Weekly Report and Nature walk

I hate to say it again but we didn't do much school work this week. Monday we woke up to an inch of snow and the kids had to go outside and play in it. They were so excited that it had snowed that they played outside for about 2 hours in the morning and then for about 2 hours in the afternoon. I couldn't get them to come in long enough to get any school work done. Then on Tuesday they wanted to back out and play with the little bit of snow that hadn't melted. We also attempted our first nature walk on Tuesday. We walked around our house. They weren't that amused with it and when I asked them what they had seen Speed Racer said trees, grass, our house. Princess did come up with a good question. She asked what kind of fruit grows in the winter. It told her that in the north things don't grow because it is too cold and the ground is frozen. I need to research what does grow in the southern states in the winter.

Math: We are in the last workbook of math 2! Yippie! They did 3 lessons this week and are working on the triplet 16, 9, 7. I can't be happier with how the are learning the addition and subtraction facts!

Grammar: I've decided to switch to another grammar program. First Language Lessons just isn't working for us. I'm looking into Growing with Grammar, or Primary Language Lessons, or both.

History: We reviewed chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7. I was amazed at what they had remember!

Poetry: We are memorizing. I Heard A Bird Sing by Oliver Herfor. You can read this on my sidebar. It's a sweet short poem. We haven't memorized poetry in awhile so I thought we would start with something short.

Writing: We are using Writing With Ease. I don't have the workbooks that go along with this so it doesn't always get done. I've decided to put them both in level one for now. Princess is better at narrating than Speed Racer but I thought it wouldn't hurt her any and I can always beef it up some for her.

It was so nice out on Thursday, an unseasonably warm 58 degrees, that we went on a real nature walk. We live in the suburbs, but we have a small line of woods that borders our sub-division. We have never ventured through them so I thought this would be perfect for our first nature walk. We were surprised to find a marked trail with bridges and everything! The kids were so excited. I wasn't thinking ahead of time and did not dress for the occasion! I didn't have tennis shoes on because my last pair bit the dust a couple of months ago. I don't know why but I wasn't expecting it to be muddy! Plus Sweetie Pie was in a dress with tights...umm like I said I wasn't thinking. I brought our camera along to take pictures and after only taking 4 or 5 my memory card was full so I started to delete some old pictures and then the battery went dead! LOL It really turned into quite an adventure. We found a small stream that was partly frozen over. At a few spots along the stream there were logs going across so the kids decided to walk across the logs. Casanova was so cute, he didn't want to stand up so he crawled across by putting each leg on one log. They were having such a great time I had trouble keeping track of them all. They kept running in different directions. At one point I thought I had lost Casanova! I told him to wait for me while I showed Princess how to get back across the stream, after walking across once she was scared to come back across. By the time I showed her another way Casanova was nowhere in sight! I started screaming for him and eventually he came running. I told him he needed to stay where I could see him. At the point I decided we had enough for the day and they each moaned and groaned as we headed back home. I told them we would come back another day. I'm so happy they had such a great time, and we have the perfect spot for our nature walks! Our lessons for The Outdoor Challenge didn't get done because they wouldn't stay quiet long enough to listen to the sounds of nature, they were just happy to be out in it!