Fort Worth Botanic Garden

We enjoyed a fun field trip the other day: a trip to see Peter Pan at Casa Manana followed by a picnic and exploring at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden.  We went with some friends, and the boys had a great time.  Connor enjoyed seeing the show although he had seen it a couple of days earlier with Oma, and Brennan was entranced through most of it (he wanted to know at the end if the pirates were good now!).

The Botanic Garden was a hit.  Lots of trails to explore, bugs to poke (Connor had a hard time understanding why I wouldn't let him take home the handful of rolie polies, stink bugs, and sundry other creepy crawlies), tadpoles to (attempt to) catch, trees to climb, water to throw rocks, sticks and leaves in.  A little boy's dream!  

Baby birds!

For the second year in a row, we have barn swallows nesting just outside our front door.

It's been fascinating to watch them build their nest, and although I know it's not unusual, I think it's neat that they remembered where they nested and came back again.  Especially since their first nest (along with four nestlings) was destroyed in a storm last year (tornado, or close to it--it may not have been actually touching down when it passed over our house).  They built another one and hatched another brood, so I guess since those were successful, it was still a safe place!

I was curious how things were progressing the other day, so I climbed up with my camera and saw this:

(one teeny tiny beak on the left)

and then, today, this:

This was their reaction to the flash every time. *grin*

The boys are fascinated by them as well.  I can't wait till they start learning to fly and are hopping all over the porch!

SOTW Chapter 3: The First Writing

This chapter covered cuneiform and hieroglyphs--the first writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, respectively.  After a little bit of discussion, Connor remembered which writing came from where and that cuneiform was carved into clay tablets while hieroglyphs were carved into stone.  When we talked about how Egyptians later developed papyrus, he got a little confused and kept listing papyrus as a type of writing rather than a surface for writing on, but eventually we got it straightened out!

The hands-on project we did for this chapter was to make a clay tablet with his name written in cuneiform.  We used screwdrivers for creating the wedges, and he really enjoyed working with the clay.

The large piece of clay was his name tablet; the smaller piece was our "scratch pad" for experimenting until we got the hang of writing the symbols.

Just a side note: When you're using Crayola Air-Dry, there's a point after a day or two of drying when it feels dry, but it really needs a bit more time.  It almost feels chalky, and it's really easy to break at this point.  Which reminds me--I need to add superglue to the Wal-Mart list.  Sigh.

Love living in horse country!

Connor has been begging for a horse ever since he read his first Billy and Blaze book.  Although it took a bit of convincing at first that we couldn't get a horse ("But mommy, we can build a shed for it and it can run in Mrs. Parks' cow fields!"), I think he's pretty much resigned to dreaming at this point.  Living in an area known as the cutting horse capital of the world, we're surrounded by ranches and horses everywhere we look, and it's not unusual for people to ride horses down the road in front of our house.

This morning, the boys were waiting for Oma and Opa to come pick them up, and a couple of girls rode up on their horses.  I recognized one of them from the high school where I sub from time to time, and she came over to the driveway and asked if the boys wanted to pet her horse.  Connor went right over, and Brennan followed, although he was a little more hesitant.  After a minute, she asked if Connor wanted to sit on the horse (as long as it was okay with me).  He was thrilled, and she helped him up.

She asked Brennan if he wanted to sit on the horse too, and after hesitating a minute (which is really unusual--usually Brennan is more adventurous and Connor is more cautious!), he let her put him behind Connor.

(I didn't dress them alike--they did it on their own!).  Absolutely made their day, especially Connor.  Thanks, Randi!

Dysfunction, Fiction and Non-Fiction

I spent the day today subbing in an English class at the high school here in town.  Three of the four classes were dual credit college classes, and since the affiliated junior college's semester is over, these classes are done for the year (grades had to be turned in already).  So we got to watch movie adaptations of British and American literature--The Murders in the Rue Morgue in two classes (as well as part of a biography of Poe in one of them) and Hamlet in the other.

Hamlet is the poster child (okay, ONE poster child, as Oedipus Rex and others come to mind) for dysfunction.  He (and his family) are the epitome of Murphy's Law of the mind.  It's horribly fascinating to watch as the characters come unraveled, and even more interesting to consider what the mind behind it all must have been like.

Poe, while perhaps less dramatic, is all the more compelling in his reality.  As with Hamlet, you can trace the outline of the events in his life and see clearly how they at least contribute to tragedy.

All in all, it made for an afternoon of interesting comparisons!

SOTW Chapter 2: Egyptians Lived on the Nile River

With chapter 2, we jumped into learning about ancient Egypt.  Connor was intrigued by the story of King Narmer and the battle to rule both Upper and Lower Egypt.  We chose to make the model of the Nile river, and he loved flooding it once a week to water the grass, imitating the yearly flooding of the Nile that provided moisture and fertile soil to the surrounding land.  He was eager to explain the whole process to anyone who happened to come to our home!

Filling the "river" with water

Flooding the soil to water the grass seeds

When the soil was still SOAKED after a few days, we took it outside to get a little sun.

You can see the grass sprouting!

He was so excited every time we flooded the river!

About two weeks worth of growth

Fully grown, about three weeks

Both of the boys enjoyed this project, and it definitely accomplished the objective of cementing the flooding of the Nile concept!

SOTW Chapter 1: The Earliest People

**We are actually getting ready to start chapter five next week (after spending a little extra time on Ancient Egypt)--these projects and pictures are a couple of months old.**

Chapter one describes nomadic life and how later nomads began to farm in the Fertile Crescent.  Connor was fascinated by the (fictional) story of a nomadic girl and her family.  The story approach definitely works well with him.

This chapter's hands-on project was creating our own cave paintings:

He did really well with painting a black outline and then filling it in with typical cave painting colors (reds and browns, mostly).

Brennan was thrilled to be able to participate this time around!