Labor Day has come and gone, and with it was the end of our month studying animals. I think we're finally falling into a groove, which is good, as September brings several new activities to fit into our calendar. He will be starting gymnastics again next week, though with a new teacher, and Story Time at the library starts back up tomorrow. Next week will be our first time attending the homeschool group at the library, and several families are also starting a preschool co-op that will meet on Tuesday mornings. I'll be teaching the first class, focusing on weather, in large part because we'll be focusing on weather at home this month and I already have the materials.
Last week, we drove out to one of our local state parks to walk one of the trails around the lake and look for animals. Our eventual tally: deer, squirrels, a chipmunk, various birds (including a woodpecker), countless spiders, dragonflies, butterflies, fish, a newt, ants, flies, bees, a fence lizard, and humans. Moose was very interested in drawing his discoveries in his book, but he was too busy making perfect spiders and their webs to make it to anything else. We also spent time sailing on flat rock "boats" and tramping over small bridges and pretending we were the three billy goats Gruff.
Along with our animal studies, Moose has continued with his Bible stories and coloring pages and has learned his second memory verse, John 3:16. I've been surprised at how well he's able to memorize verses. Our next verse will be Genesis 1:1, which also corresponds well to our Creation studies in Sunday School.
Our animal cards are put away for the time being, or at least not brought out on a daily basis. My inflatable globe finally arrived, so we are spending a little time pulling animals from the deck and finding where on earth they live. They'll be used again when we talk about the weather different animals need (climate, which we touched on already), hibernation, and much later when we study baby animals in the spring. The globe is also nice to have on hand for our Bible lessons and for discussing various weather topics.
My goal of going week by week and not worrying if we don't do something "for school" every day is working well. We're being more intentional about our learning, but there's less stress this way. Especially with so many new activities coming up, less stress seems to be the way to go. On the bright side, our weekly activities are finally helping us find a real routine, and they're giving me a reason to get out of the bed in the morning instead of wanting to sleep as late as possible. I enjoyed my time this morning before anyone else woke up--baking muffins, sipping tea, taking out scraps from last night's dinner for the chickens. It made for a much less frantic morning than we usually have.
You'd still better not expect me to get anywhere before 10 or 11, though, because that's just not going to happen.
