Day One, Afternoon

This afternoon was wonderful! One of the things that I feel is best about home schooling is that if the kids have a burning interest in something, we can pause and address that interest. After lunch (oh, did I mention "our cafeteria" served trout for lunch? yeah... yum!) C and I sat down with the munchkins and talked to them about our "Fall Senses." They hypothesized what they might experience with their five senses while out on our afternoon walk. When we went out, they were primed for exploring the fall world with their various senses.

The first thing they discovered were colored leaves (sight). Then Mike noticed that the leaves crunched and crackled as he walked through them (sound). As we went down the street, we could tell the fir trees were dropping twirly-birds from the scent (smell). They compared and contrasted between the softness of milkweed fluff and the rough hardness of squirrel-dropped nuts (touch). We ended our walk at a friend's house, where I knew they grew apples in their front yard. I have carte blanche to pick there, and so I let the kids each pick an apple, and the minute we got home, they described apples as juicy, sweet, and delicious (taste). Yay kids!

On the walk, not only did they make excellent observations ("Hey, we can HEAR crickets in the autumn!"), they also collected samples of things to bring home and look at closer. Along with our apples, we brought back a stick, some twirly-birds (maple seeds), a handful of silky fine milkweed fluff,  some nuts (both in and out of their casings), and some red leaves.

Upon returning home, we got drinks and sat down to discuss what we'd seen. We made a list of all the things we discovered using our fall senses.

FALL SENSES

Fall looks like: colors, flowers, nuts, morning-glories, leaves, sunshine, trees
Fall sounds like: windy sounds, crunching leaves, crickets, dogs barking
Fall feels like: fluffy, hard, soft, crinkly, bug bite itches, warm, breeze, sun, sharp prickles, bumpy
Fall smells like: sweet, fir trees, candy, skunk
Fall tastes like: juicy yummy apple, sweet grapes, blueberries (we saw ornamental ones; they didn't eat them)

AUTUMN ACROSTIC POEM

Apples are juicy and sweet.

Under the trees there are twirly-birds. They twirl and twirl when they fall down.

The apples are ready to pick.

Ugly mosquitoes bite me.

My mouth crunches yummy apples!

Nuts fall down because the squirrels eat them.

by Mike and Kayla

We finished up the school day by trading off on the math sheets they did earlier. Each finished up what the other had done, thereby keeping them "even" on academics. Now they're running around the house playing with balloons and laughing and enjoying life.