Nature Day with Mrs. Megan

My friend Megan keeps a garden and has a big, shady yard with bright flowers and a hammock.  She recently discovered these black swallowtail caterpillars in her herb garden, and invited us over to play and look at the caterpillars.

She talked to Suzi about the life cycle of a butterfly...

While the little ones played and bounced.

And we found this little guy!  You can't tell from the picture, but he is a huge slug.  When he realized we were all standing around him, he tucked his antennae away and made himself look just like a rock.

Here is the conversation that ensued.

Megan, to the children:  Would you like to pet the slug?

Me:  Eww.  Is that okay to do?

And later...

Megan:  Sigh.  It's so relaxing out here.

Me:  Eek!  A bee!

So I think you can see why it's Nature Day with Mrs. Megan and not Nature Day with Mama.  I try and am getting better, but I'm so glad for all the unique role models in my kids' lives.

Did you know that Mrs. Megan is also the leader of our homeschool co-op, All Things Bright and Beautiful?  We have a great time there. If you are in the area, you should think about joining!  There are limited openings in both age groups.

John the Spider

I included a picture of our spider friend at the end of the last post, but since then Suzi has named him John. It makes me wonder if John is male or female. Either way, I am going to be sad when John is gone! I check on him every night, and usually he's there, seeing what he can catch in his web. Whenever I think about it, I turn the porch light on for him so he can get a few extra snacks. Here he is catching a moth while our family watches.

I'd recommend turning the sound off. All you'll hear is my kids marveling at how he "catch-ted" something, and me fussing at them to quit bumping into me because I'm making a video. My voice sounds so annoying in recordings. I really hope I do not sound like that in real life!

June 4 - 8

Boy have we been lazy this week! There was just so much cleaning and party prep going on last week that it felt like a good week to rest a little. I don't think we did a single premeditated lesson on anything.

Well, I take that back. First of all, I spent a significant amount of time homeschooling myself in geography. I was tired of my astounding lack of knowledge in that department, so I went here and spent lots of my free time (and by that I mostly mean nursing-at-keyboard) playing their absolutely wonderful free games. Seriously, go try them! I am now familiar with almost all the countries, some of the capitals, and all of the states and capitals in the United States. Why couldn't I have had this website in seventh grade? I would've aced world geography! As for Suzi, that is all a bit over her head at the moment. She is learning to identify our state on a map of the US, and we let her play around with her Daddy's tablet on Google Earth. Seeing the Earth this way and then zooming in to our country, our state, our house (yes, it's amazing) helps connect bits of knowledge to form a working understanding of both local and world geography.

As usual, we read books and played a lot. Suzi worked at her desk, drawing pictures and making things like this outfit for Puff the Magic Dragon. I think he looks awesome in it. We went to story time at one of our local libraries. The girls love listening to "that fun librarian" read books, and it's even better because she has a big velcro storyboard to go along with most of them. We spent some time with Grandma and Grandpa Wednesday and Thursday. The week flew by!

Today we had a playdate at our local botanical gardens. I feel so lucky to live near it. It's the perfect place to spend a morning with friends! We didn't have any planned lessons here either, but we did see some interesting things that will make nice leads for nature learning in the next few days. We found some tiny frogs (perhaps toads?) as we played, and when we walked down to the pond there were tadpoles. We discussed the life cycle of a frog a few weeks ago. Mostly the kids just explored and played, and we had a great time with our friends!

When we came home, all three kids took a nice long nap and I set things up to make recycled paper. Earlier this week I bought a children's paper making kit at one of my favorite consignment shops for only 50 cents! The kids loved using it and it seemed to work great. The paper is outside drying right now. This is a great activity to do while discussing recycling. The kids get to see how much effort can be required to recycle an item, and how much more effective it would be, in this case, to use less paper in the first place. I think our shredded EOBs and bank statements are going to make some pretty interesting paper, though. Maybe you can see how there are whole letters sprinkled here and there. Alphabet paper!

I've been contemplating unschooling quite seriously this week. Last night I bought a new book to read on the subject. Just seeing how excited and self-motivated Suzi can get when an idea is hers makes me feel called to unschool at least part-time. Even though it is scary and the complete opposite of how I was educated. My own education also serves as inspiration to unschool, though, because of all the times it didn't work. I'll post more on this later. Daddy is home and we're starting our weekend!