Creekside Trails...

"The children walk every day; they are never out less than an hour when the weather is suitable." Charlotte Mason, Home Education.

With that in mind, we decided, as a family, to take more advantage of the numerous creekside trails in our area...

The trail itself. Some are paved like this one, others are just dirt

A nice view of the creek

Mustard flowers, which smell heavenly

Taking a brief break by the water

Such prettiness

Launching a leaf "boat"

Elder in bloom

My girl, glowing in the sunshine, gathering more leaf "boats"

It was a nice way to wrap up the week! We also saw birds - a mating pair of Mallard ducks, a couple of Snowy Egrets, and one magnificent Black Crowned Night Heron (not, as my BIL once told the kids, a "Great Night Herring", which always makes us giggle as we picture a fish soaring through the air), fishing for its evening meal. And we saw entire schools of little fish in the creek.

This, overall, has been a pretty good week as far as homeschooling and all that went. 

Science:

We read about creatures in the soil in science, and The Boy read some more of a couple of Paul Fleisher's books on physics. The Girl and I read about dragonflies as well, in A Child's Story of the Animal World. We did the final check on our moldy bread experiment, coming to the conclusion that the damp bread definitely molds more quickly, and much more grotesquely, and we re-started the bean sprouting experiment (my bad).

History:

We read a bit more about the ancient Egyptians, mainly Thutmose I and Hatshepsut, and we read about automobiles, along with a chapter on Marie Antoinette. Believe it or not, I'm still not absolutely positive about history in the fall! I'm down to these choices:

• American History, using Hakim's Concise History of US as a "spine" text
• Continue world history with K12's Human Odyssey as the spine text
• Just read various titles from this amazing list (pdf) of Landmark and World Landmark books
• Read from both world and American history spine texts once a week, and then explore areas of interest with the Landmark books (adapt the Core Knowledge sequence, 2 grades per year?)

I'll figure it out before fall, I think!

Math and Language Arts:

We're trucking along! The Boy is tackling division work in math, and participles in writing, while The Girl is working on cardinal and ordinal numbers in math. She's on lesson 18 in Reading Horizons, which I will be writing more about quite soon.

The Girl also read a couple more stories to me this week, from the Elson Reader: Primer, and The Boy wrote a lot in his journal. We didn't work in the Complete Writer this week, but I plan to get back to it next week.

Everything Else:

We read about the Rock of Gibraltar this week, in Halliburton's book, located it on our world map, and then watched Anthony Bourdain's visit to Spain. We did an art project on complimentary colors (I'll get pics up asap!), and then The Girl spent a lot of the week painting.

The Girl's complimentary colors project

 And The Boy's work

The Girl and I are really enjoying Heidi together (although every time they talk about the food Heidi eats, wants to know where the fruits and vegetables are!), and we're all having a lot of fun with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. We've settled into a really nice routine at bedtime: I read a chapter of Heidi to The Girl, while The Boy reads his own book, and then we all settle in with a good chapter of Harry Potter!

We also started reading The Trumpet of the Swan, which led to great discussions on swans, including measuring out what an eight foot wing span would look like, as well as compasses, and being out in nature alone. The Girl likes all the nature descriptions in the book so far, and liked that the main character keeps a journal, just like he does!

Other Bits & Pieces:

I finished up another semester! I actually turned in my last paper today. As for my fall class schedule, I'm waiting to see the language offerings at the local community/junior college, since the class times at the university don't mesh well with my schedule, though I did sign up for the grad-level seminar on American literature.

The kids spent a lot of time outdoors this week, playing around with chalk "paintings" on the driveway; throwing the indestructible ball our neighbor gave us to the dogs; watching insects; and all that. We watched Back to the Future last night, and will watch the other two in the trilogy over the next couple of days. I have a lot of fun watching movies like that with them!

It has been a nice week. Nothing too exciting, but just nice! Hope you all had a good week too, and enjoy your weekend!

P.S. Thanks for all the feedback on scheduling! We're going to give year 'round homeschooling a try!