First day of Summer Break!

We've had a fun, exhausting day with Nana & Poppy BIll. We spent all day today visiting farmers markets and the Amish bulk foods grocery in east TN. Visiting Sam's tomorrow and we're stocked for weeks at the Farm! Looking forward to getting there tomorrow. Embree bought some sunflowers that are already 6 ft tall. We'll plant them when we arrive in Crumpler. We are also looking forward to planting a tiny garden with lettuce and tomatoes. Can't wait to get settled in for the summer. We have three required days of school left since we took this past week off, but I'm looking forward to doing it at the picnic table on the front porch! We'll visit the library and get signed up for summer reading, and stop by to see Great Granny Farthing this week. Excited about going to Granny & Pop's next weekend, too!

In celebration of the beginning of summer, our homeschool group got together to get Henna Tattoos (Mehndi). There were 18 of us and we left with some pretty neat designs. We've been studying ancient India & China and thought we'd incorporate the traditional Mehndi artform. Everyone had a lot of fun!Embree got a very cute SEAHORSE!

Brice enjoyed the company of friends and his Chocolate/Banana smoothie.
No tattoo for him...at least not this summer.

Reeves got a DRAGON!

Mom got a TREE...a large tree...much larger tattoo than she originally intended. But, hey, it's summer and you only live once!

This will be my last post until we get to the farm for the summer and figure out the best way to get things posted. Hopefully, we'll be busy with nature studies and science experiments and have lots of pictures to post shortly. Happy summer!

Reeves & His Buddies

 

 

Jeannie Gambill

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. Jimi Hendrix

 

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland (presented by my children's theatre program, Stage Left of Georgetown Community Theatre) opens tomorrow night. 90 kids in cast and crew! Assistant Director/Stage Manager, choreographer, crew, and all cast members are all 18 or younger. Kids designed their own costumes! Embree is the prop mistress. She's very good backstage. I'm happy she enjoys it. It's something we can enjoy together until I become too uncool to hang out with! Caterpillar Trey, and Quatro
Alice, Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dum

Alice and Humpty Dumpty

The Knave of Hearts

Brice's new favorite snack

Challenge #4: Japanese Garden

Challenge 4: Japanese Garden

May 19, 2009
Today, we visited Yuko-En on The Elkhorn, the Japanese Friendship Garden here in Georgetown. We are still in the general noticing phases of our nature study project, so we just looked today...hoping to be surprised by some things we saw for the first time there today. The kids spotted some two-foot long koi in the murky pond and all three were fascinated by a waterfall. We found lots of treasures in this spot we’ve visited many times before...we used new eyes this time! Embree said this trip reminded her of a poem she has been working to memorize.

Afternoon on a Hill
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes.
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when the lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
and then start down!

Though we took some nice pictres of the flora and fauna, the ones of the kids are the best...

The waterfall was fun for all!

The kids made their own Zen garden in the gravel pathway.

Extra: Embree, my backstage "Techie" for Alice in Wonderland. Brice...advertising!

Challenge #3: Journal Collecting

May 13, 2009
Today our goal was to collect entries to our journals...photos are ok, but we began working on rubbings of leaves & bark, and leaves & blooms for pressing. Embree collected the most in her journal, sketching as well as pressing many bits & pieces. I prefer photography, and Reeves prefers hands-on exploration, occasionally stopping to photograph something. He hasn’t made an entry into his journal yet, but remains excited about exploring on our walks. Embree enjoys stopping and really examining a leaf or ant in fine detail. Brice runs and runs, and then usually falls asleep in the stroller, as he did today. We walked the 6-8 block stretch around the College and investigated the flora in the Scott County Native Plant Arboretum on campus, as well as our own and our neighbors yards. Our discoveries mounted again today.

Phlox that has appeared among the peonies.

Lupines in our flowerbed. We brought these back from the farmer's market in Ashe Co. last summer.

Locust Study:
The kids had never noticed that the Locust trees on campus produce bean pods. Opening them was a challenge and inside was a gooey surprise.

Fringe Tree

Wild Columbine

Sweet Shrub (Nana calls this a Bubby Bush)

EXTRA: Reeves has finally begun to lose teeth!

Discovery School Nature Study
Challenge #2: Noticing
May 9, 2009 Today we went to Great Crossing Park for our nature walk. Our goal was to just look, listen, and feel...nothing more specific than that. In the hour that we were there, we covered only about 100-200 yards of the trail and then back to the car. The kids found so many things to look at, photograph, sketch, in that short space. Since we’ve begun, I find them stopping more often on daily outings to just notice something they find interesting...a flower, a rock, a small plant growing from a crack in the sidewalk. We’ve stumbled upon something that they look forward to and find exciting and motivating.

Mushroom Study

Clover Study: Though I grew up loving this flower, it was a first time find for the kids.
Sycamore Study: We love the bark of this tree andwondered why the old ones all opened at the bottom? One opened all the way to the top and the kids wished they could climb up and jump out of the top into the Elkhorn Creek!

Embree measures herself against the flood gauge.

Test post

This is a test post to those of you who are signed up to receive an email each time we leave a new post. If you got this via email, pleae reply to jeanniegambill@bellsouth.net and let me know it's working. If you follow us on your own, by reading the blog, and you'd like to be added to our email list, let me know there too!! Have a great day!

Discovery School Nature Study: A journal of our discovery of the natural world around us

Challenge #1: Let’s Get Started

Resources
· Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock ww.archive.org/details/handbookofnature002506mbp
· Outdoor Hour Challenges, Nature study close to home by Barbara McCoy
· Handbook of Nature Study Blog: handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com

This week’s challenge was to just get out into nature nearby our house. We chose to visit our friend Kathy’s backyard garden. She’s an avid gardener and has transformed the shape of her backyard into a lovely cottage garden with a babbling water fall and fish pond that the kids love. We’ve been so many times that the Reeves was surprised I chose there as our first spot. What could we see that we hadn’t seen before? So we decided to look past all the landscaping and transplanted flowers. We chose to focus, instead on the pieces of nature that were there by chance. It was a whole new location then. Reeves and I took pictures of lots of treasures. While I found it hard to stray from flowering plants, Reeves found several unusual items. Following is our photo diary for this week. Because we will be learning more about identification and journaling, I will post these with general descriptions only.

Snow drops? Not sure. Reeves spotted these in our driveway. Possibly from perennial seeds strewn last year?

Dandelion Fluff - that's the technical term!:)

Cones of a Hemlock

A violet

A lily pad (not naturally occuring, but cool!)

Remains of a Grackle. Reeves was fascinated by the maggots. It was a good lesson about the creatures that help keep nature cleaned up and tidy.

In order to better keep up with posting, I'm going to go to a once weekly format. We are beginning a nature study today that we'll post each week along with special things from the week.