Posted by Cindy on October 20, 2009
A family in our church owns a pumpkin patch/ corn maze, and they generously host the families of our church each year for a cookout, hayride and free pumpkins for the kids. It’s always GREAT fun – and this year was no exception!
The rule was each child could take home any pumpkin they wanted as long as they could carry it by themselves. Do you see my little one walking near his daddy? Yeah, that was Eli’s pumpkin that he needed “just a little help” carrying.
Posted by Cindy on October 14, 2009
Our nature topic of the month is ponds. We’ve been having so much fun studying plant life, water birds, erosion, pond sources, pond health and so much more! Our most recent trip to a pond focused on pond plants. Below are some pictures of the wonderful finds – even in October!
Algae
Duckweed
Rush
We think the foremost plant might be water buttercup.
Pondweed
Possibly hornwort
Measuring the perimeter of the pond
This particular pond is stream-fed and a stream leads away from it, too. We followed the stream and the kids decided to build a bridge across with some downed limbs.
Just a little quiet time. Oh, how I wish there were more! 
An underwater root
Tons of ideas for learning about pond plants can be found in the NaturExplorers unit Peaceful Ponds.
Posted by Cindy on October 13, 2009
I recently reviewed some curriculum from Moving Beyond the Page that included a Poetry unit. Mahayla worked through the self-directed curriculum on her own and then completed a final project of sharing some of her own poetry in a coffeehouse setting. Here are a few pictures from the “coffeehouse”. 
This is some of the poetry she shared.
Nothing like dressing up for you big performance! (Insert rolling eyes.) The poster in the back was a display teaching the audience (her family) about poetry forms and the tv is on because it was playing soft music.
Yummy banana bread. Every coffeehouse poetry reading needs food!
This week and next, the kids are working on presidential projects. I’ll share them with you soon!
Posted by Cindy on October 9, 2009
October is an awesome time for finding spiders and their amazing webs in my area. Take a look at the webs we found in and around a barn.
Orb Web
Sheet Web
Funnel Web
Tangle Web
And I couldn't pass up this picture of spiderlings that recently emerged from their egg sack!
I tell ya, once you start looking for things in nature, God is always good to give you quite a show!
Enjoy spider nature study with oodles of ideas in the NaturExplorers Spectacular Spiders study.
Posted by Cindy on October 7, 2009
Well, another unit bites the dust! We had a great time learning about energy, with a main focus on heat and electricity. This slide show gives you just a glimpse into some of our hands on experiments.
What turned out to be THE BEST of all the curriculum we used was the Electric Kitbook. In fact, I liked it so much, I’m going to do a review about it soon at The Curriculum Choice.
At the end of the unit, I gave the kids a test that you can find on my Homeschool Launch page. I’ve been enjoying adding more tests to the curriculum this year. It keeps everyone on their toes!
Below is the resource list that’s been in my sidebar. I hope you find some treasures the next time you need to plan an energy/electricity unit!
Energy
Moving Beyond the Page Energy Unit
Electricity Lessons
Heat Lessons
Next stop – Presidential History!
