Nature week

Using this week as a catch up week from missing some unforeseen days in April, we concentrated on Math and Reading only.  Then in the afternoons, we started our nature journals.  It was a good week for it.  Since we had just tilled the garden, the beginning of the week, we saw several ground feeding birds eating the bugs and worms we uncovered in the garden.  With the spring flowers blooming on the trees and in the yard, we didn't have a shortage of colorful things to draw.  Yesterday, as the clouds were moving in, we laid in the yard drawing pictures we saw in the clouds. 

The boys love drawing, but not so much the journaling part.  We are working on that.  I had my expectations of what they would write about, but those expectations were not met this week.  We will continue to work on finding words to express our imaginations.  (Myself included.  The writing IS the harder part.)

Last summer, Alex built a birdhouse at scout camp which they attached to our backyard tree last fall.  This spring, a house sparrow family has claimed it.  As of now, there is a next inside, but no eggs.  We continue to watch their activity. 

Here are some pictures from Alex's nature journal.

These are from Nicolas's journal:

If you look closely at the last line, he has "movement" marks (which he learned in co-op - Thanks Ami!).  As we were laying down, there was an "airplane line" and the larger, puffy clouds were being blown underneath it.  It looked like the line was moving rather than the clouds.  If we looked at our tree, it looked as if the tree was moving towards us. 

Even I joined in on the journaling:

A branch from our redbud tree.  And below are my cloud pictures :)

Next week we will try to venture outside our backyard to see what we can find.  I am looking forward to continuing this for quite awhile.

Just a note on Nicolas:  The writing is doing him much good.  His handwriting is improving (although some letters are still written backwards) and because his reading has improved much this past year, he is able to spell most words by himself in his journal.