How We Do Science

So...Chad learned that he should never send Luke and I on a "quick" errand.   We are too distracted by birds.   We pulled over several times to take pictures and try to identify what we were seeing.  I love how Luke's passion for birding has rubbed off on all of us.   One of the birds we've been seeing out by our place are Meadowlarks.   I've never been able to get a picture of one but did today...it's just not very good.   But, I wanted to be able to make sure that's what I'm seeing and I'm pretty sure it is.  

We have lots of these little guys in our yard.   They are fun to watch too.  

This is probably going to seem crazy to anyone seeing this, but....oh well.  :)   Today, as Luke and I were on our way home, I noticed a Kestrel on the side of the road.   They are one of our favorite birds and we see them often out here.   So...we stopped to take a look.  It looked fresh and just had some blood coming from the back of it's head...almost like it was shot with a bb or something.   So...I put it on top of our car since we were so close to home.  Does that make me really crazy????  I just thought that it would be a great opportunity for our kids to get to have a really close-up look at one of their favorite animals.   They were all so excited to see it...but, also sad for it and couldn't imagine what had happened.   We got the idea to collect some of it's feathers for our nature box and also to use it for science.   They measured it's wingspan and studied it's beak and talons.  Then, the kids buried it and marked the spot.  They are going to check on it periodically.  They will get to witness it's decomposition and they are very excited about having the skeleton eventually.  Ethan want's to use wire to put it together and display in their room.  I think to most people it will seem weird, but, my kids were so taken with God's artistry.  As they spread it's wings they were literally in awe at how beautiful it was.   I love that they were so excited about it. 

May

We've been able to watch so many birds nesting lately and it's been so fun.   The kids have watched the nests built, eggs laid and hatched and even the birds eventually fly away.   

This egg is from a nest that Robins made in our hen house. 

It flew out of the nest and was hopping around.   We put it back up in the nest and it flew away today.

A new Robin's nest in our yard.

Chickadee nest

Our bees are keeping us busy lately.  We are in the process of going to all foundationless frames.  There are many reasons to do this.   When our beekeeper friend came over, he was upset with us for doing it and we thought we had made a big mistake.  However, after further research we really feel it's what we want to do and are going to move forward with it.   We are excited and nervous.  It's amazing how quickly bees can fill out a frame with no foundation.   

We stopped to take a look at a Heron rookery a few weeks ago.   A hawk flew right over our heads with a snake in it's talons.

We drove to Knoxville one day to hang out with my sister and niece and nephew.  We went to the farmer's market over there and had so much fun.   We got some Cruze Dairy ice cream.  The lavender-honey flavor was delicious!  We are going to try to make our own soon.

The kids have been doing tons of reading and enjoying being outdoors.

We're pleasantly surprised with our garden so far.   We've been harvesting lots of lettuce, spinach, chard and radishes.   We have lots of other stuff doing well.   I've started almost everything from seed and I can't believe how well some of my plants are doing since I don't really know what I 'm doing.  

Impromptu Field Trips

So....after we drove the 45 minutes to take the baby robin to the vet...and it didn't make it...we decided to take advantage of the free stuff in Knoxville.   We first headed to the McClung Museum.  We've been listening to G.A. Henty's Cat of Bubastes so we all really enjoyed the Ancient Egypt Exhibit.    After hanging out there, we headed over to the Knoxville Museum of Art.   They had different exhibits from last night and they were so neat!   At the McClung Museum we learned a lot about how Egyptians and the people of Mesopotamia made glass.   At the Art Museum they had a whole room of glass art!  It was really interesting.  I love homeschooling.  If you had asked me last summer...I would have said I didn't...I was burnt out.  But, I'm learning to "do school" totally different and we are all enjoying it so much.   The amazing thing is my kids are learning SO much more than I could have imagined.   

Next door the the Museum of Art is the Chocolate Factory, so, we had to stop in there!

These were just taken with my point and shoot so they're not good.  I just couldn't help capture the beauty on our drive home.  God is so good!