Monkeymama

Holding my son a little closer this morning......

A book idea...

I think we are going to write a book about all the different vegetables we grow that look like animals or shoes or other random things.   Looks like this sweet potato is in costume for Halloween....can you guess the animal?

 

Cows and pumpkins...

Did you know that cows love pumpkins?  I think pigs do too....so if you don't compost that pumpkin after tomorrow, please find a local farm and donate it to the sweet animals.

 

The Cherokee Nation

Today we travelled back to the Cherokee capital of New Echota (as we are ending our year with some more local study of Native Americans).  Teddy brought along another homeschooling friend this time.  The boys had a great time together.  They really absorbed a lot of the information from the movie and came away with the basics of the Trail of Tears. 

When we went out on the grounds, we ran into a group of Cherokees on a road trip.  They had travelled all the way from Oklahoma, following the actual trail.  They had made several stops along the way to perform forgiveness ceremonies.  The entire thing was being filmed for an independent documentary.  The hope is that other Native Americans would participate in the process of forgiveness of the sins of our nation's ancestors. 

Wow...what a profound event we got to witness.  The boys (both of which have Cherokee ancestors) and I were actually invited to participate in the ceremony!  I was so crushed that we could not as we had to get back home and they insisted that if we watched, we had to stay for the entire time.  But I did get contact info and so hopefully down the road we can watch the documentary. We even got to tag along in their tour and go into some of the buildings that are generally closed to the public.

The boys also got to partake in a geocache adventure at the park which was great because they had to go around the museum property and read signs to get the clues to open the cache.  Very cool!

 

New Life on the Farm

These little piggies are eventually headed to the market.  But for now we just get to learn about them and watch them grow!  Teddy even got to name one of them.  Sally is the runt in there somewhere.

These little guys are triplets.  They are only a day old in this picture.  If you look closely enough, you can still see the umbilical cords.  It looks like one of them sat on an egg, but we learned that it is just baby goat poop.  It is "milk poo" and is yellow just like human babies.  You learn something random everyday!

Nature walk...

We went on a nature walk recently.  The kids got to dissect owl pellets.

The honeysuckle is blooming!

This was an enormous beech tree.

Geography block

One of our last blocks this year will be our geography block.  We followed our friend Norman the Gnome as he travels down the Chattahoochee teaching us about the geography of Georgia as he travels.

America's first gold rush

Recently we went to a mining museum near the place of America's first gold rush. This museum was actually on the same property as the original mine.  This pond is the bottom of the old quarry.

Teddy got to pan for gold.  The guy who helped him was so knowledgable.

 

 

Teddy placing his gold flakes in a container to take home.

 

This tool was used after panning.  I forgot the name of it, but it is used the same way as a pan but it is rocked back and forth and the gold falls through to the bottom.

This was part of the display in the museum showing how the gold and other metals are used after mining.

This is the inside of the mill.

Fibers Block

This spring we had a blast with our fibers block.  We learned about leather, cotton, wool, linen, and silk.  We studied how these fibers are produced and how different cultures have used them through history.  Teddy learned that the development and utilization of fibers are critical in human history.  We topped off our study with a trip to a local fiber show where Teddy got to see demonstrations of a drop spindle, spinning wheel and a loom.

So busy....

This spring has been packed full of activities that our little blog has suffered!  Here are some photos of  some things we have been doing:

We have a new member of the family...Introducing Pumpkin Muffin.  He is an English Lop and we adopted him when he was 6 weeks old.  He has nearly doubled in size.  Teddy has enjoyed caring for him and does a great job.

We had a wonderful quiet Easter with family and friends.  Here is Teddy with our Lenten Garden that we added to all the way up to Easter.  This was the first year we did this and we loved it!

Teddy with his Easter basket (and of course his rabbit!).

Teddy earned his blue belt in Tae Kwon Do!

We made Italian Easter bread (they were terrible by the way).

Teddy held a huge cockatoo....

We went on a massive egg hunt...

Went trail riding in the mountains...it is really hard to photograph others whilst on the back of a horse!

Made moccasins for our Native American block...

Went on a very REAL egg hunt....the chickens hide these eggs everywhere (even on top of the bales of hay in the barn).

And we actually completed a lot of school which of course I failed to take pictures of....here is one lesson reviewing nouns I remembered to shoot.