Fall weekend

Tailgating, football, cider mill, and a little seasonal clothes shopping. Though last week was miserably windy and cold, and yesterday's early morning tailgate left a little to be desired, by noon the sun had come out and the air was warming to an enjoyable fall temperature. It was our little village's fall festival celebration, with hay rides, cider, ponies, you name it. I missed it because I was lucky enough to be at the game, but the boys  had a great time with all the activities while I enjoyed the trouncing at the stadium. And the weather looks promising for the rest of the week, too.

A little light reading

It was too cold, too wet, and too windy to join the homeschooling group at the park today. Maybe on a different day, but not with the sniffles still hanging around. But we did get to try out our new furnace finally, though it was so quiet we forgot to notice. And a cold, rainy, windy day is a great time to curl up with a good library book. After reading Who Was Charles Darwin, a decent book for this reading level but not stellar overall, everything has been "Origin of the Species this" and "Origin of the Species that", so that when we went to the library this morning we just had to look it up and check it out. An illustrated copy, nonetheless.

Hiking for nuts

The autumnal equinox has come and gone. The garden is done growing (I wish the grass would do the same), the fall colors are starting to come out, and most of the week has been dark and rainy. That's fall, and I love it. This is one of the best times to go hiking. Spring is good, too—when nature is twitterpated and busy, and signs of life can be heard and seen throughout the forest—but fall, with its rich colors and warming scents, is also inviting.  The insects are busier in the fall, and there is more nature to collect, like nuts and seeds and fallen leaves.

Having just ditched the sniffles of a cold, and seeing the sky brighten between showers, we took the risk of getting wet and set out for the field near our house, collecting "basket" in hand. Calvin calls the open nature area there the deer field because we find so much of them there—tracks, scat, and bedded areas. It's really just an undeveloped part of our subdivision, and with the housing market being what it is right now I'm hoping it stays that way. Having the completely uncultivated area just a neighborhood block away—open field for hiking, forest for looking, boggy areas for listening—has really been a treat. 

This trip wasn't as rewarding as most. With all the rain and with the grass still being high we found only two deer tracks today. But we counted a multitude of hues in the flora, and discovered other signs of fauna in the several obliterated nut shells we found along the path. Someone found a bounty. The catbird was a noisy companion on this trip. Calvin remembers seeing her on our paved footpath this past spring, but we can't recall ever noticing her before this year. I wonder if she is new to our area, or if we are just paying closer attention than in the past. There are many things that have previously escaped our notice and have only recently become known to us. That is the beauty of discovery.

In the end we had to cut our hike short upon the arrival of the showers that had been threatening all day. We fled the deep meadow, jumping over the puddles we had gingerly stepped around on our way in, forgetting to notice the deepening of the colors on our way out, and jogging the final block to the cozy, dry refuge of our own home. Then on to the next experience, good old kitchen science and some demonstrations of matter.

Then Demonstrations of matter

Evolution—we are here

An update on our progress towards U.S. History by way of the evolution detour. Or actually backtrack, since it's not really out of the way, I suppose. This is turning out to be a really fun exploration. Discussing ages of evolution with Calvin—exploring, researching, sometimes explaining—I've had to look more closely at my notions of life and death. I spent the better part of my college years studying exactly this topic, and still I feel like I am only now really seeing it for its most basic lessons. But that's a post all its own. For now, an update:

The timeline has been keeping us busy. So far we have populated each period of the Paleozoic era. Calvin chooses the critters and designs the scenes, then I get to work with cutting and gluing. Mostly we've been using Evolution, The Story of Life, by Douglas Palmer and Peter Barrett, for sketches. We're really enjoying the process, and even my sore neck, from bending over the pieces, is worth it when we play with them either on the timeline or on his felt board.

Designing the Permian period

The timeline is hanging in our upstairs hallway where the light isn't good for photos, but here is our progress up to yesterday, populated through the Devonian Period.

We've just discovered Back in Time, an app for the iPad that has given us no end of pleasure, starting with the big bang and passing through all the events between then and now with pictures and info and lots of buttons to tap. Less hands on, but equally fun, we've been reading and re-reading The Story of Life, by Steve Jenkins, and Life Story, by Virginia Lee Burton (reviews here), and watching and re-watching the BBC Walking With videos. They've definitely taken some liberties with those, but we are enjoying them nonetheless.

And thanks to said new app and the book Bang! The Universe Verse, plus a push from the recent arrival of BFSU (Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding), we've taken on the idea of matter. All those life forms that are evolving had to come from somewhere, right? This is only cursorily related to the evolution exploration right now and has more to do with the arrival of the BFSU book, in which the states of matter is amongst the first topics to look at (along with classification of stuff, and that we really have down), but when I think about it, clearly they're related. Well, actually all of life, and thus all study, is related, and isn't that the point? So tomorrow we'll be freezing, melting, and steaming water, and other fun experimenting.

And because we're not unit study or subject immersion learners, there are lots of other things going, too, like a little piano, a little math, a lot of reading, a little playing with food in the kitchen, a lot of board gaming, and a little outside play. The workboxes are going well (I'll write about that sometime soon), and we're happy and busy much of the time. Still, sometimes the old fear of not knowing what we're doing will creep in grab me around the neck...until I look around, and then, in one great big "oh, yeah" moment, I'm fine again. Evolution it is.

Non sequitur?

Meet our oddly metallic purple and blue jumping spider. He was tiny and cute and very happy in our garden. Five years ago I would have rapidly fled the scene, but yesterday I used my own (gloved) hand to carefully coax him into a cup so we could get some pictures. This makes me happy.

And on an unrelated note, but entirely worth mentioning, about seven months ago Calvin became determined to play Monopoloy. At the time he knew his numbers, but we hadn't spent any time on math as a subject because it hadn't held much interest. The frustration of Monopoly without prior arithmetic sparked that interest and got us trying Math-U-See, which has served us well in its own way. Now, seven months later, Monopoly has made a comeback, and to drastically different results. The learning wasn't a rush—it was all on his own schedule, and of his desire and determination, and he is pleased with the results, or maybe he just takes them for granted. That warms my heart.

That is to say...life is going well.