We went on an impromptu field trip to Pinellas County Heritage Village, today.  It was great fun, the girls loved talking to all the volunteers and seeing how things worked 100-200 years ago.   We have just finished reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods and we are in the middle of Little House on the Prairie, the field trip was a great way to visualize their lifestyle.  There were houses from the time of the pioneers to the Victorian age and the volunteers brought it all to life so wonderfully.

Here are a few pictures of our trip.

Alexia, ringing the school bell outside of the Harris school room.

We loved to see the kitchens from the different times.

We had to go back a few times to watch this lady spin the yard.  Alexia had a great time talking to her.

Playing in the butterfly garden.

Bananas in the tropical fruit garden.

Having tea in the Victorian house.

Relaxing after a long field trip.

We had a few new visitors today.  They were very suspicious of me, so I could not get very close.  I did manage to snap a few shots though before they walked further off.

I am going to be sad when we move, and we have to give up this back yard with all the lovely wild life.

We saw a lovely Wood Stork in the backyard today.  These birds are still on the endangered species list, but we have been lucky enough to see three in the last 6 months.  Since the reeds have been pulled on our side of the pond we have had more birds come to feed in the area.  It was a great treat to see him up close like this.

We took a trip to Noah’s Ark petting farm today.  The kids had a wonderful time petting all the animals, but the chickens got the most attention by far.

In science today we learned about Mercury and what the surface of Mercury looks like.  To demonstrate craters to the girls, I took them outside with a bowl of flour and a couple of rocks.  We tossed the pebbles and rocks into the flour, then removed them to look at the craters left behind.  We enjoyed looking at the results for about 5 minutes and then the science project turned into a flour tossing competition.  I am so glad we did this outside!  They had such fun “making it snow”.

The weather is fantastic at the moment.  I had forgotten what it felt like without humidity.  This weekend was our first glimpse of fall and we took full advantage of it.  We headed to John Chesnut Park in Palm Harbor and there was so much to see.  Here are a few pictures from our trip.

James by Lake Tarpon, Palm Harbor.

We saw two little alligators together.  The mom was hiding in the reads, we could hear her, but she was out of sight.

An Osprey nesting, the male was fishing close by.

Another alligator shot.

Alexia spotted this bunny on our walk back to the car.

There were dear everywhere, but it was great to see this little fawn.

Some days I feel our homeschool is similar to the public school system in that the first “cuts” made are to art and music.  I am creative, but not artistic. I love classical music, but have only a rudimentary knowledge of how to read music; bring in modes, texture and timbre and I am lost!  For this reason we take baby steps, everyone can color a picture right?  This year for art, we are coloring  art master pieces.  I figured this way the girls are at least exposed to the master pieces and learn a little bit about the artists and the pieces themselves.  I found a great coloring book with different paintings from numerous artists on Amazon – Art Masterpieces to Color, 60 Great Paintings from Botticelli to Picasso.

On Fridays we get together for an half-hour, to color and listen to classical music.  This week we listened to Mozart and made an interesting discovery.  It turns out that the music to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the ABC song and many more are much older than we could have guessed.  The girls recognized the tune in Mozart’s 12 Variations on “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman”.  Mozart did not write the music himself, but used it in his compositions.  Here is the link to a website that we use to listen to music on Fridays – ClassicalConnect.com.

We are not creating our own masterpieces and we are not learning to play an instrument or read music, but at least we are gaining a bit of culture and we are having fun doing it together.

As part of today’s science lesson, about the sun, we headed outside to make s’mores.  The idea was to show the kids how hot the sun is and that different materials melt at different temperatures.  The chocolate melted quickly and become lovely and gooey.

The girls also took a magnifying glass to a few dried leaves and saw for themselves how one can manipulate the suns rays; by concentrating the rays the heat intensifies.

We have now completed 3 full weeks of school and it has been our best homeschool year so far.  The schedule that I prepared is working well for us, we have lots of time for field trips, trips with friends and time to do fun projects as well as our regular school work.

Last year Emily struggled with mathematics and this year she seems to be doing much better.  The concepts are now more familiar to her and we can move through our work at a faster pace.  We are still behind, but we are working faster now and instead of falling further behind, we are slowly catching up to her grade level.

Writing is going very well, we are using Writing with Ease, this is one of her favorite subjects.  I love that the program breaks writing down into skills and teaches each step slowly and thoroughly.  Emily is very good at dictation, her spelling improves every week and narration comes much more naturally to her now.

This week in History we are learning about the Ancient Chinese cultures.  Today, we read about the Sui and Tang Dynasties while enjoying Chinese food in the back yard.  We also started making “lacquer” bowls in the Chinese style.  Later this week we will paint them black, red and gold as they were traditionally made.

Alexia is doing regular reading lessons now and she loves to do her workbook.  I do not pace her workbooks, I let her do as many or as little as she wants.  Later this year I will structure her writing more, but for now she is enjoying doing it at her own pace.  She sits in on all our math games and is learning a lot from them.  She is a natural logical thinker and mathematics comes very easy to her, so I prefer to keep it fun until she starts school next year in Kindergarten.

Here are a few pictures from today.  The girls were dressed in their “uniforms” since we went out to the library and to buy Chinese food during regular school ours.  This way people are less likely to ask questions about why they are not at school.

We spotted a deer on our early morning walk.  The girls like to get out before it is completely light.

Chinese food and history lessons outside today.

Emily mastering the chopsticks.

Alexia doing her work book.

Emily reading during quiet time.

A smile during math review, this is a great step up from last year!