Tag Archives: nature study

Where Eagles Dare to Fly

Walking in High Cotton Posted on by 14

So, I could fill this post with more pictures of sheep and lambs and calves… Or I could fill this post with cute pictures of my kids and especially my boys like I usually do for Boys in Motion Fridays… But I got the coolest pictures of something else yesterday when I left the office! They sort of tie in with the farm, since they were definitely in range of our property “as the crow flies.” And they might have been boys and were definitely in motion. {PS. If you’re … Continue Reading…

Family Time at the Virginia Living Museum

Walking in High Cotton Posted on by 5

Our holiday weekend included lots of family time.  Mr. Fix-It was able to be home Thursday thru Saturday and most of Sunday too, even though he was on-call for work, and his sister came to visit for the weekend.  So we took the crew to the Virgina Living Museum.  This trip has been on my list for family time all summer.  We weren’t disappointed.  The whole place is just made for kids! The VLM is all about wildlife and ecosystems native to Virginia (obviously, right?) and has live exhibits as … Continue Reading…

Rainy Day Fun at the Virginia Living Museum {Family Connections Summer 2012}

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Once again I’m joining Aurie, Lisa, Amy, and Connie to share ideas for fun, family activities for the summer. We hope you’ll stop by every Wednesday to share in our theme or link up your own posts about great summertime fun for the whole family! And wow, don’t I feel silly! Last week I posted about Nature Notebooks and summer learning fun, and then said that this week would be our series wrap up–but it’s not! This week we’ve got some great posts about rainy day fun ideas. (Next week … Continue Reading…

Spring at the Virginia Living Museum

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Well, I had a bit of time with the kiddos while they were on spring break last week and we headed to the Virginia Living Museum–which we’ve been enjoying often since becoming members last summer! It was fun to see it in Spring, before everything blooms, but when everything is just coming awake.We’ve visiting in Summer, Fall (boy these pictures take me back a bit!), and Winter now and not only have we gotten to see different exhibits, we’ve gotten to see the animals and habitats change for the season. … Continue Reading…

They Will Soar–Backyard Wildlife Adventures

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Ever have one of those moments when something just stops you in your tracks and changes your everyday moments to not-so-everyday moments? Something exciting suddenly swoops in and the joy lasts long past when the moment is gone? Yeah, bald eagles do that for me. {grin} We had one visiting the back field for about 30 minutes or so last week after Annabelle had her new calf. We’ve come to expect a certain conglomeration of turkey buzzards to show up after a birth looking for any buzzard-ly “treats.” But every … Continue Reading…

Real Life Homeschooling — Learning While Camping

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Real Life Homeschooling is a monthly blog hop with 20 other blogging mommas that I’ll be participating in this summer. It’s all about the non-traditional face of homeschooling today. What it looks like when it doesn’t look like school-at-home. Last week my introduction post touched on our love of nature study and family read-alouds. This week I’d like to touch on the idea of learning everywhere, all the time. I’ve been writing about our camping adventures lately, and I think that’s a perfect example of how we can surround our … Continue Reading…

Real Life Homeschool…On Teaching Something Every Day

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  Real Life Homeschooling is a monthly blog hop with 20 other blogging mommas that I’ll be participating in this summer. It’s all about the non-traditional face of homeschooling today. What it looks like when it doesn’t look like school-at-home. Which, obviously it doesn’t around here since our crew goes to a Christian school full-time and home-learning has to be fun and relaxed to keep us all from getting burned out. One question you may have is Why do we even bother, if our kids are already getting an excellent … Continue Reading…

Nature Study Display Frames

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We love nature study around here. It’s one of our favorite real life homeschool topics and can fit in to pretty much any moment of the day. But it also means that we have quite the conglomeration of feathers, rocks, skins, twigs, beetles, moths, and other cool finds. We use nature journals to save pictures, drawings and notes (along with the occasional leaf) but our adventures to the Virginia Living Museum inspired me to create nature study display frames to put on the walls in our newly painted playroom. It … Continue Reading…

Random Mondays

Walking in High Cotton Posted on by 3

Friday the kiddos finished up their last day at YMCA camp (we lost another towel and water bottle, and Speedracer’s lunchbox–although we found that again by the end of the week) and we packed up to head to Mimi’s house for a week. Well, they’re going for a week–Mr. Fix-It and I headed home on Sunday morning. Here’s some randomness from my phone camera over the last few days… We’ve been doing some nature studies and nature journaling and it’s amazing to see how the kids eyes have really opened … Continue Reading…

Don’t Just Settle for “Not Bad”

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Do you work? Do you worry that you can’t teach your kids because: You don’t know how; or You don’t have time; or They’ve already been at school for 6-9 hours today and they’re burnt out on learning and you’ll just make them hate you? How about 4. All of the above? Yep, #4–That’s been me. #3 has been part of my continuing fear about changing schools too. There’s just tons and tons of stuff that I want to teach my kiddos that they might not get in school in … Continue Reading…

Butterfly Thoughts

Walking in High Cotton Posted on by 3

Have you ever heard of chaos theory and the butterfly effect? The idea that there are so many teeny-tiny variables that effect things that you can’t actually predict what will happen, or determine which action caused the final outcome. How often do we tread this course of (hysterically) over-analyzing when things go wrong? What did I do? What didn’t I do? What could I have done? What should I have done? {SIGH} How often do I forget that none of these things I worry about so incessantly are actually in … Continue Reading…

Down by the River

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I mentioned yesterday that after Cowboy Days, the kids all took a nap and then were raring to go again.  We had a little pool time until everyone was up and about. But there was more adventures to be had. Mimi has a river. My mother-heart was glad to see that it was very low this time of year. It’s a little known fact to everyone except mothers that children who never go to the river never drown in the river.  I know I’m not the only mother to lay … Continue Reading…