Salamander Crossing

This isn't supposed to be just a nature blog but we have just had so much fun out in nature lately. Our friend invited us on another hike this week. We drove up into the mountains a bit for this one. It was a little misty today. Not actually raining but it looked like it might. We went out anyway.
We must have hit the trail at just the right time. Within a few steps out onto the trail one of the kids in our group found "a lizard". All the kids got really excited about it. After watching it for a little while we continued down the trail and were amazed to find more and more of these "lizards". I started to call it a salamander rather then let the kids keep thinking it was a lizard. Sophie got excited because we had just studied amphibians and salamanders in particular a few months ago. I don't know what was going on today but we really had to watch our step almost the whole walk because there were so many salamanders all over the path and trail. They were on the move somewhere.

Sophie quickly wasn't content just to look at them and had to pick one up. Then of course all the kids had to hold one. I felt bad letting the kids handle so many of them but there were so many salamanders around we really couldn't stop them. It was great to get a close up look at them. We watched how they walked and noticed the shapes of the feet, tail and head. It was great! I don't know exactly what type of salamander it was but after doing a quick scan of what salamanders are in that part of California. I think it is actually a Coast Range Newt.

We also saw a number of Banana Slugs. I knew these from many hikes and walks before.

We also saw a number of Stellar's Jays on our hike as well.

It was a great hike. Lots of great things to see.

Green hour #4 - Coming into focus

We headed to one of our favorite parks today. It is hard to believe we live in the city when we are at this park. It is a nice long bike trail that goes along a small creek that flows into a lake. It is home to a bunch of ducks, geese, herons and coots (this was one we didn't know before. We found out the name of it today). I took tons of pictures and decided to just put them in a slideshow rather than post each one.

Our assignment for the week was pick a focus for our nature studies. This is always hard with small kids. They don't focus well. They love to look at everything and each day will pick a new subject. I would like to focus on plants. I don't know the real name for most of the flowers, trees, weeds that we see around us. So it is going to be my focus for a bit to try to identify some of the different flowers or trees that we see. Especially the ones that we find in our neighborhood. We take walks or scooter rides around our block so often I should at least be able to point out some of the different plants we pass.

Today while at the park there was a plant that I recognized and knew the name of. It is a plant that I had fond memories of from when I was little. It grew in large supply right in the front yard of our house. My Mom detests it because it tends to take over and spreads out of control. But Vinca will always remind of my youth.
My kids loved spotting it everywhere along our hike. I told them that as a child I used to pop the flower off and suck on the end to taste the nectar. They of course had to try it and then all along our path there were purple flowers littering the way. Since I knew the name of it ( I didn't even know they were commonly called Periwinkle) and referred to it as vinca my kids now call it vinca. Sorry Mom but they love Vinca.
I brought my sketch book along with us to the park. I didn't expect the kids to draw but while they climbed on logs and played with sticks and rocks and sucked nectar from periwinkles I sat and drew one of the geese that was watching us. And I drew a little bit of Vinca. I added the color when I got home. It looked good before I put the color on but flowers just need color.
When we got home Sophie drew a little picture of our outing. She of course added the play ground in too. We spent a little time at the end there climbing and swinging. But she included all the birds we saw. That is what she really wants to focus on.
We saw some Mallards and I was glad that Sophie knew and callled them Mallards. She even knew which was the male and which was the female. Geese were a different story. We had to look up what kind of Geese we saw. They are Canada Geese and I couldn't see any difference in them so we couldn't tell which was male or female. We saw a lot of little black birds too that we kept calling some sort "little black duck". But we found out they are American Coots. But we really got excited when we saw a Great Blue Heron. We come to this park a lot and haven't seen one. We always look for it but never find them. It flew out of a clump of trees over us and ended up back at it's nest we guess. The sign we read about them said that they love the eucalyptus trees that grow in this park.
We had a great day at the park. Notice I said day. It was supposed to be Green Hour but we ended up staying at the park for 5 hours. I walked to the car with Ian begging for just a few more minutes and Henry kicking and screaming because he wasn't ready to go home.

Reviewing our week.

It doesn't feel like a really structured week. So maybe if I report on what we did it will sound like more then it feels like we did.
History - Read more about ancient Rome. Sophie and Ian loved the "You wouldn't want to be...." books. Our library had both the one about the Roman soldier as well as the Roman Gladiator. So we read those together and I know Dad has read them to them again at another time.
We also peeked at David Macauley's book City which is about building a Roman city. We haven't made it all the way through yet. We have been reading Detectives in Togas as an afternoon read aloud. Sophie really enjoys it and I have read about 3 chapters a day all week but we still haven't finished it. I am surprised at home much everyday Roman life we are learning from reading this funny story. (When looking it up on Amazon, I just found out there is a sequel. That one should be fun too.) While I read aloud Sophie has been coloring in her Life in Ancient Rome coloring book.

The boys are either playing with blocks, Knights, or Legos while I read. At times it is hard to read over the noise they make. I even banished them to their room once or twice because they got too loud and I ended up yelling the story so Sophie could hear. I really need to work on reading aloud to Sophie but still including the boys somehow.

Here we took a break from reading and built an aquaduct with our legos.


