Nature Study Club Post 10 Spring is Here!

Spring is here and that means lots of nature study for us! We have been visited by so many different critters in the last few weeks. I will post all of the pics we've taken in the last two weeks.

Our tree is finally blooming, this is the only time of year it blooms so I really wanted to take a pic of how beautiful it looks!

My favorite bird, the cardinal and the female cardinal! The visit all the time but they scare so easily... they are starting to get used to us.. I hope!

I finally got a pic of the very elusive chickadee, he never stays at the feeder long... but I got him that time!

The house finches are always around, the truth is we are not sure if they are house or purple finches, A9 says house, so I guess that's what they are!

The mourning doves are always around as well, they have no problems being near us!

The robins, of course they are around all year!

We had another visitor to our feeders... a squirrel.. this little guy is very brave!

The Mallards visited us during a rain storm!

This is a male cowbird... they are pretty cute!

This is the female cowbird.

We found an egg sack on one of our bushes!

I have no clue what type of egg sack this is, praying mantis maybe!!

This afternoon we found a groundhog on our neighbors yard, turns out they have been trying to catch him for a couple of days now. Well, they got him!

No worries though, they are going to take him to the woods and release him there.

These guys are always around, the grackles.

One more pic of the groundhog before they take him away, we feed him some apple slices.

One last pic of my fave... the cardinal!

We keep seeing a blue heron, I'm trying very hard to get a pic. I love watching birds from my deck, I love hearing their songs. I will try to get more pics soon!

School Week 32 & 33 2011

My last school post was on the last week of March. We had just started Book 1 of the next My America series Virginia's Civil War Diaries. Then we were forced to take a two week break due to illnesses... and here we are! back to school again!

School Week 32

Last week we read book 2 of My America Civil War Diaries, After the Rain. It was nice to get back into our school routine, A9 is really enjoying this series as well. A9 has 3 more weeks of math, she is done with vocabulary and will soon be done with her cursive copywork.

We were able to get back to our narration and dictation exercises and our language lessons.
We took it easy the first few days, but instead of having a light school Wednesday, she worked very hard on all her subjects so that we could have Friday off for a field trip to the movies. We went to see African Cats as part of Earth Day.

BTW, before she got sick, A9 had another field trip to see The Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet at Wilson College. I was already sick so she went with Mrs. Long! She loved it!

I took it easier on X6 since he had a harder two weeks than his sister. We went through an ordeal with him, but thank God and all who prayed for us he is doing great!

He worked on his math, his reading and phonics... that's it. That is all I required of him this past week. We read the book The Legend of The Three Trees for Easter.

School Week 33

This week we are reading book 3 of My America Civil War Diaries, A Time to Dance. We are also reading the book Meet Abraham Lincoln. Since the Civil War deals heavily with him I thought this would be a great time for A9 to learn all about our 16th President!

Two more math lessons and we are done for the year... well, she needs to take a final math test the following week! She will be done with cursive copywork this week, and we will continue to do narration and dictation because we have fun doing it and we have about two weeks left of language lessons.

The boy will be rowing If Jesus came to my House and doing a Jesus lapbook. He has two more books to row and he will be done! I think he has two more math lessons as well. Like I said before, he won't be done with reading made easy, we will continue to do this throughout the summer.

We did a lot of nature studies the last few weeks, we've had so many new visitors to our feeders. A9 has a new blog where she talks about all of the birds visiting our backyard. I will post some pics as well since her blog is only available to a couple of people.

Here's praying we finish healthy!

No School Week

We are taking an early Easter break, I've had a chest cold that turned into a high fever that kept me from my endoscopy this morning. Now I have no fever(Thank God) but still have a chest cold, sore throat and a stuffy, runny nose.... not ideal for the amount of reading we usually have for school... so we are taking our break early! and I'm back on my vitamin C!!!!!