Lemon Tree

A. chose our Lemon Tree to study over the summer.  I mentioned our lemon tree the other day, the one that gives us the most incredible juicy lemons. :)

Here she's conducting to the music that's playing instead of drawing. LOL

Her story (middle left):

     Home to Birds
Our lemon tree
is home to so many birds.
It can hide them from the hawks
and in the storms,
it's leaves protect them
from the rain like God
protects us.

Come back tomorrow to see R.'s pick for tree study this summer!

Nature Study

As I mentioned in my last post, we did some nature studying today. :)

Here's what my kiddo's did:
E picked our Eucalyptus tree to study for the summer.

She also wrote a poem (lower right corner of picture):

Arizona Eucalyptus
Waving in the breeze,
Green in all seasons,
and giving different birds a home
to raise their eggs into
things that fly.
Whether it is under the hot summer sun,
Or in the winter's
cold rain, it's green
scented leaves are
always waving against
the blue desert sky
In praise to God.

Some observations:
Height:  It can get up to 30 ft
Trunk:  One and a half feet thick at the bottom, tapers off and separates into branches at the top.  It is mostly gray brown but some places can be light gray.
Thickness:  The leaves are thickest near the ground.
Leaves:  Some are shaped like circles, some like pears, and the color is from lime green to mint green and some leaves are tinted with purple.
Bark:  The bark is rough

(I'm going to have her do some research on the tree then check her observations and see if she was accurate).

Stay tuned tomorrow for A's drawings.  She painted our Lemon tree. :)

My Boys

And while the girls were quietly drawing and listening to the classical music, here were my boys, having a sword/gun fight out of something they made!  You can see S.'s paper on the ground behind him. LOL

My girls

 

Great Day!

I love the simple days, where things just flow one into the other, don't you?  We had one of those days today.   We're taking a brief summer break, probably starting back in July.  With nothing, or very little, on our plate right now, I'm enjoying some lazy, laid back time with my kids.

Today we started what I hope will be our daily routine.  We headed out the door for a walk around the neighborhood followed by swimming in our pool.  After swimming, we had a simple lunch and the kids went off to do their own thing for awhile. 

Leanne, on the FIAR boards, posted a Nature challenge to get outside and study your trees.  I thought this would be a perfect day for such a study.  I had the kids gather up their pencils (colored and regular) and some paper.  I grabbed my camera, the cd player and a classical music CD (and the baby of course ;- ) ) and followed them outside.  Their assignment was to pick one of the trees in our yard and document the changes it goes through throughout the summer.  They could document the tree throughout the months through drawings, poems, songs, pictures, whatever inspired them the most.  I encouraged them to look at all aspects of the tree.  Check out the bark, the leaves, the canopy, the color, the animals, etc.  Then I set them loose. 

One of our trees happens to be a lemon tree, which has provided us with so much wonderful lemonade this past spring.  I'm going to miss all those fresh lemons here pretty soon.  I grabbed five of our very ripe lemons and made some fresh squeezed lemonade.  Yum!  I filled up 6 glasses with ice, poured in the golden elixir and brought it out, along with some gingersnap cookies, to my budding naturalists.

What a beautiful picture to see all my little treasures out there enjoying God's glorious creation, in all its varied facets.

I'll share their drawings and poems as they come in throughout the summer, so stay tuned.

Fresh Squeezed Lemonade
16 oz fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 5 lemons)
48 oz filtered water
~ 1.5 cups sugar

Stir and serve over glasses filled with ice.  Enjoy!

What did you do today to celebrate and rejoice in God's creation?

She Did It!

I know as homeschoolers we don't really "do grades" but, since this particular year marks a milestone for my eldest, I thought it was fitting to celebrate it a little bit.

My daughter has officially "graduated" from elementary school into middle school.  Today she finished up her 5th grade year!

Working out the last problem as a 5th grader

She now will spend her time finishing up her free reading books, continuing with math and all the free writing she wants (she loves to write).  I'm also going to hand over our Beyond Five in a Row Manuals and let her work at her own pace throughout the lessons getting some extra practice in essay writing as opposed to what she does now, creative writing.

It was a busy year with many interruptions, including a death (grandfather) and a birth (sister).  Through it all E. worked hard and persevered, even when the books weren't what she really wanted to be reading. LOL

I'm so proud of you E.  You amaze me daily with all the gifts God has given you.  Love you bunches!  Looking forward to starting your 6th grade year together!  I'm so thankful that I am blessed to be your teacher. 

Here are some pictures of my young scholar messing around w/ all the books she read this year.

The happy scholar

E, where are you?  Time for school

The Philosophical Scholar

The tired scholar

Poor Blog

You know you have a sad little blog when your only traffic is coming in off of google image searches of your son's Valley Fever rash. LOL He's all better now, if any of you strolling on in here to see the image care. :D I don't even come to visit my little blog too often anymore. Poor, poor blog. LOL I'm actually dabbling w/ a new blog over at blogger. They tell me it's easier. I know one thing that will make it much easier, I'll be able to blog w/ Safari. For some reason this blog host doesn't like safari. Which means, I have to log into firefox, which doesn't happen all that often. As you can tell from this post, w/ no formatting to it, I'm in Safari. Too lazy to switch servers. :p