Blessed

We are so blessed to live relatively close to the Adirondack Mountains. So blessed to be healthy and able to climb and all together. So blessed.

Because my camera is broken

Almost as soon as I decided to blog again, my camera inexplicably got stuck on the macro setting. This enables me to take beautiful, close-up pictures of, say, my children's eyelashes, but not their entire faces. I was very distressed at this until I realized it could be the start of a fun, new hobby! Let me show you:

I'm almost thankful that my camera is stuck! Almost.

A Beautiful Fall

We've had a gorgeous fall here in New York this year. This week the temperatures are forecast to be up in the sixties. In November! It just makes you want to get out there and soak up every last bit of sunlight before winter hits.

We've had lots of leaf-pile jumping here and some lovely nature walks.

We took a picture of this unusual goose so that we could try to identify it when we got home. It's a juvenile Brant, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and it was apparently just resting on it's way from the Arctic tundra to the coast of Virginia or North Carolina.

I hope you're all enjoying a lovely autumn!

The beautiful Adirondacks!

We are so blessed to live near the Adirondack Park!

The view of Fourth Lake from the top of Rocky Mountain.

Us at the top, having a snack.

The boys climb like mountain goats but they scare me sometimes.

Back in the town, a lovely moon rise to end a perfect Autumn day!

Science Day!

A state park in our area hosts an amazing, annual science day where groups of students visit different stations to learn about everything from earthworms to acid rain. There are many stations and each group visits six. Our homeschool group visited:

-A station where we tested solutions with cabbage juice to see if they are acid or base.

We then tested the lake to see if it had been affected by acid rain. We were happy to see that our little sample of lake water turned blue/green, which means that it was a base.

And then, of course, we had to mix acid (vinegar) and base (baking soda) because who doesn't love that sudden volcanic eruption!

-A Zoo station where we met Matilda, the eastern box turtle. We learned that her kind are the only turtles able to completely close their shell, transforming themselves into little "turtle rocks." The only thing able to get them open at that point are crows, who pick them up, fly high into the air and - are you ready for this? - look for a parking lot in which to drop them. Ugh.

-An animal CSI station - this one was so clever!

We learned how an animals skull can tell us whether they are prey or predator, and then we visited some "crime scenes" to sift through the evidence and determine who the victim and the attacker were.

In some cases, samples of "scat" showed us that the victim had themselves eaten another animal that day.

-A paper recycling station where we made our own recycled paper, complete with shredded leaves, flowers and cinnamon. This is one we want to try at home!

-A forest recycling station where we learned about earthworms, bacteria, fungi and the decomposition of leaves and fallen trees.

-At the final station we met several beautiful owls, falcons and a turkey vulture.

All in all, it was a fun and fascinating day made even better by a game of beach football at the end!

Our Ansel Adams Photo Safari

We're continuing our artist study with Ansel Adams this semester. Our study is very simple - we look at some of the artist's work, discuss it, and read a biography or two. Today we took advantage of the lovely September weather and went out in search of high-contrast nature images to capture in the style of Ansel Adams.

And then we waded in the river to cool off.

I'll leave you with a poem that seemed just perfect for today:

SEPTEMBER

by: Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

HE golden-rod is yellow;

The corn is turning brown;

The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down.




The gentian's bluest fringes

Are curling in the sun;

In dusty pods the milkweed

Its hidden silk has spun.




The sedges flaunt their harvest,

In every meadow nook;

And asters by the brook-side

Make asters in the brook.




From dewy lanes at morning

The grapes' sweet odors rise;

At noon the roads all flutter

With yellow butterflies.




By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer's best of weather,

And autumn's best of cheer.

Exploring the uncharted wilderness

We're into our second week of the school year here and knee-deep in Lewis and Clark stories, thanks to TruthQuest History.

Today was a lovely day so we filled our packs with supplies, grabbed our (cap) guns and headed out to explore the wild, uncharted territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

The guns remained loaded at all times in case we had any run-ins with grizzly bears like Lewis and Clark did.

