Lifestyle of Learning: Birthday, Butterfly Garden, and Swimming Lessons

My intent in the last post was to get it all done in one post, but I had to change my course of action, b/c after the last image I posted, I was unable to write anything below!

So continuing on...

Jaden William turned eight this month. He's wanted to take a flight in a plane for a long time now, so we made it happen for him on his birthday. He'd been up for a short helicopter ride with my father two years ago for the latter's 50th birthday. This was Trusten's first flight, though, as he went with William. So did Nathan, because Nathan had never been up in a private plane before, whereas I have many times. They all enjoyed it, and I'm so happy William finally got to fly. :-)

Whereas Nathan got Trusten his first bike on his birthday, he gave William his second but first new one. He loves it! I got William a lot of books--some Hardy Boy mysteries, a godly science fiction book, and a whole set of new graphic novels on inventors and their inventions--as well as a Light Wedge, which is one of those things that fit over the pages of a person's book and lights them up in the dark. JW loves reading in his bed at night; now he no longer needs to use a flash light. He loves this, too.

We finally planted our butterfly garden, the plan of which was shown in a previous post. I had to get seeds for all but one of the kinds of plants, of which I got two (for the tops of the butterfly antennae). I planted a bit late, but I'm pleased that I did it, and even if it doesn't turn out to be the best I wanted, I'll be content if some flowers come up, and the butterflies come. We have a lot of butterflies, anyway, and hey, the butterflies like just the manured dirt I used.

We reviewed seeds, roots, and other plant parts, as well as the importance of earthworms, which included reading some of our favorite books we have (worm book was posted in a recent post):

The Organic Farm by Shawn Frost and What Do Roots Do? by Kathleen Kudlinksi

The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and The Organic Adventures of Tucker the Tomato by Ray Ortega

We haven't worked much on JW's spelling and math practice, because he and Trusten have had swimming lessons, and there's been plenty else to do after we get back home. Soon we'll get to really working on the plant project. Here are some pictures of things on our nature walks: