Weekly Wrap-up ~ Nature .. that's all .. and a field trip

Well, geez. This was an odd week. On Monday we took a Life Skills day because we had to go to "town" to get groceries, buy dog food, and go to recycling. It had to be done! So, that's how we spent our day. (Of course there was the on-and-off playing of educational games on the iPad.)

On Tuesday morning, I had to get my hair colored in the morning. My sister is here two days a week and she is my FREE hairdresser, so it was necessary that I take the morning to do it. After eating lunch at my mom's (which we do every Tuesday because my sister and my aunt are in town for lunch), we came home and played for the rest of the afternoon.

In the night Wednesday night I had the worst headache I have ever had! It was a sinus-like headache in my eyes and I was dying! At 5:00 a.m. I was in excruciating pain. I figured out a combination of over-the-counter medications to take to relieve some of the pressure. I slept in that morning, and was back in bed by 1:00 p.m. For the few hours I was up, we did the basics: a math facts worksheet, some reading and writing, and some grammar.

We were planning to have a regular 'ol school day on Thursday and go on a field trip on Friday. But, we learned that the weather on Friday was going to be cooooold and our field trip was going to be outside. When I got up on Thursday, it wasn't as cold as it was supposed to be, so I got the kids up and we headed out for the hour drive to our field trip.

Where did we go? To a super-cool botanical garden called Powell Gardens near Kansas City, Missouri.

This was the last week of their Fairy Houses and Forts exhibit that we wanted to see. We spent three hours roaming the grounds of the gardens, searching out the houses and forts. But there was so much more!

The farm on the grounds was amazing! I'm having trouble expressing how cool it was! There was EVERY kind of vegetable and fruit you can imagine, layed out in a super-intricate design. It made me want to come home and turn my entire yard into an edible yard, complete with apple trees and spinach growing all over the ground.

I was really inspired to make a Salsa garden and a Pizza garden.

Okay. I've told about all the things I loved about Powell Gardens. But, how did the kids feel? Well, Brynne wasn't too excited about the snake that crossed our path. In fact, she screamed, like chainsaw massacre screamed! She scared me, and then I saw the snake (that I am terrified of) and it scared me, and then her screaming scared the snake! All the while, Eli was oblivious. Once we got over the shock of the snake, we rounded the corner to Monet's garden. Oh. my. gosh! It was beautiful! The kids were so excited to see their recent artwork in real life.

We spent a lot of time at the Hummingbird Garden, taking note of the types of flowers that were there so that we can replicate the garden outside our dining room window at our house. And we saw the most amazing caterpillars. I wanted to take them home with me so bad!

The kids loved all of the fairy houses and forts. We had a blast using the map to find them all in the gardens.

When we were at the farm, we had so much fun following the "rabbit trail" while we read Peter Rabbit on signs.

The kids also loved the "leaf footprints" in the sidewalks.

We had such a great day. The waterfalls and various gardens were beautiful and so inspiring! We sat down and had a picnic lunch half-way through our day. We soaked in Nature!

Today, well, we didn't do much. We started on our Trees study which is the topic of Barb's Outdoor Hour Challenge for October. Mostly, though, we got ready for daddy to come for a weekend visit! We haven't seen him in three weeks and we are excited for a weekend with him.

And that was our VERY unusual week of schooling.

We are linking up with Kris at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.