LITTLE GARDENERS

Planting Impatiens with the 4 year old and 2 year old. Even if we planted nothing, they love to dig and dig!Amelia is following my example to loosen the roots a bit.
Calvin is showing off his "tamping" technique. (They did such a good job!)

And they were so proud of the finished product.

Whoops. I put this out of order. This is scooping compost into the pots before planting.

It's almost like planting was intended for kids this age. They loved each step.

And last of all, we watered them of course.

Although she enjoyed it all, I think Millie liked watering best. Calvin helped her to pour proportionate amounts. And now we have two pots with shade-loving blooms sitting in a cool place on our front porch. :-)

FROG ON THE BLOG

Such good comments on that last post AND I had such a witty idea for another blog post title, that I thought I'd post a few more pictures of Algonquin. ;-) This way you can see enough detail to observe his suction-cup toes. We think he's pretty neat. (But doesn't feel "neat" with those suction toes on my bare foot!!)
He's the only animal or insect so far that can scale the glass walls of the terrarium.

Alright, you get the idea. Just one more...

Wrapping those toes around Sam's fingers. Sam's in heaven, of course. How can we mothers complain too loudly when they love these things so much! There's nothing else on their minds these days.

FROGS!

The boys have caught a number of frogs over the last year. They caught three little toads (we think) last fall. We still have one of them. He's only a few centimeters long. Peter bought the boys an empty fish tank to use as a terrarium and he lives in there, in the garage. The boys catch insects to feed him. He hibernated over the winter. His name is Teddy. Recently, they were so excited to spot a larger frog on our deck during a rain storm. We've given him a temporary home in the terrarium in order to enjoy and study him a bit before setting him loose. The boys have called him Algonquin. Samuel created a logbook to record observations about his terrarium friends while they are with us. They've caught lots of other things that are kept briefly and then released, salamanders, snakes and bugs of all kinds. Most of these have been caught here at our house, and some at places we've visited. Samuel is working on a blogpost talking about the different things that he has caught with pictures to record them. So there will be more about this to come...

THIS post, however, is really about the frogs. We got them out the other day.

Can you guess what she is holding?

Algonquin. :-) When the boys hold him he can be very hard to hold onto. He jumps out of their grasp so quickly! But, he seems to like Amelia's little palm and placidly sits there.
Once she had him she wasn't letting him go.

I took a little video of Millie with the frogs. The boys love the ending.

CURRICULUM SHOPPING

Peter and I finally made our way out to a local homeschool curriculum store. There is so much available for homeschooling, but most of it has to be ordered online or through a catalog. We knew there was a store about 1/2 hour away that carried much of the curriculum that we use, but we hadn't taken the time to get over there before this week. It was nice to get to look through some of the books before buying them, a luxury unavailable on the web.

Here's what we came home with:

The science book in the middle, "Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day" in the Exploring Creation series is what we will be studying this summer. We're going to take a break from the "Swimming Creatures of the Fifth Day" so that we can study birds and insects during the season that they can be observed outside. The boys are trying to patiently take turns looking at this new book, but it's very hard!! We already started it yesterday. (We got it on Wednesday)
Above and below are some views of the pages of the science text. I could not say enough good things about this curriculum. Filled with incredibly interesting, read-aloud text and quality photographs on every page, no one can tear themselves away to move on to another subject. We are so thankful for Apologia, who put out this marvelous, creation-based teaching tool. You may or may not know how DIFFICULT it is to get good science books that don't teach evolution. We are strongly committed to keeping our children away from the atheistic teachings of evolution.

We picked up the last two of a series of 5 nature readers from Christian Liberty Press.

Another quality Christian science tool in the form of a reader (easy reading to do on their own). There are charming drawings all throughout (below) to help maintain interest. They are very well done and get high ratings with my children.

Next is some fun math to do over the summer. We are going to take a break from their regular math curriculum and do some fun review in these books.

Miquon offers fun "lab sheets" that are creative and different. I have used these to occasionally give the kids a break from the norm and a fun way to review the concepts that they've learned all year.

Peter picked three biographical books that happened to be in stock. These and the Streams of Civilization history book were the things that we got that we hadn't planned on, but happened to find. Two of the below books are put out by the same publisher as the nature readers, Christian Liberty Press. We have become fond of their books. They have a standard format of child-friendly, interesting text that is well inter-mixed with quality illustrations. The Ocean of Truth is a biography of Sir Isaac Newton. The other biography is of John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress. The third isn't exactly a biography but a bit of a compilation of many small biographies of inventions. Sounds funny, but when I flipped through it, I was instantly captivated. It looks SO interesting! The boys are going to eat it up. They will love to hear just how the Flintlock Rifle was made and be so interested to know exactly how the steam engine was first invented and how it works. A good find.

These are some illustrations of a portion of The Story of Inventions explaining how steel is made. Most pages have illustrations like this. It makes for very clear and interesting reading.

It always feels good to bring home more good things to study together.

BATHING BABY

Cecily grew into the bath seat. She seemed pretty happy to be able to sit up and observe the water instead of laying down in it.Amelia saw that seat and couldn't stand to not jump in the tub too.
What really made me laugh was how much she wanted to help me. She insisted on washing Cecy's hair.

I think babies are so very cute right after a bath.

Not to mention sweet-smelling.

DAY OF GARDENING

Actually, we're planning to try to go out to the Oldlands' about once a week to help with gardening. These pictures are from Memorial Day.

This is Cecily and Jonathan greeting each other when we first arrived. He crawled right over and sat here interacting with her for a while.

They're so cute reaching out and touching each other and "talking" to each other.
Bill and Peter in the lower garden. Peter is leaning over the onions.

Some of the kids at the upper garden.

Sam is showing them a crab spider he found.

The mound next to Will has broccoli and cabbage plants and the farther mound has pea vines.

Three of the six rows of green beans.

Using shovels to turn over soil on the unplanted mounds that were starting to get some weeds.

Millie is heading for the house.

Water break.

The water was by the lower garden, so this is looking from there up to the upper garden.

Weeding, building a trellis for the pea vines and working on the fence.

Amelia was doing her part, playing hard. :-)

Jonathan and Cecily played together in the portable crib.

Calvin and Millie played a little on the swingset before we left.

Amelia is just figuring this thing out. Calvin helped her get her legs and feet into the right position and to hold on tight.

There, she got the hang of it.

Some goofing around in the car on the way home. (It's about 1/2 hour)

:-) A little sunburn to take home!