Week 4 of the "School" Year: Nature and Lessons Abound

Oh dear, where to begin?  We had a LOT of nature this week and frankly I am feeling every one of my forty-two years.  Chasing after little boys and trying to weave educational opportunities into our every day lives can be a bit tiring.  But I am NOT complaining!  This week has been a whole lot of awesome.

We packed a lot of learning in on Monday because we had a big Geocache Expedition on Tuesday with our Gifted Kids Meetup friends at the Botanic Garden on Tuesday.  It was hot.  It was a trek.  But we finally won our little (nano) prize on our third cache attempt at the garden.  Viola!  A nano log!  Woot!  I think we hooked our friends on this fun little hobby.

Wednesday we packed the car and the pup and headed to the San Bernardino Mountains to Aunt Mimi's Family Cabin.  It's a hidden little valley owned by a small group of people for about a hundred years with a wonderful history attached to it.  It is cluster of cabins nestled between two streams and separated by fields of apple trees.  It is my version of Heaven.  I had visited the cabin when I was my kid's ages and this orchard contains some of my fondest childhood memories.  Now my children are very privileged to get to experience it too. 

We arrived, unpacked our cooler and headed directly to the stream to play.  The weather was perfect, around 78 degrees and the fresh stream water chilled our feet.  Of course the boys have to go neck deep whenever possible.

My original plan was to build rafts and huts for GI Joe, to test speed and flotation, to make bows and arrows and test speed via bow tension... Lots of plans for these trips to the river.  You know what they say about Best Laid Plans?  Yup...the kids had their own plans, which included doing what they do best: playing.  And who am I to try to force them to do this stuff anyway?  Ha ha, jokes on me, Teacher Mom.

There was lots of learning happening anyway.  Aunt Mimi surprised the boys with Golf Cart driving lessons, which must have turned out to be pretty funny but I missed the lesson and that's probably a good thing for the state of my heart health.  Apparently T Man nearly rammed them into an apple tree!  He got better on the next lesson :) 

We gave Aunt Mimi a lesson in Geocaching and we were all happily surprised to find an awesome cache within a mile of the cabin. It was an old ammunition case filled with lots of toys.

On the way back to the cabin, we got one of our greatest lessons of the week: finding a baby bird that fell out of its nest.  T was vehemently against taking the baby home and thought we should leave it flailing in the dead grass next to the road.  Mimi and I were all for attempting to save its life.  We put him in a shoe box and immediately queried our Facebook Friends to see if they could help identify it so we could feed it.  Duckling?  Heron?  We were given a number to a volunteer organization that works to save wild birds and got some very valuable advice on finding baby birds like this:  Put it back in the tree it fell out of, watch for an hour and hope and pray mama bird finds it.  Essentially my little T was right.  We shouldn't have messed with it.  I found this out too late.  By the next morning the baby couldn't peep anymore and was quickly on his way to birdy heaven. I feel awful about it, but isn't that how we learn lessons?  Today Mimi said her son thought he was a Vulture.  I'm pretty sure that is correct.  (sigh)

Near the end of the day, it was clear that the golf cart was the boon of the visit.  They boys obsessed on it.  T pointed right at Mimi and said "You need to take us out in the golf cart."  This got an eyebrow raising!  Mimi explained that she is a Communication Expert and that she's pretty sure that this is not the way to convince someone to do something for you.  She coached him on how to properly ask someone for something.  This was an invaluable lesson and I am so grateful to have her do this because it doesn't matter how much mama harps on her kids for their behavior, coming from Mom it sounds like a regular nag session.  Coming from Mimi, however, makes all the difference in the world. 

I am, for the most part, solely responsible for the complete education of my children. Not just reading, writing and arithmetic, but life skills, communication, social skills, manners, self-care, reproduction, respect, love, logic and common sense, caring, you name it.  It is a daunting task that I often try not to think about, but live in the moment and make every situation count to the education of these boys.  It is a wonderful gift to be given when someone steps up and helps in this journey.

We got a little sit-down work done during our full day at the cabin...the kids use dice to do addition (PJ) and multiplication (T) and they wrote on their Favorite Thing about the Mountain Cabin.  (the golf cart, of course)  We started reading Life of Fred Butterflies and it covered the life cycle of the butterfly, and moved onto Astronomy and the Orion constellation, specifically Betelgeuse, the super-sized star that makes up Orion's left shoulder.  Apparently this star is the size of a football field compared to our Sun, if you can imagine our Sun as the size of an orange.  Crazy Big. 

