This week has been productive and fun. We completed the week's Ambleside history readings by Wednesday, and had time to do plenty of free reading. Kathryn read Brighty of the Grand Canyon and The Story of Doctor Doolittle, and now she's starting on a few more Little House books from the Caroline years. We're happy that our local library has had many of the things we've been looking for lately!
Math has continued to be tear-free, and even done cheerfully. I've praised Kathryn greatly for that. We're doing 3 or 4 lessons each week, depending on what else we have planned. We are finally doing poetry again, and have taken turns reading poems to each other at lunch. We've discovered that we talk differently after a good dose of poetry, and entertain each other greatly when we do so.
The weather is nice today, so I hope to get outside to do some sort of nature study. We have been noticing signs of spring in the behavior of our avian friends. We watched a pair of red-tailed hawks spiral down together from a tree to the ground, but they were behind some bushes when they landed so we couldn't see them; at first we thought they were fighting, but then we decided it was more likely they were mating. We also noticed a chicadee doing a little dance to impress another chicadee, so we're pretty sure he was trying to impress the girl.
Two of Kathryn's friends, and our neighbors, joined a brand-new Brownie Girl Scout troop a few months ago, and we thought about joining, too, but we were still having rehearsals for "Anne of Green Gables" then, and would have had to rush from one to the other. Rushing around like that is something I will not do. It's easy so want to do all sorts of neat activities, but hectic schedules are not part of the home-sweet-school environment we want to have. Since our schedule is now less hectic and they still have openings, we've decided to join. The meetings are right after school, and within walking distance, so transportation won't be a problem (since we're a one-car family). Kathryn's very excited, especially after her friends have told her that their first real field trip will be somewhere to ride ponies!
Yesterday we did a field trip of our own. We went with my cousin Jonnia and her son Cullen to a new science museum, and the kids had a great time! (The photographer in me must give a disclaimer about poor lighting in the museum, and I was just using my little pocket-sized camera.) The kids were SO excited when we walked in and saw the huge apatosaurus (formerly known as a brontosaurus).
Although the skeleton is a re-creation, they do have a real fossilized bone for each creature in a display case nearby, with a diagram of where the bone was located in the animal, and a map showing where this particular specimen was found. For the apatosaurus, they had the femur, and it was 60" long! In the fossil gallery, they had a smaller t-rex sort of dinosaur called an appalachiosaurus, meaning "appalachian lizard" because it was found in the Appalachian Mountains -- the tyrannosaurus of the South. There was also the jaw bone of a gigantic shark, the megalodon, that's said to have been larger than a school bus. 
In the lobby when we first walked in, there is a huge 260-pound brass Foucault pendulum that demonstrates the rotation of the earth upon it's axis. In a 24-hour period, it will have made a complete circle. Some of these types of pendulums have sand below them to show the circle. This one had domino-like wood pieces set up in a circle, and every now and then it would knock one over. I'd never seen one of these before, and found it interesting and rather hypnotic. 
The Mineral Gallery was interesting, but the kids most enjoyed the part where they panned for gemstones; Kathryn found several small pieces of quarts, 2 or 3 pieces of tiger's eye, and some type of red stone we didn't identify. In the same area of the museum, they got to go on a "fossil dig" and could keep their favorite fossil. Kathryn and Cullen both chose to keep a shark's tooth from some type of now-extinct sand tiger shark. In addition to the real but tiny fossils, there were also some fossi replicas built into the "dig" area; in this photo they are uncovering some kind of trilobites.
Photography wasn't allowed in the Science in Motion gallery, but I enjoyed seeing the old types of automobiles, like Ford's quadricycle, as well as some things from the space program, including a replica of the Apollo 1 space capsule.
My Big Backyard is a very hands-on, kid-friendly section. In it, there was a "greenhouse" dedicated to learning about light, prisms, shadows, and reflections (including silly fun-house style mirrors). Jonnia loved the part about sound waves, and the kids spent quite a while playing in a section about electricity and magnets.
I loved this giant "tree" with some interactive nature-study types of activities. I wanted to explore the inside of the tree where we could learn about weather, but Kathryn did not like the thunder so our time there was very brief.
We didn't plan accordingly this time, but on our next visit I'd love to see the planetarium show about the stars over Georgia and the stories behind the constellations.
Math has continued to be tear-free, and even done cheerfully. I've praised Kathryn greatly for that. We're doing 3 or 4 lessons each week, depending on what else we have planned. We are finally doing poetry again, and have taken turns reading poems to each other at lunch. We've discovered that we talk differently after a good dose of poetry, and entertain each other greatly when we do so.
The weather is nice today, so I hope to get outside to do some sort of nature study. We have been noticing signs of spring in the behavior of our avian friends. We watched a pair of red-tailed hawks spiral down together from a tree to the ground, but they were behind some bushes when they landed so we couldn't see them; at first we thought they were fighting, but then we decided it was more likely they were mating. We also noticed a chicadee doing a little dance to impress another chicadee, so we're pretty sure he was trying to impress the girl.
Two of Kathryn's friends, and our neighbors, joined a brand-new Brownie Girl Scout troop a few months ago, and we thought about joining, too, but we were still having rehearsals for "Anne of Green Gables" then, and would have had to rush from one to the other. Rushing around like that is something I will not do. It's easy so want to do all sorts of neat activities, but hectic schedules are not part of the home-sweet-school environment we want to have. Since our schedule is now less hectic and they still have openings, we've decided to join. The meetings are right after school, and within walking distance, so transportation won't be a problem (since we're a one-car family). Kathryn's very excited, especially after her friends have told her that their first real field trip will be somewhere to ride ponies!
Yesterday we did a field trip of our own. We went with my cousin Jonnia and her son Cullen to a new science museum, and the kids had a great time! (The photographer in me must give a disclaimer about poor lighting in the museum, and I was just using my little pocket-sized camera.) The kids were SO excited when we walked in and saw the huge apatosaurus (formerly known as a brontosaurus).
Although the skeleton is a re-creation, they do have a real fossilized bone for each creature in a display case nearby, with a diagram of where the bone was located in the animal, and a map showing where this particular specimen was found. For the apatosaurus, they had the femur, and it was 60" long! In the fossil gallery, they had a smaller t-rex sort of dinosaur called an appalachiosaurus, meaning "appalachian lizard" because it was found in the Appalachian Mountains -- the tyrannosaurus of the South. There was also the jaw bone of a gigantic shark, the megalodon, that's said to have been larger than a school bus. In the lobby when we first walked in, there is a huge 260-pound brass Foucault pendulum that demonstrates the rotation of the earth upon it's axis. In a 24-hour period, it will have made a complete circle. Some of these types of pendulums have sand below them to show the circle. This one had domino-like wood pieces set up in a circle, and every now and then it would knock one over. I'd never seen one of these before, and found it interesting and rather hypnotic. The Mineral Gallery was interesting, but the kids most enjoyed the part where they panned for gemstones; Kathryn found several small pieces of quarts, 2 or 3 pieces of tiger's eye, and some type of red stone we didn't identify. In the same area of the museum, they got to go on a "fossil dig" and could keep their favorite fossil. Kathryn and Cullen both chose to keep a shark's tooth from some type of now-extinct sand tiger shark. In addition to the real but tiny fossils, there were also some fossi replicas built into the "dig" area; in this photo they are uncovering some kind of trilobites.Photography wasn't allowed in the Science in Motion gallery, but I enjoyed seeing the old types of automobiles, like Ford's quadricycle, as well as some things from the space program, including a replica of the Apollo 1 space capsule.My Big Backyard is a very hands-on, kid-friendly section. In it, there was a "greenhouse" dedicated to learning about light, prisms, shadows, and reflections (including silly fun-house style mirrors). Jonnia loved the part about sound waves, and the kids spent quite a while playing in a section about electricity and magnets.
I loved this giant "tree" with some interactive nature-study types of activities. I wanted to explore the inside of the tree where we could learn about weather, but Kathryn did not like the thunder so our time there was very brief.We didn't plan accordingly this time, but on our next visit I'd love to see the planetarium show about the stars over Georgia and the stories behind the constellations.