Thankfully, this guy was about the most menacing thing we saw.

We gathered specimens for President Jefferson - mostly pressed flowers, although Z-Man did get within arms reach of this turtle before it dove. I couldn't take a picture because I was preparing to pull him out of the water and mentally calculating how far he'd have to walk in wet clothes before we got to the car. Thankfully, the kid has pretty good balance and managed to stay dry. Speaking of specimens, did you know Lewis and Clark actually sent a live prairie dog to the president?

The funniest thing that happened was our trading with the Indians. We had brought some beaded bracelets to trade and, when we saw a young couple on a hike, Z-Man chased them down and asked if they'd like to trade their Yankees hat for our trinkets. I explained what we were doing and asked if they'd mind playing the part of the friendly Indians. They didn't skip a beat and happily traded the hat! No kidding! They didn't even want it back. Z-Man was delighted with his successful trade. And you can never have too many Yankees hats.

We saw the monarchs!

This evening was just beautiful and we decided to spend it at a local beach.

As we watched the geese and the sunset and threw the football, we started noticing monarch butterflies.

They were all flying in the same path, in the same direction, at roughly the same height.

We realized that we had wandered into their migration path! We were so excited! The boys cheered them on and yelled, "have fun in Mexico!"

By the time the sun set, we had counted 97 monarchs.

This is number 61. He needed to take a little rest. Or maybe he just likes the camera.

Two years ago, when we did our "around the world" study, we discovered the monarch's over-wintering grounds while studying Mexico. You can read about that here. Monarchs born over the summer live 6-8 weeks, but the last generation to be born in a season lives 6-8 MONTHS so that they can fly thousands of miles, sometimes crossing the Great Lakes (think no place to land) to go dormant in one small patch of woods in the mountains of Mexico. They are so thick there that they sometimes break tree limbs! Can you imagine how many butterflies that would take? They wake up in the spring, mate and start the trip back, laying eggs all the way. Scientists have tagged butterflies, taken them hundreds of miles off course and they still find their way! God's creation is just astounding and I'm so thankful that He allowed us to see this tonight.

Mrs. Katz and the Passover

Last week, we learned all about Passover with a sweet Five in a Row book, Mrs. Katz and Tush. In the book, an elderly Jewish lady is befriended by a neighbor family and eventually adopted as their "Bubee." She tells the boy the story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt as they share the Passover Seder together.

We covered many of the FIAR lessons, including:

• "Love your neighbor as yourself." - we memorized Luke 10:27 and used it as copywork and cursive practice.
• We read the story of the Exodus and made really cute (I know that just seems wrong, but they really are cute) little books of the 10 plagues that I found at Homeschoolshare.com
• A yeast experiment - mix yeast and sugar in a bottle of warm water and put a balloon over the top. That worked so well that we had to secure our balloon with electrical tape.
• We talked about patterns, tried drawing our own and looked at these National Geographic patterns in nature.
• We learned all about Passover with The Matzah That Papa Brought Home.
• We learned about Warsaw, Poland during WWII and why Mrs. Katz left in The Cats in Krasinski Square.
• We learned quite a few yiddish words, ate bagels and attempted to polka. :)

I like to have a picture of the books to show you. However, Amazon apparently no longer supports just the picture of the books without the purchase information. I am not trying to sell anything here. Of course, I'm not against anyone using these links, because I will get a commission, but that isn't my reason for putting them there.

Salamanders!

One of our most-loved Five in a Row books is the Salamander Room.

The story is adorable and the illustrations really capture the imagination. It's great for nature study because there are so many birds, insects, plants, frogs and, of course, salamanders to identify. In the past, we've made little Fimo salamanders and colored amphibian life cycle charts and all that good stuff. This year, we just went out into the woods and found salamanders!

Apparently, they love to hide under rocks in small streams and under rocks and bark in the woods, close to water. Being cold-blooded, they actually don't seem to mind being held in a warm hand. Altogether we probably found a dozen and at least five distinct kinds. A good, dirty time was had by all!