Baby Animal Days

A local homeschool mom arranged a field trip to the American West Heritage Center's Baby Animal Days. It was a sweet simple and fun field trip.
Doodle holding a chick- Roo thought holding the chicks was the best part!

Petting the goats

Bunny Rabbits

It was a fun little trip!

More from the Nature Center

I have decided that the Ogden Nature Center is one of our favorite places to field trip. :D We went back on Friday- and took Pam with us this time. -

We loved watching the EagleExploring Tadpole Pond

Bug found a frog in Tadpole Pond- We watched him for a while

Off to the Observation tower- what a view!
Bug and Doodle on top of the Treehouse

Bug and Doodle found this evidence of Beavers- going to have to keep checking back to see if the Beaver gets his tree chopped down.Pam, Doodle and Bug taking a breakWe had a fun time exploring- saw hawks flying overhead, a bunch of deer, frogs, a woodpecker, and snakes (EEEEEWWWW!)

Beatrix Potter Unit

We have been having a great time the past 2 weeks learning all about Beatrix Potter. We spent last week with The Tale of Peter Rabbit, with lesson plans from Five in a Row and this week we've explored many more Beatrix Potter stories. Using thrown together stuff, and some bits and pieces from a unit on homeschool share- We used lots of goodies from Homeschool Share in our notebooks.

(Side note- our notebooks are sort of a lapbook/notebook combined. We tried lapbooks- and they just seemed to be in the way- and I didn't know what to do with them. We've since tried this hybrid- with lapbook elements glued onto cardstock then hole punched and put in a binder. That way we can include other things like copywork and other papers that are 8x11 size together with our studies.)

After reading LOTS of Beatrix Potter Tales- Doodle decided that The Tale of Peter Rabbit is his favorite. The 3 folds that are closed - "Hpw many days in a fortnight" "Setting of the Story" and "what is a naturalist" Doodle wrote on the wrong side- and I wasn't going to make him re-write ;) Doodle did some research on Hedgehogs- since Beatrix Potter had a pet Hedgehog.

Top- venn diagram comparing frogs and toads (after reading Mr. Jeremy Fisher) bottom- graph comparing different garden vegetables, and their days to harvest.

We only have about 5 Beatrix Potter books- the rest we read online- Here's a few places we found them:

• http://www.oldpicturebooks.com/
• http://www.tcom.ohiou.edu/books/kids.htm
• http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/p#a292

A few other useful sites in our Potter study

• LOTS of fun stuff on here for the kids to explore- puppet shows, movie clips, games http://www.peterrabbit.com/us/index.asp
• Fun applied Math worksheet
• This "Planning the Garden" was a fun activity to do.
• Each day we did a "Character study sheet" and wrote about one character in a story
• For fun Doodle did a kittens maze
• We also compared 4 stories using this chart and Doodle wrote his own Animal story- This page helped him plan his story- And here's his story-

"One day in the woods there was a rabbit named Nutkin. He stole some food from Mr. Bird. One day he gives it back. He gets scared by Mr. Bird. He learns not to steal."

We had a great time with Beatrix Potter- Dh and I watched the movie Miss Potter not long ago on Netflix- but decided it wasn't a show my boys would be interested in. But we did find a stories of Beatrix Potter dvd that the kids enjoyed.

Ocean studies applied

After a trip to the Beach in California- we spent a week or so learning about Oceans and various Ocean animals. Doodle and I rowed the book Gramma's Walk using the wonderful lesson plans in Five in a Row and the lapbook goodies from Homeschool Share . Roo and I rowed Hello Ocean- with lessons from Homeschool Share and did a lapbook/notebook thing from there. We had a great time learning about Barnacles, Salt water, and lots more. Roo with his salt water vs. fresh water experiment. What's best is when life flows so smoothly with our school studies- Last weekend we went fishing over the mountain. Bug caught a nice size trout, (Ben and I caught some nice size fish too)

Bug and Doodle were exploring around the area- when Doodle got all excited- he said he found a crab. No- not a crab- but what he did find was a crawdad- a creyfish.

Ben caught it for him- he wasn't so sure he was going to touch it. But he was very excited to cook it up and EAT it.

We looked up crawdads online, and drew picture of them for our nature notebooks. It was great!

Then Last Sunday afternoon we took a drive out to Antelope Island We hiked around a bit- and walked out on the Beach (or as close as you can get to a beach living in the Desert! We'll have to come back in the summer when it's hot enough to actually get wet.

The boys had fun skipping rocksRoo drew a smiley face in the sand :D"Mom.... PLEASE let me get wet." My reply- "NO! It's freezing cold and windy today!"

And in full circle- Roo told us all about how this water is salty- and an egg could float in the Great Salt Lake. :D

Oregon Trail final

A little while ago- we had a great unit on the Oregon Trail- We had a super reminder and refresher course on Friday- We went to The National Oregon/California Trail Center It was a GREAT field trip. Living History at it's best. (HUGE Thanks to a wonderful homeschool mom who set it all up for us!)

After we were done- we headed North to Soda Spings (we learned a lot about Soda Springs during our trail study)- and watched the geyser go off (didn't get my camera out in time- so I didn't get a pic of it) and explored some of the Springs around there.

Nature Walk with Roo

Each week someone in our family gets a date (or rather 2 someones). This week it was Roo and My turn to go. A few weeks ago after Bug's science fair, we went to a small park/zoo and Roo was fascincated with the Owl there. So for his date he wanted to "drive by the zoo at night and hear the owl 'hooing' in the night" Well, since I wasn't sure how driving by at night would work, I suggested an alternative- The Ogden Nature Center -- For Christmas my parents gave us a Dinosaur Park Family pass- and it also gets us into the Nature center- so we decided to give it a try. We were impressed. We will definately go again, take the whole family with us, and bring our Nature Journals. :D

Roo and I had a great time hiking around the trails, exploring the nature around us. The trails were perfectly marked, the observation tower and treehouse were tons of fun- and of course- we got to see 3 different types of owls, a couple of hawks, golden eagles, a bald eagle, a pelican (all injured, so they were in cages -but still cool!) and lots more in the wild.

A whole herd of deer that crossed our pathWild Turkeys that almost chased us- and Roo's favorite- the Saw Whet Owl

Roo's first Tooth fairy visit

Roo has had a loose tooth for a long time- yesterday it was finally loose enough that Ben pulled it out for him as he was checking to see how loose it was. He seems so young- but I guess he is almost 5- and Bug started losing his first teeth at 4 1/2 as well.

Here's Roo with his tooth
The gappy grin

This morning when he found the money the tooth fairy left.