Grade 4, Week 11, Day 1 ~ A Spectacular Day

I'm still tweaking things around here; one thing I wanted to add back into our morning was a morning walk. It used to be a big part of our rhythm, but fell off when we were unschooling. This past spring we were walking the dogs every morning, but that had a different purpose.

This morning we headed out after our morning chores. The Big Dog was chomping at the bit; he settled down once he realized that this was going to be a leisurely walk. We just went around the block, but that takes about 15 minutes if we're strolling and stopping occasionally. We spotted a hawk overhead, then a Western Scrub Jay, and we could hear a crow. Careful listening helped us find it perched high at the top of a Coast Redwood (a little south for a redwood ~ these were planted here). We of course heard the tweets and chirps of many small birds.

Coming home we ran into a problem; J-Baby had decided to use one of the brand new pencils I ordered from Paper Scissors Stone and it was nowhere to be found. I only ordered 2, as I wanted to try them out, and well, I wasn't exactly the picture of a happy mom. I helped look for about 5 minutes and then decided to detach myself from it as the boys were going to have to sift through their room (note to self: they really need help decluttering and simplifying in there).

Pencil recovered, we embarked on our morning lessons. We really didn't get very far; after morning chores and the walk, then the pencil hunt, there wasn't time for much more than journalling. T-Guy did do his math practice and his parts of speech work.

For our afternoon lesson we headed to the local garden center, stopping by the library and pharmacy first. We needed more soil/compost and the boys picked out some started vegetables as well as some vegetable and flower seeds.

It is hard to describe how beautiful a day it was and I wish I had taken my camera out with me. We drove up into the mountains to Oak Glen for apple cider doughnuts (I packed gluten free doughnuts for J-Baby). In the morning I had noticed how very clear it was; the nearby mountains were crisp and we were seeing the distant hills and mountains in layer after layer. Up in apple country we added the beauty of trees turning vibrant oranges and reds, something we don't see in profusion down here in the valley.

There is no point listing what we did today formally. The biggest task was coming up with a journal entry longer than one sentence and that didn't begin with I like. We did a lot of nature observation and had our field trip to the garden center and Oak Glen.