Thanksgiving in New York Part 2

  I don't have any pictures from Thanksgiving dinner.  We ate one of these handsome fellows.

The next night we had pizza from the best pizzeria in the world -- Anellio's Pizza.  We all loved it. 

We watched "White Christmas" and surprisingly, it mostly kept the kids attention:

We did a lot of fun craft projects.  Big sister A made a potholder.

 Brother S put together several puzzles. He loves doing them.

 We made ornaments and decorations for Goomie's room at the nursing home.

 Big sister A carefully made some sand art jars.

Everyone had a great time and was sad to leave. Thanks Dad!!

Thanksgiving in New York: Hiking in Ithaca

Growing up in upstate NY I never really appreciated the local scenery and hiking opportunities. I am trying to make-up for it now. Watkins Glen is a beautiful place to hike, but we have been there several times.  Ithaca has a lot of great trails that my family has not seen yet, so we went on a short (2 mile) out and back hike to Taughannock Falls. It was chilly, but we all enjoyed it.

 Having Grandpop with us turned the hike into an opportunity for more great pictures from my talented dad. All the pictures in this blog post are from his camera.

 

It was also an excellent botany and geology lesson for my homeschoolers.  We learned about shale and limestone (and collected rock samples) on one side of the gorge. We saw how the water washed it away over time. And we saw a mini dessert ecosystem on the dry sunny side of the gorge where cedar trees were growing.

 

 Miss L was not in the mood for photography this weekend. Grandpop still managed to sneak some beautiful shots.  I like this one of her peeking out. 

 And this one:

Beautiful scenery:

 

 According the the Ithaca Gorges and Waterfalls website: This waterfall is the tallest single drop waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains. It is a 215 ft cascade and is about 3 stories taller than Niagara Falls.

 The kids had a lot of fun playing around on fallen logs. It's ironic because we have many of these in our back yard too.

Family Schooling Summary: Halloween Candy Science

What to do with a bunch of extra Halloween candy?  Science experiments! We tried this one with smarties and baking soda.

 

 We also had our Fall Class Fair with our home school co-op.  Here is a display from a class that M and S took:

 Here are some cool things that the gals in my teen DIY class made:

 Here is the display from my pottery class:

None of the kids projects were done yet (all waiting to be fired).  We displayed some of my projects and those of my assistants instead. 
Here is M doing the performance part of the class fair.  They memorized the 50 state capitals!

 Here is the class photo of everyone who was willing to be in the picture... so not brother S.

Farm Fresh: First Freeze

Temperatures dropped down into the twenties last week.  Everything is officially done in the garden except a few sturdy lettuces. 

 We have a bunch of new rabbit kits. Most of them are black.  Here is Alice - aka. very experienced mama bunny.

 We have had a least 8 playdates in the last week with friends coming over to visit the farm and especially hold these cute rabbit kits.

 Some friends brought us 5 extra ducks. Their neighbors felt that they were too loud - 2 pekin and 3 more khakis.

 The cold snap plus rainy windy weather brought down most of the hickory trees leaves in one swoop.

 And with all this cold weather we finally started using our wood stove. It has been great. So warm and cozy. 

Recommended Reading: September & October 2017

We read a lot of great books so far this school year:
1. Magic Tree House Series -- Their are sooo many of these. They are great for helping kids learn history, but kind of annoying for grown-ups listening along.
2. Ramona the Brave, Ramona and Her Mother, and Henry Huggins By Beverly Cleary
Classic read aloud books -- I love these because they are so funny.
3. Who was... series (TV and Movie Biographies); I am terrible at all things pop-culture, so reading these books was an education for me.
4. Alexander Hamilton: The Outsider by Jean Fritz; Hamilton the musical has been very popular listening around our house this fall. We have most of the words memorized and have been able to link things from the musical with things in his biography.
5. Thomas Jefferson by Cheryl Harness. We have been focusing on the founding fathers and the revolutionary war this fall -- big sister A wrote an essay on Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence. They also had a special night on "Liberty" for her activity girls group. She brought a copy of the Declaration of Independence and talked about it with the other kids.
6. Story of the World: Volume 3 Early Modern Times, Queen Elizabeth to the Forty-Niners by Susan Wise Bauer -- this is our history book for this year. We finished reading it over the summer and have just been delving into specific events during that time period (like the American Revolutionary War).
7. Liberty's Kids - DVD -- I have a lot of Relief Society meetings at our house lately and this DVD is a great history activity to keep the kids occupied during the meetings.

Family Schooling Summary

I always forget to take out my camera at the pool. We have been doing homeschool swim lessons twice a week for the last two months. I love it because it is a LONG lesson (1.5 hours) and at a gym so that I can drop the littlest off at the kids club while I swim laps too. The teachers are the swim team coaches too and they do a great job teaching correct technique.  

 Homeschooling means more time for family togetherness! It doesn't take us as long to get through the each day's materials so the kids have time to play together.  I love watching their growing closeness with each other and how well they work together on projects.

 We are doing a Montessori approach to math and reading for brothers M and S. I think it has been great so far... just a little expensive for some materials.

 M and S are taking a cardboard engineering class at co-op.

 Miss L is in the nursery class.

 This is big sister A's gym class called "Old Time Games".

 One of our assignments from A and M's guitar teacher was to go listen to some live bands play.  He gave us some ideas.

 We went to the Railroad Festival in a nearby town to hear the live bands playing there.  The banjo man did a great job involving the kids.