Journey to Excellence

Yesterday was the conclusion of our Pond Study . It was a beautiful day, not like the rainy day we endured last week. Here is a picture of the pond in our neighborhood where we typically do our studies. We were set on seeing some dragonflies while we were there this time because we know they are usually there. Before we went for our Pond Walk, we read the book Pond Walk , written and illustrated by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. This was a great book to prepare us for our walk! It even described the difference between a dragonfly and a damselfly. (Do you know the difference?) ... a dragonfly's wings are expanded when it lands and a damselfly's wings move in close to it's body. We watched them at the pond and determined that they were, in fact, dragonflies. However, we weren't quick enough to get a picture of them being still. Brynne searched around for some rocks and sticks to make a painted rock turtle, as demonstrated in the back of Pond Walk . She revised he...

As part of The Outdoor Hour Challenge's August Newsletter , the kids and I partook in the first part of our pond study . It was drizzling the whole time we were there, so there wasn't much activity. And, it was slippery, slimy wet and Brynne and I were terrified of the possibility of a slippery, slimy snake, so we didn't dig into our study like we would normally do. Walking around the pond we did find an egg. It was small and a tad bit squishy. A snake egg, perhaps? I collected tons of different leaves for Dawson's Apologia Biology Module 14 study while he and Brynne sat down to sketch. I had them look for something big to sketch and then concentrate on a smaller detail of it to sketch in a detail box (suggested by the newsletter). Brynne sketched a leaf, some water, a rose (that wasn't there) and a log and made a detail box of the bark on the log from an up-close photo I took. (Again, she was too scared of snakes to get too close, so she sketched from t...