Catch-up post

As I said in my last post, my internet is not doing so well. We can't figure out the exact source of the problem, so it might be a while before I can depend on it working. So, before it fritzes out again, I thought I'd do a quick post of what we've been sorta up to lately.

We drove to the south suburbs and bought a play structure from a nice family for $50. It came with a lot more parts: a swing and monkey bars, but that part won't fit in our yard. I mainly bought it for the fort part. Sammy wants a raised fort in our backyard and although we originally thought we might build one, we decided buying this would be easier. It has a swing and stairs coming off of it, but we are still working on putting it all up.

Our seeds are a struggle. They have managed to survive a fungus problem and then a transplanting, but I don't think most of them are going to make it. First, we planted them too early, and second, I think they needed to be transplanted into bigger containers. I'm not so much of an urban farmer as I thought.

Our dear friend John Scott painted our whole basement bright white for us. Actually, this is primer and he's going to come do a few colors next week. Remember how nasty that basement was? Well, when it's officially "done" I'll give the grand tour, but this is a sneak peek. At least it looks clean and white!

He's cute. He keeps hanging Christmas lights and stuff since I told him I wanted it to be kid-friendly.

Something I haven't written about yet, and will write more about when I sum up what we've been up to in homeschooling stuff is Claire's nature notebook. We are mainly studying trees and birds this year: two sources of nature we actually see in the city. So, we have been taking pictures of the same tree in winter, fall, and spring to see how it changes. We checked out some library books on trees and recorded some stuff about bark and kinds of trees and leaves, etc.

We have also been documenting our gardening adventures. Here was Claire picking out seeds, deciding on a garden spot, and planting the seeds in our little seed-starter. If none of them make it to planting time, we'll just start over I guess. We made a chart to record what makes it and what doesn't.

Claire has always been into birds so that has been fun too. This top Robin is a picture from the internet, but the one on the right page is a Robin who lives in our neighbor's tree.

This is the tree. Isn't it pretty? I don't know what kind it is yet. Maybe that will be today's lesson.

We get most of our answers and info from this nature book. It isn't too scientific, but it tells a lot about LOTS of different nature stuff: trees, plants, various animals, etc. It's been a good reference book for us this year since I know VERY little about nature. We only do our nature notebook about once a week or so, but it's her own special book and she likes putting stuff into it. So far, this has been my entire science curriculum and so far I think it's fine.

Claire has been sewing lately. She made this little wallet out of scrap material all by herself!

She's very crafty. I am not. I am learning so much from this girl this year. It makes me wonder what my next girl will be like. We'll see in about 7 weeks!!!