Today we read the story Albert. Albert did not like to go outside because of all the bad noises, so we made many excuses so he would not have to go outside. When he finally did go out, we discovered some good noises, one being a cardinal's nest. We learned about decibals and how to draw a bird. Here are a couple pictures from today's co-op.
For Indiana History today we talked about the Mounds Indians as the first inhabitants of Indiana. We are going to Mounds State Park in Anderson on Friday.
To go along with our story The Legend of Lightning Larry, we attended a local rodeo. It was long and we cut out early since we had church the next day, but we enjoyed what we saw. Here are a few pictures:
Our caterpillar continued to grow last week. Then last night we saw he was hanging from the top of the box. This afternoon when we got back from co-op, he was a chrysallis. Here are pictures.
Our first co-op meeting was yesterday. We read the book The Legend of Lightning Larry - the story about a cowboy who shoots lightning bolts at bad guys and makes them good. The children acted the story out. Below are pictures.
We went camping this past weekend to Potato Creek State Park near South Bend with the rest of the Higginbotham family. We were celebrating July, August and September birthdays while at Jodi's sister's house. Here are pictures of our trip.
And below are animals we saw at the Nature Center.
Goldfinches (male are brightly colored and female are dull.)
Hummingbirds
Osprey. The one on the left was at the Nature Center (stuffed) and the one on the right we saw by the lake, but couldn't get a very close shot.
Here are the promised caterpillar pictures. These are of the first caterpillar that died. I will post pictures of the current caterpillar later. It is still living and still eating.
When we first got it.
Molted.
We have officially started the next year of school work this week. We are starting slow (1/2 days and no Fridays through August). We've had fun so far.
I wanted to fill everyone in on our summer activities. We took a vacation to Tennessee where we hiked in the Smoky Mtn. Nat'l Park. Ever since we rowed The Salamander Room last summer, Alex has been wanting to find a salamander. He found his first one while in TN (actually found a total of 4). We also saw several Swallowtail Butterflies and the caterpillar that will change into a Swallowtail butterfly. (I took pictures of all these things, but right now are in the process of changing computers and the pictures haven't been moved to the new one yet. Will try to post pictures later.)
We spent a week in July doing the Olympic lapbook from homeschoolshare. I wanted to do it before the Olympics started and finish a few books up in August during the Olympics. We left a place for our family olympics, but have not had the opportunity to hold it yet. Will try to get pictures when we do that to post also.
After hearing a library program about Monarch butterflies, we have tried our hand at raising a caterpillar to a butterfly. Monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed - when we walk a local walkway, there are lots of milkweed plants. We started out looking for the Monarch eggs, and thought we found one, but it never hatched. A couple weeks ago, we found a small caterpillar, so we brought it home. It molted one time and grew quite a bit. After it escaped and was put back into it's cage, it died a couple days later. Last night, we found another caterpillar (this one smaller than the last one was when we found it.) We are going to try it again. I have pictures of the first caterpillar, so will try to get them on later.
This week, for school, we began our Bible lessons using the Ten Boys Who... series. The stories are a little long and hard to keep Nicolas's interest, but ties everything together in the small devotional part at the end. We read about Brother Andrew, John Newton, Billy Graham and Eric Liddell this week. Alex began his Evan Moor Moving West History Pockets and seems to enjoy them. He is doing them (mostly) independently while I work with Nicolas's reading. We also started our Apologia Zoology I book this week. It's been fun - filled with experiments that keep the boys busy. I don't mind doing the experiments if I already have the materials ready. I will have to make sure to look ahead throughout the rest of the school year to have the right materials on hand when we need them. Besides that, it's just been math and language arts/reading time.
We start co-op next week, so will have a little more to do and by September I want to have some electives thrown in to keep them a little more busy during the day (computer/typing, sign language, art, music, etc.) I will also begin larger books for our read alouds.
Keep a watch for the pictures later.
