Cave Run Lake

The kids found this fish skeleton on the beach.

Anthony

Jacob

Michael and Embree with there weavings.

Tuesday we went to Cave Run Lake with a few friends from our co-op. Ms. Rachel was camping there with her family and invited us to crash her vacation. Ms. Jeannie planned some very fun nature activities. The kids weaved things they found in nature onto tree branches. Then they worked on a study about trees. We had so much fun. The area was so beautiful with the leaves changing color. Chris took the kids fishing, and Jacob caught two very small Bluegills. The kids also really enjoyed all the interesting rocks on the beach. They spent a long time looking through them, and they crushed some to see what kinds of colors they would get.

DJ Feb. 1995 - Oct 12 2009

We lost our puppy on Monday. He had been very sick for the last two weeks. But really he hasn't been well for about a year. He was a gift from my mother to David on his birthday. But he considered himself my dog. He will be missed :(

A friend sent us flowers with teddy bears for each of the boys. The boys really appreciated them.

Our Yellow Bear Caterpillar

Our Yellow Bear caterpillars formed a cocoon and one of them emerged a moth!! The boys LOVE to watch this happen. We have yet to "hatch" a butterfly. Hope to watch that happen soon too. While at Evans Orchard a few weeks ago Jacob found a really cool chrysalis. A very small friend of his really wanted it and Jacob was very sweet and gave it to him. I did take a picture of it though :)

Way behind.......

I am not doing a very good job of keeping up with my blog :( We have been working really hard this year to stay on track with our school work. Between that and the two co-ops we are a part of AND that I have to work at the shop two day a week....I just don't have a lot of free time. My house is going to get up and walk away on its own if I don't clean it soon!!

We have done some fun stuff too!

We Went to the Cincinnati Museum center to see the Dinosaur exhibit and the IMAX movie Dinosaurs Alive. We love the museum center in Cincinnati, it use to be the train station. They still run a few passenger trains through there in the back. We want to take a ride on one sometime.

We have been invited to several birthday parties and made an impromptu trip to Evans Orchard with some of our homeschooling buddies.

Yesterday I decided that we needed a fun learning day. So we spent time outside at the Japanese garden and we went to Royal Springs park downtown. I saw a very interesting animal that we later decided had to be a muskrat. It was dark brown and kind of reminded me of a ferret. It went around some blocks and jumped right in the water!! We had lunch out and stopped by the library. I want to start a nature study a friend recommended but its one of those things that kind of gets forgotten about in the madness of getting all our other work done :( I really love our "unschooling" days and plan to have them regularly this year! It was the boost that we all needed.

Today was Michael and Anthony's gotcha day. They movied in with us six years ago today!

We were not home in time yesterday to watch the Obama speech on education. So we watched it today. Yesterday during dinner I asked each boy why they thought the President was giving a speech to kids. Michael said he thought it was because they were going to make public school days longer. Jacob said it was because of swine flu and Anthony said it was because the students would soon be able to vote.



Jacob was very excited when the president mentioned the flu during his speech....he said "see I was right!" Jacob is very worried about the flu for some reason. I am going to ask them all to write a little something about the speech that said something to "them."



Charlotte sent anthony and egg drop challenge kit for his birthday and we are using that for our science for the day :)

Beautiful Night!!!!

Not much to say but WOW!!! I love the night!!!

A birthday and bugs....

Anthony had is 13th birthday last week. David had a little Home Ec class with the boys, teaching them to make his famous oreo cake. It was wonderful!! He always picks pizza for his birthday dinner.

We have seen lots of bugs lately. We have two Yellow Bear caterpillars at home waiting for them to turn into Tiger moths. We saw an awesome spider at the shop, and I don't even like spiders. I REALLY don't like spiders. We also have a nest of huge bees in the wall of one of the buildings not matter how hard we try to discourage them. I haven't seen any praying mantises yet though which makes me sad.