One of the awesome things about getting to visit the apple orchard in September is that it's Harvest Time!  Mimi took us into a separate orchard where we got to bag up all kinds of apples.  And of course, in the Harvest tradition, we had to bake a pie.  By this point in the day, around 4:00, the kids were pooped out, so they watched TV and I poured a glass of wine and started to peel apples.  I'm proud to say, it turned out to be one FINE apple pie :)

 

On our way out of the mountains on Friday, the kids were able to jump out of the car and play in a real, honest to God, mountain waterfall.  What a way to end an amazing few days in nature.   

Home Sweet Home brings us pictures of the Shuttle Endeavor flying piggy back on a 747 on it's way to LAX and its final resting place, the California Science Center.  We are looking forward to visiting it when it opens.  During the week without the crowds, of course, because we have that freedom now that we homeschool.  Just like the freedom to explore nature whenever we are invited to the Heaven that is the Mountain Cabin.  And the availability to spend these precious times with Aunt Mimi and learn from her too.

Week 3 and Off Track...or are we?

 This week we tackled Daddy's Birthday.  I give that a huge font and emphasis because this is Daddy's Special Day and we must make it super specials for him.  If he had his druthers he'd get the entire Month of September to celebrate, but since he's in Crunch Mode, had to settle for his Special Day as 24 hours.  To add insult to injury, his Special Day is September 11.
So we do our best to make it Big and Important regardless of that sad fact.  I gave the boys some butcher paper and asked them to make some wrapping paper for presents.  As you can see by this picture, it evolved into something much bigger and important:  a Happy Birthday Banner.  Minecraft-style.  Daddy was pretty darned impressed!

On a trip to our favorite store, Barnes & Noble, to find a treat for dad, the kids each wanted to pick out a book for themselves.  I think we already own Splat the Cat, so I asked PJ to read this one at the store, out loud to me.  This is PJ's reaction.  LMAO

Monday we did our usual studies and then spent the afternoon at the park with a lovely homeschooling family of 3 little boys.  The older boys tromped around the park in full discovery-mode, into the nooks and crannys of a dried "creek" and up to it's pond.  I looked at my fellow mama and told her I gave the TMan 10 minutes before he was up to his knees in that murky water.  20 minutes later he approached in sloshing tennis shoes.  Haha.  It's what boys do. Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails! 

After removing the offending pond fifth, the boys went after some climbing trees and and found a huge patch of mushrooms.  T explained the "gills" of the mushroom and disected it and named it's type.  (I still need to go look it up, but I'm looking forward to getting an iphone just for an app I heard about that does object recognition) I can't locate anything about it on the Web except back to 2009.  But gosh, I need it so I can take a picture of something and give it a name. 

Speaking of apps, look at this one!  It's Geocache Navigator and it's directly linked to the Geocaching.com website.  It's amaaahzing and I can't wait to use it.  
Wednesday we met up with our GHF friends, Amy, Liam and Sutton for a geocaching expedition at the South Coast Botanic Garden.  Mission: FAIL.  All 4 of the boys were either hot, bored or obsessing about Minecraft.  I stupidly left my phone (with previously mentioned awesome app) at home.  We are going try that again next Tuesday.  We went home and let the boys have some quiet play time.  Much more relaxing.. 

I had a wonderful Aha moment this week with little PJ.  He has been practicing writing the alphabet in a little Lakeshore Learning writing book.  For some reason, he wants to always start at the bottom of the line and move upwards, so I have sat down and review each letter, explaining to start at the top line and moved downwards, then add the other features of the letters.  While at the park the other day, he got too hot and decided to rest across my lap.  So I began to trace letters on his back.  He guessed every single letter correctly!  I am thinking this whole teaching thing might just be working out.

We had a playdate on Friday and got to go to their pool.  Many thanks to them, as it was 104 degrees in the harbor area of Los Angeles.  Holy Cow.  It must have been a record.  Before we could go outside, however, the boys had to be shown their friend's latest interest: www.coolmath-games.com  There are some excellent brain games on this website, perfect for 5-7 year olds.  PJ is positively obsessed now and has been playing since we got home yesterday.

With this summer heat, we are getting lots of bugs.  We had to pick bees and termites out of the pool yesterday.  We also got a strange little visitor that we couldn't identify.  I called over to T to have him check it out and see if he knew the name.  "Ah! It's a Weevil!" he exclaimed.  Having never seen a weevil in my life, I just didn't believe him and pulled up the trusty browser on my phone.  WHY did I question this kid?  It was a weevil.  When I asked him how he knew this, he credited "Ugly Bugs" one of the Horrible Science books.  Ah, it really IS working!

So I am okay today with a morning of cartoons and relaxation.  It's gonna be another hot one!  Next week we get to visit the San Bernardino Mountains with my sister.  We have planned some community gardening and a little history of the area.  Should be lots of fun.  And Educational.