February/March

Prospect park in the winter, so peaceful and pretty. The Canadian geese were out in full force, as were a few other water fowl. Took the pics while walking to the P. Park zoo a few weeks ago. The beauty of homeschooling is doing what we love when we want to do it, the kids are learning all the time. We do not have to do it inside or behind a desk.

Emus are one of J's favorite birds, this one likes grapes :) according to the zoo keeper whom we had all to ourselves since the zoo was pretty much deserted.  The kids had a nice conversation with the keeper, asked questions and got to meet the coolest bird, the Cape Barren goose, from Australia. He was walking around freely and seemed pretty interested in the kids.  We love the zoo, are members, and go often so we deff. get our money's worth. There is always something new to see, since animals don't behave the same way every day. The best time to go is after 1 pm, when all of the school groups are gone, but kids are still in school. So we usually get at least a 3 hour window when we are pretty much all alone. It is much more peaceful to view the animals that way. I think we are a little bit spoiled, haha.

This is one of the most beautiful sting rays that I have seen.

Dh decided to make bread for the first time, the girls helped. It came out so very good! It was not hard to make, but since we are short on patience, not something we can do often. It took over 4 hours from beginning to end with all the proofing time... but it was really good! The kids learn a lot about baking from their father. I cook, he bakes. We make a good team :)

We drove out to Grant's tomb at the end of February. Dh worked an over night, so he was off one day during the week. Since we've never been there, I suggested we drive out there. Since the subway ride would be over an hour each way, I was glad we could make a drive out of it. It was such a cold and windy day so we again had the place all to ourselves. This is the biggest mausoleum built in the U.S. I believe. It houses the 18th president, Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia Grant. Built in the late 1890's, it is such a magnificent building. It was a nice field trip, and we all learned some interesting things.

One Saturday I took the girls to a free Chinese Cultural fair held at the ROC.  The activities were not up F's alley so he stayed home with DH. The girls were super excited, and we met up with some great homeschoolers, including one of A's friends. They got to dress up in costumes, try to work chopsticks, made dumpling figures, learned some Chinese words from the Chinese teacher, made lanterns and did other fun activities. It was 3 hours of fun for the kids while D., E. (hs'ing moms) and I caught up.

Last week I took the kids to a homeschool gathering at the Native American Museum. There they walked around in groups and learned various things about different Native Am. tribes. We also watched a few short films, and had a good time with friends. Now if the guards would quit following us wherever we went, concerned about having so many kids in one area, that'd be great!

This Tuesday DH took off work so he could come with us to the Greenburgh Nature Center, in Scarsdale NY. One of the homeschooling moms arranged a Maple Sugaring field trip! We arrived hours early so as to take advantage of the other things offered at the center, such as the live animal encounters. I haven't had as much fun as I did there in quite a while. The kids Loved it! We got to hold and learn about so many different animals, taught by a very knowledgeable animal keeper. This is my family looking at the tortoises, Elvis the Iguana and quails.  I am in love with a 50 yo. tortoise! LOL.. he was such a sweetie, and so beautiful. She taught us about hedgehogs, chinchillas, ferrets, snakes, tortoises, and screech owls. A's favorite was the hedgehog that she got to pet. Mine was Big foot, the tortoise, who likes it when people pet him gently on his shell. :)  I spent the time trying to figure out how to smuggle him out of there... lol.

J's bff and her family came as well, so we spent an hour hanging out before the class started. I have to say this was one informative class. We split up into 3 groups of about 20 each and did a 1 hour tour learning how to make maple syrup. The kids got to take turns tapping a tree with a simple but effective tool, taste the sap (sweet water) when it flowed out of the tree. Learned how the sap is cooked down to maple syrup. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup! Now I get why real maple syrup is so expensive.  Then we sat around a nice warm fire, it was in the low 40's, and listened as he told us a story about a Native American who discovered maple syrup, when he threw his stone ax at a tree and saw the sap flowing, then his wife got the idea to boil it down to make maple sugar. It was such a perfect day, the sun shining, the fire warming us all up.... then the guide led us into the green house and had the kids try to tell the difference btwn. real maple syrup and the fake one, made with high fructose corn syrup. Most of the kids, including mine, guessed correctly.
After the tour/class was over, we all walked over to the lovely maintained grounds and sat and talked while the kids ran around, climbed huge rocks and played/talked. J and her bff had a nice time hanging out with one of bff's friends.
Wednesday started F's creative writing class again for the Spring. We took the bus to his bff's house for a semi private class by Skype. :)  We decided this was preferable than going to the location where it was held last season, since if the weather turned bad on the given day there really wasn't anyplace for us to go after dropping the boys off for the class. It worked out nicely as the mom provided them with laptops and they worked on their individual short stories with the teacher via Skype. After the class the boys had some free playtime. The girls and I hung out and talked, and played some board games.

Thursday we went to the aquarium, but only stayed for abt. 30 min since there were too many people, and we have a membership. Met up with a few homeschoolers and hung out for a few hours at the beach. It was such a beautiful, although windy, day. None of us wanted to stay inside.... J is learning  a lot about world geography thru listening to F talk (he is becoming quite an expert) playing board games, and reading captions when we go on field trips. She likes to tell us now where the countries the animals come from, are located. A is fascinated by all types of animals so she reads a lot about them and writes in her little notebook often now.

I was a little worried about when the nice weather came around and we'd be outdoors more, with field trips and classes. So far we are getting math done almost daily, reading is getting done daily and some history and science as well gets discussed in some form every day. All the kids are getting some form of writing in a few times a week, with F doing a lot of it on the computer. His spelling is improving as well as his usage of grammar.