Learning all the time

Ok, I fess up I can find a way to turn almost any event into a 'home school' moment, not that I make a point about it to the children very often. Certainly there will be no 'write 10 sentences about the Wizzard of Oz' project happening - some things are just for fun. However, when I think about all of the things we do, places we go, discussions we have, books we read, well it can all be placed some where in a school curiculum. Some days are still shouting days, actually I think they coincide with other things going on in the month, like my monthly gift and Daddy being in Africa and me not sleeping more than 4 hours - not really sure why because I have never really had insomnia before - perhaps it is an over 40 thing...oh well

Any way, we are never short of things to do and this week we have completed two Andy Warhol art projects and on Friday we will be going to an Exhibit of his art...how fun. Today we also did some science experiments and read about the Inuit (we have some Inuit projects to do as we progress though some Native American History and prepare for a trip to the Museum of Natural History). Tomorrow we go back to Cranberry Lake in the afternoon to see if anything came of The Night of the Salamanders (i.e. egg clusters) and on Wednesday we be back at Co-op again doing all sorts of cool things.

And, yes! I can even find curiculum topics in a visit to Australia and a week skiing.

Making a bird house with Daddy. Although a project with alot of involvement from Daddy given the use of nice new power tools - (you see what happens when you stay in a place more than two years, those power tools you thought you could do without...well you find that you can't do without them after all and they just happen to be on sale at an amazing price at Home Depot...what is a fellow to do?)







The Botanic Garden Orchid show. The orchids were so impressive that even the boy's were entertained for at least 20 minutes. Friends had taken 40 minutes to get through the exhibit, but I knew we would not need that much time :-)

After the exhibit we met up with our friends and went to the Chidlren's Education centre where the wonderful staff taught us all about chocolate and vanilla - did you know that Vanilla comes from an Orchid? That it only grows in certain equatorial countries AND has to be polinated by hand within a 4 hour window of opportunity once a year. No wonder it is so expensive.



Boo Hoo, our music teacher of a year is moving to England. Yeah for her of course but sad for us. So, now we are looking for a new piano teacher and hoping Daddy can find enough energy at least once a week in the evening (when he is not in Africa) to give the boys a guitar lesson.


This is how the Native American's made maple sugar. They used a hollowed out log, filled it with sap and then used hot stones from the fire to (ever so) slowly boil the sap and evaporate the water - leaving only the sugar crystals hours and hours later. The three chn did this but you only need one photo to get the picture, thank goodness for Maple Syrup outlet stores in Vermont...we have over a gallon of it now, should last until next March.


So it is dark and cold (but not too cold) and raining so what does one do? Head out with rain coats, umbrellas, torches and camera's to search for Salamanders on their way out of their winter hiding spaces to their vernal pools - looking for some Salamander Business!!! Of course!

At Cranberry they have 4 vernal pools - pools which dry in the summer, which is important because they don't support fish which otherwise would eat the salamander and frog eggs and babies. This was actually pretty cool and it only happens a couple of nights a year one for the boys and perhaps a few days later (if not on the same night) for the girls. We saw nearly 40 in just an hour and only covering a small area of ground along the preserve entrance road, we and the preserve curator were very excited and very glad that it was not just a wet and cold walk in the woods after all.






This day was basic survival and fire making skills. Of course I took along some marshmallows, which strictly speaking are not required for survival but they were fun none the less.