The female bird has now laid a total of 5 tiny pale blue eggs, which we are eager to see her hatch! We attached a half-cocount shell of bird seed to the door frame near the nest, and put a shallow bowl of water out for them too. We're all trying to use the backdoor as often as possible to avoid disturbing the little family.
They are lovely - he looks just like the picture above, and she's all brown and soft-looking.
The science fair at C.O.'s charter school was great! There was a potluck dinner in the kids' garden first - we brought a salad which disappeared very quickly. The charter school's band played while everyone ate (think semi-grunge rock band with Celtic influences rather than school marching band). They wrote all their own songs too. We also watched a yoga demonstration, and then headed inside to show off the science projects. Before long, C.O. had a crowd gathered around the volcano, complete with the traditional 3-sided backdrop, for which C.O. painted volcano pictures. He did demonstration after demonstration until he ran out of colored vinegar! M and I are really proud of him - he's really blossoming in all that he's learned so far this year. A lot of the other projects were really cool too - we saw optical illusions, composting, animal-focused projects (including one on barn owls with a dissected owl pellet), and more. I'll post pictures when I figure out how to get them off my phone!
Schoolwork-wise, we've been working on adding "e" to words in phonics to get long vowel sounds, something I had a bit of trepidation over, but C.O. picked it up right away, and even took it further - two of his spelling words in this unit are "take" and "make", and he wrote down "cake" all on his own! In math, we are now working on congruent shapes and the beginnings of multiplication. The unit on dinosaurs has been a huge hit so far - we are blazing through the library books, and both kids pretend to be paleontologists every time they're near a sand box.
Yesterday both elflings had doctor's appointments, for their annual checkups. They had vision and hearing tests, bloodwork done for lead and iron, shots (poor C.J., but at least she's not as far behind as I thought with her vaccinations, so we're still taking them slowly). Both are in excellent health! We really liked the doctor, who was very gentle and has a great bedside manner with kids, and the fact that both kids were seen together, so he would listen to C.O.'s heart, let C.O. listen, and then repeat the process with C.J. As a treat, my sister took us all out for ice cream afterwards, at Coldstone Creamery. My favorite part is always the fresh raspberry sauce... mmmmmmmm.
Today M and I are going shopping for C.O.'s birthday - he'll be SIX on Monday! We're putting a sandbox in our small backyard as the "big" present, and we'll be getting him a couple of smaller, wrappable items as well. I'm baking a gazillion cupcakes tomorrow, and tomorrow evening we're going out with family to celebrate!
I just love that I learn so much from other homeschool moms!! We feed the birds in our backyard (I have a picture of our nature/bird center in a slide show on my blog right now) and I was just saying to Ben that I want to get a field guide so we could ID the birds we see. Now I know the we have Red House Finches! I never knew that the little brown ones were the females and the red the males- They're always squabbling with one another- maybe I should have guessed!LOL Not to mention the tendency for male birds to have all the fancy looks in general. We have a few other birds that visit often too- hummingbirds, two gray doves come every afternoon, several crows and a small black bird of some sort. We have a nest in one f our eves too- I think both the red house finches are up there and the small black birds- it looks like two nests this spring instead of just the one that was there last spring.
ReplyDeleteHow cool that your nest is visible- we can't see ours, but last year we got to see the babies peeking out before they were brave enough to fly.
First off... HAPPY BIRTHDAY C.O.!!
ReplyDeleteSecond, how weird that they would choose to make a nest in your front door. You'd think there would be way too much movement there. Odd.
Congrats on the successful science fair. Sounds like it was a lot of fun.
Happy birthday, C.O.! Happy, happy day to you and a blessed new year!
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely post, by the way. We have red finches in our backyard, though we've not been fortunate enough to have any nest in our front door wreath. How amazing! Take lots of pictures and blog, blog, blog!
Our Nature/bird center sort of happened by accident. I moved our compost over to the corner where that greed thing is- I think it is a phone company box or something. It can't be moved so I thought I dish of bird seed would be great there. I'm going to get a bird bath to place in front of the green thing and I planed morning glory around the compost so eventually it will look really pretty over there. The corn cob is supposed to be for the squirrel, he came once before we had it and was trying to take bird seed- really fun to watch. I decided he could have a piece of the center and got the corn for him and he hasn't been back since. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteHow does one have a butterfly garden? that sounds Lovely!
As for Suzuki- I think the method can be applied to any instrument really. I think Sue (homenveggie in my blog sidebar) does Suzuki in some fashion- it is somewhere in my brain, but I'm not remembering fully right now. And Maria just posted to me that she did Suzuki violin for two years- so she's a good resource too! Basically Suzuki teaches in a very natural pattern- same way we learn language. first you hear the music- a lot- so that it becomes very familiar. then you start playing it, then you learn to read and write it. I think the reading and writing are a ways down the road too.
oh and another Suzuki homeschooling mom is Nurtured by Love also in my side bar. Her kids are amazing. She is a instructor though so they've been truly learning from birth.