Of their own accord, Ryan and Connor decided to sit and watch the birds at our backyard feeder this afternoon. Connor first, and then Ryan, pulled up a chair, and the two of them sat for longer than I ever believed possible, first simply watching the birds and then identifying and recording the birds they saw. Writing, math, science – check, all accounted for without opening a school book this afternoon!Summer is here. School is out and families are beginning to plan vacations: trips to the beach, an amusement park, a museum… all wonderful places, full of fun, unless you and your child are separated, and then they become places of sheer panic: crowds of people coming and going and large areas of ground…
Tin foil dinners cooked in the open fire, s’mores, skits and songs, sleeping under the stars… well, in tents, but after saying goodnight to a sky filled with stars…. I have such fond memories of camping with the Girl Scouts… and my Mom, who was my Girl Scout leader all the way through Scouts. And…
Farm-fresh strawberries, $2.29. A day of play on the farm, free with our CSA membership. Spending time together enjoying the beauty of God’s world… and not just a few extra-sweet berries, priceless! Let our weekly farm-days begin!
A new school year that is. Today we celebrated the start of the new homeschool year with a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Our science curriculum for this year begins with a unit on butterflies. As we have yet to see any butterflies, aside from…
On several visits to local parks and gardens, the boys and I have heard talk of the difficulty Virginia parks are having with invasive non-native vines overtaking native undergrowth, shading out and replacing native wildflowers, and climbing and eventually killing native trees. Unfortunately, when native plants are edged out, the diversity of plants needed by…
Connor and his new best buddy, Dawson, were talking in the car this evening: Where do you go to school? I’m homeschooled. What is your school like? I don’t know about inside a school building because I go to school in my house. — Silence — I get to stay at home all day and…