wrapping up summer, part 1

Well, Summer has come crashing to a close for us. Not only is the hot weather suddenly over (we're back to chilly-ish nights and jeans-wearing days), but we are also back to our school year rhythms, which also seems sort of sudden. But before I start posting about our more formal homeschooling type learning stuff, I figured I'd finish up by posting about some of the past two week's informal learning stuff!

This first photo is the boys at the back edge of our property (also known as the manure pile) hunting for mushrooms after a day of rain (their idea, they said it would be a good day to look for mushrooms, and they were right, we found quite a few).


Zoo Boy having fun forming sentences with friend E at a children's museum where we met E and R and their mommies for a playdate.










E and J chat with J-E aboard the clipper ship at the same museum.









On a playdate with their friend D, we took bikes and scooters through their neighborhood to a playground where we (well, they) spent the afternoon playing and scootering and biking. And falling and scraping knees. (Well, only Zoo Boy, though he didn't let it dampen his good time for long.) Stay tuned for news about J and his bike (he's on a scooter in this photo).






The boys had a museum class two days with Ms Laura (the new Humanities Curator), who the boys just raved about. ("She's a GREAT teacher," beamed Zoo Boy.) They created pretty cool woven watercolor works of art.





Here's Zoo Boy's masterpiece.










We spent some time at the Springfield Science Museum, took in a Planetarium show about the ancient stories surrounding the various constellations, and checked out the current traveling exhibit about snot and other disgusting bodily things (entitled "Grossology" -- trust me, it was gross, I felt slightly nauseated the entire time we were in that exhibit).



The kids were also really into the Native American exhibits this time, listening attentively to all of the recorded material and reading quite a bit of the written stuff as well.

Ok, that covers the week before last. Time to go check the camera and see what the boys were up to last week while I was busy workings with dogs and sheep and ducks.