The Great Outdoors!

A viewing dock out into the lake allowed us
to watch turtles swim!

One of the things I love about home schooling is being able to occasionally set aside the formal lessons in order to get some hands on learning on a gorgeous fall day. The girls and I did exactly that the other day when we headed out to spend several hours exploring a local wildlife reserve. Besides stopping to read the signs about the eco-friendly parking lot, the benefits of a rain barrel, the process of building an oyster shell reef, and the history of the park itself (it used to be farmland), we also consulted the pocket field guides we brought along to learn about the local flora and fauna:

Trees: sweet gum, water oak, sassafras, magnolia, and holly

Flowers: dayflowers, smart weed, goldenrod, and a variety of other wildflowers that could not be identified

Other Plants: shelf fungus, ferns, muscadine vines, and LOTS of mushrooms,

Bugs: daddy long legs, pill bugs, water striders, ants, dragonflies, and butterflies

Animals: turtles, minnows, oysters (well, shells anyway)

We loved this place! There are still a handful of trails we've yet to explore, so we'll definitely be going back.

Now that autumn and cooler weather is finally here, the girls have also been spending many hours outside in our own backyard. While I'm not privy to the details of their complex pretend play, it involves lots of running around, climbing, and collecting and arranging sticks, stones, leaves, and pretty much anything else they can find. They've also been riding their bikes again on a regular basis, and the other day they got to explore a bit more of our neighborhood when I decided to go for a nice long walk and told them to grab their bikes and join me.

Little Runners
The girls are still loving running club. This past week Miss C actually had 9 and under group do a timed 1/2 mile run. Lion and Bug both beat their time from when Daddy and I took them running last month (Monkey never bothered to ask Miss C what her time was, but she had fun just running with a friend of hers). Lion did so well in fact that Miss C is going to have her run the timed full mile with the big kids next month! Lion was SO excited to be moving up. Miss C's goal is to have all kids running the timed full mile, but she's moving them up as she deems them ready. So far only Lion and two other kids (both bigger than her) are ready to make the switch.

While I'm not participating at the girls request, I did manage to find another mom who'll walk laps with me instead of standing on the sidelines while the kids have running club. This week though, we pretty much neutralized any calories burned by taking the kiddos out for ice cream afterwards with a couple other moms. Fun times!

New Addition!

Our academic lessons continue as usual with no major milestones to report at this point. However, we recently acquired a huge magnetic, dry erase board! While Daddy and I are both looking forward to having this big white space for teaching purposes, the girls have spent a good portion of the weekend so far drawing and playing with our large and mostly unused collection of magnets.