Science - Again we have spent a lot of time out of doors and did our Green hour Challenge. We have read more Thornton Burgess stories which are always nice. But I can't say we have really studied anything specific this week. I have done some more planning for our small garden which we should plant in a week or two.

Math - Sophie hasn't done a lot of her Singapore workbook this week. We have been playing a few Math games. Sum swamp is always a favorite for Math time. I am surprised at how well Ian can add. He is learning a lot just from watching me try to teach Sophie how to add.

Language Arts - We are learning the poem Dancing from First Language Lessons. Sophie illustrated it one day. We read it again another day and pointed out the verbs and nouns. We acted it out once too this week.

I already explained what we have been doing in Music - Mozart is a great subject. We have read a few books. Listened to a lot of music and watched the Magic Flute. We even had a children's video about Mozart that we watched too.

Art - I introduced our artist for the month, Seurat, by first reading Katie's Sunday Afternoon by James Mayhew. We have always enjoyed these Katie books. Sophie loves the idea of jumping into paintings and such. I also copied a coloring page from my Masterpieces coloring book. We looked up the painting in the Seurat art book and she went to work coloring it in.
Later in the month some time we will get around to doing a painting in the pointillism. I never realized how scientific Seurat's artwork is. We are going to have to do some experiments in color to go along with our study of his artwork.

That is about it. I can't recall anything else we did that I would call academic work. The kids of course helped me cook and do laundry as well as clean up their rooms. Which are great skills they need to learn too.

Hurray for the Governator

"Every California child deserves a quality education and parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children,""Parents should not be penalized for acting in the best interests of their children's education. This outrageous ruling must be overturned by the courts and if the courts don't protect parents' rights then, as elected officials, we will."

I have spent way too much time reading the news today. I am really hoping this whole thing ends well for us home schoolers. It certainly has a bunch of us in California a little worried. But for now we just homeschool as usual.

Black Pepper?

I don't know about this one?..... I don't feel like pepper

You Are Black Pepper

You may be considered ordinary by some, but you're far from boring. You elevate the mood of any discussion, and people miss you when you're not around. You are secretly very dominant and powerful. Most can only take you in small doses.

What Spice Are You?

Music Study - Mozart

This week we have been listening to a lot of Mozart. He is our composer for the month of March. Sophie has greatly enjoyed it. I started with the Classical Kids CD called Mozart's Magnificent Voyage.

After listening to this Sophie was very interested in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. I was hoping to find the other Classical Kids production called Mozart's Magic Fantasy but our Library doesn't have it. And they don't have it on CD swap either.
I may just have to buy it.

Instead I decided we would get a movie version so she could see and hear the music. (Thank you Netflix!) I remember watching Ingmar Bergmen's The Magic Flute in College (I had a film teacher that loved Bergman films) and thought we could watch bits of it. I knew it was very long so I thought we could watch just a few of the arias.

I was shocked that they loved it. It is sung in sweedish and you have to read subtitles. But they didn't seem to mind. I did explain what was going on to the boys since they couldn't read it. They ended up watching the whole thing. Not in one sitting. We started it in the afternoon yesterday and then I stopped it to make dinner. They begged to watch some more of it after dinner last night so we let them. They finished it with their Dad before they went to bed. Even the boys sat there glued to the screen watching it. I was really surprised.



I like this cover of the film better. The one above looks far too sinsister and very Bergman like but not something I would show to kids. But I had seen the film before so I knew it was alright. I also knew I was going to be sitting here watching it with them to make sure it was alright. Sophie did say parts of it were a bit scary but she really liked it. She loved Papageno playing his bells and little pipe flute.





We have done very well with Music study, now I need to finally get around to introducing our Artist.

Hiking - Green Hour Challenge #3

I still don't have a copy of the Handbook of Nature Study. It should come this week, I hope. But we still went out to enjoy nature. Some friends had set up a little hike and invited us to go along.
There are a lot of great little hiking trails around where we live. Our friend picked one that was short enough for all our small kids to go on and for us to enjoy. I thought this was a great opportunity to do our Challenge for the week.

I have to admit it didn't turn out to be the best outing to do a lesson or try to get the kids to stop and look or listen to anything. There were a lot of small kids on this hike and that means there is a lot of running around and playing. I had trouble just keeping up with my little guys.
The view from the top of the hill was really nice. The kids loved looking out over the valley and trying to find their houses or other buildings.

Sophie loved finding little hiding places in the bushes at the top.
On the hike down the hill the boys picked up a lot of sticks, threw a lot of sticks and hit anything and everything with sticks.

There were lots of opportunities for climbing. One of the things Sophie said when I asked her what her favorite part of the hike was that she loved climbing and sitting on the big logs.

I did attempt to have Sophie draw something about the hike. I didn't give her any more direction then I gave her a black sheet of paper and asked her to draw me something about our outing. This is what she came up with.
We didn't actually see any birds but we did hear some. And we did see a lot of trees.
Here is my drawing of our outing. I started it and Sophie decided to help me out with it. It turned out a little messy but still kinda gives you the feeling of the trail.
Not too bad for a beginning, and a great way to spend a few hours.