Monday, August 29, 2005

our Not Back to School Day

So my youngest and oldest daughters headed back to school today. One is a freshman and a half at UNLV's Honor College and the other is a sophomore at a local public school.

Josh and I ... well we had a Not Back to School Day instead :)

We started with McDonald's McGriddles and watching the weather channel to see what Katrina was up to as she hit landfall. Lots of remembering many facts and such we learned last year when we studied hurricanes and Florida obliged us with 3 to track and study. I'm not sure about this memory thing though. Always seems the student (that's Josh) beats out the mentor (that's me, mom, in case you couldn't figure it out) everytime lol.

We moved on to reading and more remembering (of course by said student again) on the Incas because on Enchanted Learning's calendar they list the fact of Inca King Atahualpa being murdered by the Spanish conqueror Fransisco Pizarro in 1533. We reviewed all this, I say reviewed because we have studied Incas before and yes it seems plenty stuck with Josh. We used one of our favorite resources (which I think the student has memorized!), Dempsey Parr's World History Encyclopedia and also used the Young Student Encyclopedia. Josh has notebooks this year for his subjects and I had him pretend he was a historian and report his findings on the Incan people. I was surprised at how well he did with spelling some of the words since this is usually one of his weaker points. He is coming along without me knowing it seems lol.

Moving on from there was Nature Study (as per our weekly schedule which will be followed very loosely and changed when needed) Now anyone that's been reading this blog knows that nature study with Josh lately is ALL about birds lol. So, on our errand to get groceries we picked up a replacement hummingbird feeder (our original one broke last night when Josh's dad tried to bring it in to refill it). It seems Las Vegas heat and plastic can be at odds- maybe I should make that a science project hmmmm. We not only got the replacement but he talked me into another smaller hummingbird feeder for the front yard, a general bird feeder for the front yard, a thistle sock for the back yard and we just had to get the small suet feeder to be ready for fall migration especially since it was on sale. Oh yeah, we also had to get some black oil sunflower seeds because you can't have a bird feeder with no feed! Thank goodness the hummingbirds nectar is good old fashioned sugar water, 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. Hey, but that gave us Math later too as we had to figure out how to half the proportions for the smaller feeder. We then drew in our nature journals, Josh choosing to draw the large hummingbird feeder with one of the black-chinns at it while I drew pictures of each of the feeders we purchased and put up today. He also read part of a chapter of the book he has been reading on birds called Going Wild, Adventures with Birds in the Suburban Wilderness by Robert Winkler. This is an adult book thatn he is enjoying. Thank goodness birders, who also happen to be writers, (at least from what we have found) write so that even young birders can read the books and you don't have to worry about the content. We also used a quote from the beginning of the chapter he read from as his copywork. Oh, I forgot to mention before we went on the birding accessory shopping expedition, I mean grocery shopping, we began the book My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. We began a bird field notebook similar to one Winkler has and talks of in his book.

All in all not a bad day to not go back to school. :)

2 Comments:

Blogger Angela said...

My daughter has become a bird-brain of late as well!! We found an old tattered field guide at a yard sale, and we are using it to cut and paste into her bird journal. We are reading "Burgess Bird Book for Children" and as we come across a bird, we add it to her journal. Then she tried to sketch it from the picture on the opposite page. It has been really fun so far.

5:47 AM  
Blogger Theresa said...

Sounds like a GREAT not back to school day! I only wish that we could do bird feeders, but I have yet to find one that our devil of a cat cannot exploit for his own evil purposes! Does Josh (or his mentor/mentee) have any suggestions, short of ridding ourselves of Modgirl's cat?

8:02 PM  

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