Farm Study Petting zoo trip

Today was a super fun day. 

I had mentioned to my mom (she regularly babysits 2 of my nephews and has another nephew living with her for the past 2 weeks while his mom is visiting family in Northern Ireland) that I wanted to take Aurora to a petting farm for part of our Farm study unit. She thought it was a great idea and wanted to take my 3 older nephews (my sister-in-law took her youngest son with her)

Today was a great day for it. It's been cold here lately but today was warmer and mostly sunny. The kids had a GREAT time. 

 my mom with the 4 older grandkids

 E "kissing" a goat.

 me with Gids in the backpack, Aurora and my oldest nephew

 Mini horse

 Man, roosters look hilarious when they are crowing!

More to come later :)

linking up with:

 Our plants have grown a lot in these last few days. The ones in the paper towel are growing MUCH quicker than the ones in dirt. We think it is because they are getting a lot more sun (they've been sitting on the windowsill)
They got big enough that it was time to put them in the dirt so we did that today.
The only thing in our dirt that we can see growing (from the  surface) is the salad mix, but we do see roots in the other plants so they are obviously growing too. :)

 This is a pretty cool magnetic map puzzle I found at the homeschool conference I can't remember off the top of my head who sold it but Aurora LOVES it!! We had been doing geography off a tiny printed map. but now she can see the actual countries better (and hold them and put it all together!) and it shows some of the animals that live in different areas which is awesome because we were looking for something like that!
She knows what country her daddy grew up in (Venezuela) and what country her friend Silas lives in (in the South pacific)  and where she lives and a bunch of other things too. This has made it a lot more fun for her.

     We have a trip to a petting farm planned for very soon to see and pet some of the animals we've been studying. We've been reading a lot of farm fact books and a bunch of goofy farm (and farm animal) stories as well. "Can Hens Give Milk" by Joan Betty Stuchner and Joe Weissmann, and "Princess Pigsty" by Cornelia Funke are two particularly silly ones that Aurora really likes right now. 

       Oh, and we have already visited some chickens already a couple times this week, what funny creatures they are....

Planting seeds

 Here are the pictures of our planting project.
We planted Peas, purple beans, cherry tomatoes, carrots and lettus

more to come. :)

feeling better and farm

The Gidster is feeling much better! He's still not 100% but his antibiotics are working really quickly which is great because taking care of a miserable 7 month old is EXHAUSTING!

Today we started our farm unit which we'll be working on for whole month of April (besides a little break next week to talk about Easter for a couple days) We'll be spending a lot of time on different farm animals (and visiting some to see them in person which she will LOVE) and learning about how plants grow. This is the first time I have really done a real, focused unit so I am excited and nervous about that.

We started our plant part of the farm study today by planting out seeds (last week Aurora picked 5 different plants to grow and we bought the seeds) and picking out some books about farm animals and plants.

We are still working through the alphabet as well but she seems to be really struggling with some of the letters so I think we have to stop pushing forward and go back to spend more time on some of the ones she has trouble with.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring less runny noses, happier kids and lots of fun and learning.

This basically sums up our weekend....

Aurora and I both have cold and poor Gideon has an ear infection and a cold. He had a pretty rough night last night. :( 

We didn't do any preschool today at all, I had a newborn photo session this morning which takes a good amount of the day (it takes a LONG time for them to go to sleep so you can pose them usually) so between that and everyone feeling crummy we decided to take the day off.

We did do our last bit of worm study on Saturday though, it was a perfect rainy day so it was easy to catch a bunch of "wormies"

I had looked up ideas for worm units and seen the idea of letting the worms "paint" to see how they move. We (obviously) used non toxic paint and were carefull to get it all off the worms before letting them go again. After all, we like wormies. :)

Aurora LOVED this project. She finally got up her nerve to actually HOLD a worm (only the really small ones though)

Spring

Since Spring seems to be in full force (at least for now) we are studying everything spring. Today we studied Robins.


We went up to the library and got a book about them, It turned out to be a really good book for young kids! It had lots of great pictures and was a lot of information but they kept it simple. I learned a few things I didn't know, but it was easily understandable for Aurora to. :)

 We also got a few books about bugs and beetles and have been studying them (in an attempt to help Aurora get over her sudden crippling fear of all things creepy crawly.)

Here is a beetle we found in the garden. Around here you find these pretty often when you dig, but this time we stopped to really look at one.

 (Then we had some fun blowing bubbles)

We are certainly enjoying this warm weather, but man am I tired at the end of the day!! I have been falling into bed exhausted way earlier than usual!! (that may also have something to do with Gideon deciding to get up earlier than he used to though)

warm weather, worms and water

The weather has been gloriously warm here! It's really crazy to think that this is March!! Usually we still have a lot of snow!! Instead we are wearing flip flops and shorts, getting sun burns if we aren't careful and really enjoying being outside.

This week Aurora has become very interested in worms. We've found quite a few and some really huge ones hiding under the leaves that we cleaned our of the garden, so we've been talking about worms, what they eat, how they help plants and what animals like to eat worms.

We've also been talking a bit about how dams work. There is one by our house that she loves to walk to and we've been talking about how it can stop the water or let the water flow through.

We started reading Little Women. I wouldn't have picked it for her yet, but I have a really beautiful edition with greats pictures in it so she got excited about it and begged me to read it to her. We are also reading an old book called Adventures in Animal Land. It was mine when I was a kid and loved it. She's really enjoying it so far too, we are about 5 chapters in.

again....

Man, It's already been a week and once again my good intentions have not led to more posting at all!!! This is terrible. :( With a 6 month old who seems to be in a "hold me all the time please mommy or I will scream" stage and Aurora, and life of course, I seem to find time for either this or my photography business. It seems to go back and forth between those two depending on what's going on, how many clients I have and all that.

So despite putting most of my "free time" (ha ha!! as if we moms of babies and young kids have any REAL free time-which is why I stay up WAY too late every night) into my business, I have been tossing an idea around in my head for a long time for a series o(n this blog) that I am pretty excited about. I haven't seen anything like it yet (doesn't mean it's not out there, just that I haven't seen it - nothing new under the sun right?) I am hoping to get it up pretty soon!! I am so excited! so stay tuned!!

Besides that our week has mostly consisted of keeping Gideon happy, or that is how it seems to me. (It's just a stage, it's just a stage!) The weather is starting to warm up so we've been getting out more which is great!!

My family tapped trees to make maple syrup this year which was AWESOME!! We've talked about doing it for ages but finally did this year. Now I admit, I was really only supervising ok, just watching and chatting and taking pictures which Gideon strapped to my back while Aurora running around in the mud with my nephew.(it was super sunny and Elliot is very fast, but here is a quick pic of him covered in mud and completely drenched eating ice cream)

 And here is one of the sap! :)

I'm excited that spring is finally on it's way so we can get out more, do more nature studies and all the wonderful things that come with spring, summer, and fall.

So bear with me if I am bad about keeping up, and stay tuned for the series, I think all you homeschool moms will really enjoy it, or I hope so!! :)

Mmmmm Cake!

My mom is quite a talented lady I have to say, the woman can sew like nothing else, she paints, she sketches, she cooks and bakes and crafts all kinds of things. I also have to add that she would freak out if she heard me saying that because she is a little too humble. :)

A couple at her church asked her to make their wedding cake, they are getting married tomorrow and really wanted a tree stump wedding cake. I have to say I thought that was a pretty strange request but the cake looks pretty awesome. 

(the pictures really don't do it justice, it was dark and this is my old pocket sized camera)