Friday, September 23, 2011

Week of Fall Fun

Last weekend started on Saturday morning when the kids and I went to the St James Festival where I was playing with a small group from the CNY Flute Choir.


A small group from the CNY Flute Choir
After playing we got paid in food so we sat with Sul-Young, Sara, and John as we ate our Korean food (and they shared with my hungry kids)
After leaving the festival we headed across the street to check out Betts Library then we went to Webster Pond where you can, for a donation, get cups of corn to feed the ducks and geese.
Caleb making friends



They ate corn right out of our hands

Sunday after church we walked over to the Westcott Cultural Festival which takes place just about a block from our house. It was fun wandering and looking at the booths, making crafts in the library parking lot, visiting with neighborhood friends and generally avoiding the used book sale going on at the library ;)
 This clown made us balloon animals

The girls made stuff out of clay - H made a tea set, A made a couch for her Pollies

L is not excited about how her cup is turning out

McGruff, a robot dog, was there telling kids to scream if they saw their parents texting or talking on the phone while driving

There were races for kids (love this pic with our upstairs neighbor coaching her little brother on the far left)

Hannah came in first followed closely by Lydia in this heat
 On Tuesday we went to Owen Orchards for a field trip with friends from the Waterloo area. (It felt almost like a family reunion. I love all the other mommies that were there and miss sharing life with them! Many of them I either grew up with or went to Tuesday morning Bible study with, or both.) The field trip started in the barn with an education on how honey bees help orchards
Worker bees on the left, queen bee on the right and my drone in the middle

checking out the bee hive
Then we took a wagon ride out to pick apples.
our wagon ride out to the orchard



Learning how to properly pick apples and how their neat apple picking baskets work

Abigail's first apple

L&A munching apples on the way back with Jonah

The sky looks ominous but thankfully it didn't rain while we were there!



The sun actually even came out for a bit

After our picnic lunch Caleb decided to try out the stocks


ain't it the truth


 After apple picking we went on another field trip with people from around Syracuse to Side Hill School, a one room school house near Skaneateles.

 This week we have also had the chance to walk our neighbor's puppy Iggy at lunch time. It was a fun but reminded me why I don't want a puppy - they are crazy!
Iggy on our porch steps with 3 of his fans
 To wrap up the week we made globe cakes this afternoon for Friday Funday. H&A worked on the Western Hemisphere and C&L worked on the Eastern.
The Western Hemisphere girls decided to start with water

The Easterners decided to start with land


Showing off the finished product

Western Hemisphere Ws and Eastern Hemisphere Es
That was our week in pics. I love fall.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Our Week in Pictures

Kids filling out their "passport applications"

Caleb studying his old passport

Hannah making an orange globe

no wonder map makers have such a hard time making a flat map of the world!

Lydia found a cricket in our Backyard Habitat

Caleb collected most of the worms in our science experiment

Funny bumper sticker we saw at the zoo

Momma Tiger and her triplets







The new baby Patas Monkey and the momma


the Pre-Hensile Skink
I am taking a break from my daily writing about our train trip to post pics from our week of school. This year we are using My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures and I think that we have done more fun stuff this week in school than we have in most months in previous years. We are really enjoying it! I decided I would take a picture or two every day to show what we did, both to share with Glenn as well as to post here for us to remember later. To finish off the week we decided to take a trip to the zoo to hopefully see the baby tigers. So many of the animals were out and active today! We were greeted upon arrival by the siamang monkeys out in the outside exhibit vocalizing very loudly which was really fun to see and hear. The penguins were full of energy, the momma and triplet baby tigers were out and active (so fun to watch!!), one of the red pandas was actually out, the spectacle bears were doing their loop, a lynx was walking around, one of the otters was swimming at the fish, the baby Patas monkey at not quite a month old is already starting to think that he should be independent of his mama. We love the zoo. We need to go there more often (oh, and I actually figured out how to get there today!! The zoo is in a strange part of town and I can never figure out how to get there but I discovered a great route today so I no longer have the "I'm not sure how to get there" excuse - yay!)

I'm thankful for a great first full week of school. I am so grateful for the chance to homeschool.