the water viewers were made we went down to the waters edge to explore how to use them and this is what happened. :)

We went on a 1.5 mile and picked and ate red huckleberries.

 Explored spiders (not to close).

Saw slugs and stinging nettles. Did you know that slug slime from the banana slug is a natural anesthetic and takes away the sting from the stinging nettle?

                                                       Checked out some baby fish.

 

Wrote in our nature journals.

 

  Practiced our balancing act.

 

 And swam some more.

Nolte State Park and Deep Lake were awesome. It was a great place to start our year of science exploration and we liked it so much that we went back again the next day for more fun in the sun.

 We are really looking forward to more science exploration outdoors with our Nature Club.

Our day in pictures.

While we are waiting for the "official" first day of school and for our curriculum to get here we are doing some stuff on our own. Today was the first real day that we have had and it went great. I don't plan to do school on weekends but we needed something to do and most of it was great fun. She got a little bored with the handwriting but really liked everything else. We are doing a geography study of the states and are making a notebook full of lapbooks, one for each state. The first one we did was on the world and the continents so she would have a perspective on what a country is. We will also do some math pages and some language arts and of course some reading. Today we also did an experiment making our own rainbow and discovering how many colors you can get out of just the three basics; red, yellow, and blue. After we did our experiment we made snickerdoodles and she is now outside swimming since the clouds have departed and the sun has come back. :)

We improvised a little at the end of our experiment and blew bubbles in it to mix it all up.

Home Ec :)

She is smiling now. In 10 years I am sure she will not think it is so fun. :)