week #9 summary

Hoo boy. Week number 9 is over, and I'm glad! The chaos of birthday celebrations, Halloween, adding new critters to the farm, and having to cancel a much-anticipated trip to visit friends, resulted in a week of dysregulation for my guys, so we had some tough times in circle, and the curriculum story was a total bust. (An Enki nature story about a cute little mouse who strays too far from home while playing, gets lost, and takes shelter in a jack-o-lantern for the winter, until his family finds him -- cute story, really!) I'm not sure if the story was just too advanced (or possibly too long) for them (the Nature Stories are a step up in sophistication from the Folk Tales we've been using, which have been working great for us), or all the chaos from over the weekend/first part of the week set us up for failure, or a combination of the two. But by the end of the week, I just threw my hands in the air, abandoned our curriculum entirely, and spent as much time outdoors as possible so that we could all recoup! I think we're back on track now, and ready to tackle week number 10.

We still managed to have a lot of fun this week, though, and plenty of learning opportunities. Like we learned all about what pigs need for food, shelter, and care when we added Pig to our homestead. J went to his usual Monday Homeschool Chorus and Soccer classes with The Map Man (who took the morning off to help out), while Zoo Boy and I went on our pig-fetching mission. J also participated in a museum class called "Mad Scientists" where they made scientific observations and did experiments, including one where they made blue slime. (I SO BADLY wanted to get a picture of J as he pulled out his blue slime to show us -- this icky, drippy, gooey substance, glopping all over his hands, while he had a big smile on his face! But the camera was not cooperative and the lighting was too dim for my camera phone, and by the time I was able to take a photo, the moment had passed.) While J experimented with science, Zoo Boy helped some volunteers at the museum cleaning out animal cages.

We also had two field trips this week (not counting our adventure to the farm for critter pick-up), the first to Foster Farm in South Windsor, CT (which I blogged about here and here and a little more here), and our Friday Excursion to Northwest Park in Windsor, CT (which I posted about here and here).

We picked up a scavenger hunt form at the Northwest Park Nature Center, and we had a great time finding all the items on our hike. Here J shows off item number 3 on our list, a leaf containing Chlorophyll. He already knew that leaves with Chlorophyll were green, but while doing the scavenger hunt, he also learned that leaves containing Carotenoids are yellow or orange, and that leaves containing Anthocyanins are red, purple or blue, although Chlorophyll, while still being manufactured by the leaf, usually covers those colors up. When the Chlorophyll stops being produced, voila, the other colors show. (Duchess Autumn at work, as J pointed out!) Zoo Boy had fun searching for nuts and climbing over logs and rocks.

One more photo -- J's creative use of books and other objects (there's a xylophone in there) to create a ramp to jump the Lego Racer he built this week off of. There was a time when J only used books for reading and musical instruments for making music -- his creative use of materials certainly has come a long way!

We read a really nice batch of Halloween stories this week during Family Story time: Pumpkin Moonshine, by Tasha Tudor; The Runaway Pumpkin, by Kevin Lewis, illustrated by S.D. Schindler (a really fun poetic romp); and my personal favorite, Miss Fiona's Stupendous Pumpkin Pies, by Mark Kimball Moulton, illustrated by Karen Hillard Crouch.