Nature Fun Walk, First Kings of Israel, and Hibernating Animals

For the week of December 9-15, 2012:

The first day of the week we did not do any survival learning.  Instead it was a free day.  I really wanted to write a long email to a beloved friend, and Nathan wanted to go to Kansas to hunt on a client's property for which he got a year's lease in return for installing a thermostat.  Pretty good deal!  So the kids watched several Care Bears episodes.  There are at least two seasons worth that are Amazon Prime eligible.  I like the Care Bears, because they teach morals and how to be loving and kind even to your enemies.

The kids did free drawing, painting, etc., especially William.  He traced his hand for one picture and then made a chicken out of it:

He has some pen sketches in one of his journals that I really like.  He drew various birds, and he drew a couple pretty good drawings of trucks.  He worked a lot on drawing inventions this week, too.  He goes through phases where he does a lot of that.  He has a very inventive mind.

I found Trusten producing a page of various interesting irregular shapes, which is something I remember doing quite a bit of as a child.  I remember one time when I was ten I made a page of them and handed the page to my best friend Lindsey for her to name.  She then wrote names beside each shape. I wonder whether I still have that.  I know I kept it for a good while, anyway. 

We read about the first three kings of Israel, covering three chapters in Mystery of History, and we read "Town to City, the Late 1800s" in A Street Through Time. 

During a nature walk, we took a route I'd never gone before (only Jade has with Nathan) on one of our good neighbors' property, up a trail to the top of a hill.  Before heading out I wrapped tape inside-out on the older kids' wrists so that they could make nature bracelets (idea from Big Backyard magazine), and we took along Jaden William's autumn fundana to find everything on the game squares.

Fundanas are fun!

The start of Liv's nature bracelet

Still on the road, the kids posed for me:

Happy was snuggled up to me, as usual:

Can you tell the wind is blowing?  Sadly, this picture came out blurred.  I forgot my hat, so I used the fundana (and Elizabeth usually pulls of her hat, silly girl, but she snuggles against me, anyway).  If you look closely, you can see a dirt mound in the distant background, which is where Nathan is working on digging a pond.

The boys found two bones, believed to be from a donkey or perhaps a cattle. 

Starting up the trail, the boys are happy to show off their newly-found animal bones

We were pleasantly surprised to make a discovery of two puffballs in our pathway:

Jaden William releases spores from a puffball with his bone tool

We reviewed how fungi reproduce by spores and how the puffballs release their spores in a cloud when disturbed.

After we reached the top of the hill and walked out of the woods to the clearing where the high-lines are, we then turned and went back home to eat but not before I snapped another picture:

Our road is between this hill and the one next one you see behind the kids

 On the way back we noticed how one of the trees that was injured a few months ago by the tree-trimmer the county sent down our road has filled its wound with sap:

I'm pulling for this tree to make a full recovery

When we got home I sealed the kids' nature bracelets with another layer of tape.  I'm glad I'd taken a picture of Liv's bracelet early on, because a couple of those goodies were lost somewhere along the way.

These were fun, but the kids were ready for me to cut them off immediately.

We did some reading throughout the week from a book called God's Children.  It's Jaden William's, and we used it a lot when he was younger.  I like most of it, though there are a few things I skip, because it's Catholic stuff.  We read from Proverbs and some from Matthew.  Jaden played a lot of Bookworm on my laptop, and Trust and Liv also played on "their iPod" (my old iPhone).  Liv loves to take pictures with it.  They have little games on there, too.  Trust and Liv watched sight words videos.  Jaden worked on grammar, spelling, etc.  We read some books, but we hardly touched our periodicals.  We did go through some of Trusten's and Liv's Weekly Reader/Scholastic News that discussed animals in the winter and how some hibernate, and they learned about different habitats for animals (mountain, desert, rainforest, etc.).

Trust and Liv get separate issues for one thing, but their Science Spin is the same for their levels.

Overall, we had a pretty good week!  Until next time...