Squirrels

This week I stretched my comfort zone a little further and we learned about squirrels. I have had a tenuous relationship with these rodents since one fell inches in front of my face on the way to botany lab, but they are beginning to grow on me.

We started with a little experiment to see what squirrels would eat. Our printer wasn't working, so I had to go old school and bust out the markers and ruler. We ran out of time and didn't get to test everything, but from what we saw, if it's junk food, squirrels will eat it.

Carrot

Oreo

Frito

Brownie

We read Earl the Squirrel...

...and I made Jack a little scarf like Earl's. (Remember all this red felt? I'm still trying to use it up.)

After we read the story, Jack went looking for acorns. This was a huge hit. He spent the rest of the afternoon pretending to be a squirrel and burying his play food.

A few of the other books we read:

This one is neat because it has an extreme close up of something and then shows the whole picture on the next page. It's a fun guessing game for kids.

I finally let Jack read this again. It used to make him wild.

Yes, We Are

Homeschooling, that is. Some of the people I know in real life are aware of this, but I guess not all, so here I am, finally coming out of the homeschool closet once and for all.

I've started to write this post several times and never gotten very far; I have been somewhat hesitant to announce this to my college friends and former coworkers, lest they beat me about the head and neck with my Teacher of the Year bell and then decide to take it back. Actually, most of the ones who know have been quite supportive, though I'm not sure if it's homeschooling they are in favor of, or just the thought of another person escaping the ever-increasing cascade of paperwork involved in teaching.

So why are we doing this? Lots of reasons. We're homebodies. We like spending time together. The thought of going back to teaching full time makes me want to crawl under the bed like Boris when he sees the cat carrier. The one time Jack had to go somewhere five days in a row, he was d.o.n.e. by Friday--and that was a fun dinosaur camp. We like going to see Jay at lunch. Grocery shopping is so much nicer in the middle of a weekday. If my kids have trouble, they won't fall through the cracks. No fundraisers. And on and on and on.

I guess the easiest explanation is that we want to do this, and we are fortunate enough that we can. And truthfully, this seems so much easier than sending Jack to school. As we have been trying to decide what to do about a job, housing, and moving next year, it has been nice to not have to take school into consideration. If Jack were going to kindergarten next year, we would be losing our freedom to the school system just as we were getting it back from the military. And as I discovered very (alarmingly) quickly after quitting my job, I love my freedom.

Now that Jack is four, many (well, almost all) of his friends are in some kind of school or another, and I guess he has been making his own observations about what it must be like. The other day we were headed to the museum to look at something and Jack said, "If I had to go to school, I couldn't be doing this right now." I laughed because it was clear the brainwashing is working (only kidding!), but it really was the truth. If we sent him to school, there is so much we would be missing.

Now I will make one more confession: I have nothing against public schools. You can probably find many homeschoolers who do, but I'm not one of them. In fact, I loved the time I spent in public schools--17 years as a students and 6 years as a teacher. I even miss teaching. It's just not for us now.

And now that I've posted this, I will even say it aloud when someone I've just met asks if Jack is in preschool. Currently I just say, "No." and nothing else. You know that makes me look like a great parent. And those of you who were not aware that we were indeed going down this path can rest assured that I am not some sort of control freak parent who is making her child do all kinds of work at school and home. You should know by now I am not that organized unless I am forced into it.

Now it's back to looking up pumpkin stuff. I've discovered there is a big learning curve when going from fifth graders to four year olds.

The Creek

Today we spent a couple of hours at the park. On the way out, we checked out the creek. Since we haven't had any rain in a couple of weeks it's getting pretty low and we were able to get down close. It's looking pretty mucky now!

Further up we were able to find a clear spot where the water was moving some.

Jack was excited to find this rock chair.

We spotted a few dragonflies!

And remember those hedge apples? They make SUPER projectiles. And since we're not the only ones who have been doing this, they are starting to make quite a little dam, too!

Apples!

We spent last week learning about apples. Though we did a lot of activities, we didn't do a lot of written work, so instead of making a lapbook we just put all the pages together and called it good!

We tried several varieties of apples.

The taste-tester in action

We also polled people about their favorite kinds of apples.

Jack's finished graph

We practiced estimating and using the balance. If you look at Jack's answers here you can tell that he has my mad estimating skillz.

It took a LOT of blocks!

We also used our balance to see which items were heavier and lighter than the apple.

Checking out some seeds--also called pips.

Apple painting

We learned about the life cycle of an apple using these free cards from Montessori for Everyone.

In addition to making apple butter, we made some homemade applesauce.

Some of the books we read....

Apple Farmer Annie has been a favorite around here for a couple of years.

FYI, this is in the current Scholastic book order for just $2!

HomeschoolShare has a free lapbook for this book.

This is a great resource for nature activities for littles.

Happy Birthday, Brandy!

Happy birthday to my friend, Brandy, who knows the most dirt on me and is the least likely to spill it. ; ) I hope you have a WONDERFUL day!

1992: Choir tour (I must be concentrating really hard on my aim.)

2000: Our wedding (I was marrying Jay, not Brandy.)

1991: Some house in Tennessee. Brandy is actually the photographer here, but I came across this one while looking for the others and it made me laugh. And what is the point in having your own blog if you can't post pictures that make you laugh?

Outside Time

I'm not going to go into the details of what we did outside today (I'm up too late as it is and I'm already planning a post for later this week), but it had to do with squirrels. Hungry ones.

Happy Birthday, Rose!