Gardening

Yesterday we went to T's parent's home to do some work on the garden.  Got a few peas planted, and poles ready for them to climb when they pop up, but mostly just got the ground ready to plant.

Found some good lookin' bugs too!

Baby hanging out while everyone else plays in the dirt. :-)

Nature Study in the Suburbs

I've noticed two trees out in the front of our townhouse strip that I'd like to identify somehow.

This one looks like a very young pine of some sort.

Right now, it's sprouting off some sort of seed or maybe something that will turn into a pinecone maybe?  Or maybe it's just some new growth.

The other one I'm not sure at all.

The leaf color is similar to that of a red maple, but the shape definitely isn't maple.  But some of the leaves are more of a green color.

It's also just about finished flowering for the season.

I did some reading in the Trees field guide that we have, but couldn't find a good match.  So will do some online research at some point and/or ask our next door neighbor.

Need to find a way to involve the girls in this curiosity.  At this point, *I* seem to be the one owning it.  Maybe they'll catch the bug at some point.  Right now, they're more interested in investigating trash laying on the ground.  :-\

New books!

Last week we put in a huge amazon order for books to use next year for "school".  (I put 'school' in quotes since I'd rather emphasize learning as a part of life rather than segmented into a special time and place.)  Anyways.  Big Amazon order and quite a few of the books we were able to get used, so they are coming in separate shipments and we've received one or more packages each day this week, except for today.  In addition to History and Science books that we'll use as the base for curriculum for Abby, we ordered quite a few books for 'preschool' for Lydia.

So far we've received these:

Random

Thur 4.26.2012
Pulled out the Pairs in Pears alphabet tiles after lunch and worked on letter sounds.  -at, -ook, -op, plus a couple more.  Also did another session of graphing with colored cheerios.

Graphs

Update

Whoa. Last blog post was over 2 years ago? And wow. Lots has happened since then! Our family has moved across the country, and gained another 2-legged member and lost a 4-legged one. And kids do lots of growing in two years time. We're transitioning from a family with a preschooler and toddler, to a homeschooling family of 5!

 Us then:

Us now:

Going forward, I'll probably use this blog to document our learning activities related to homeschooling. I have another 2 years of experimenting before I'm required to be a 'legal' homeschooler in our (new!) state. I'm not that great writing everything down, but think I may be a bit better at taking pics of everything. :-) We'll see.
Until then.
--C