Family Schooling and Fun: Sand and Sea Creatures

 Miss L is devoted to her melon patch. She checks on it every day, rain or shine.  This week she was sure that one of her cantaloups was ready... but I had to tell her to wait a little longer and show her what color it should be.  

Brother M and big sister A got their new bikes.  Brother M learned to ride with no trouble and tested out a lot of areas of the yard for riding. 

Big sister A had a tie dye social distancing activity with her friends at church.  She was not sure what to bring for it at first, but upcycled some stained items with happy results for my rainbow loving girl. Big sis also cut Miss L's hair for her.  

This week we learned about toothed vs. baleen whales.  We did an echolocation experiment and listened to the sounds of various real whales under water here. 

Brother M was the only one brave enough to try drinking like a baleen whale (through a comb).  As we learned more we realized that it's more the opposite of what we were doing. They gulp in a ton of water and then spit out the water though the baleen plates keeping the krill in their mouth and licking them off the plates!

Saturday we had a delivery of landscaping sand and pea gravel for my barn project.  As I was ordering it, I was inspired to get some play sand as well.  We have been talking about putting sand in their digging area under the gazebo for a long time and I thought it would be too mean to have only sand that they were not allowed to play with.  So we ordered 1/2 ton of play sand, 1 ton paver sand, and 2 tons pea gravel. 

They got to work right away moving it to the play area. Rain was in the forecast and we needed to get it under cover. 

HOURS of fun playing in the sand.  So much so that they nearly missed family movie night (because they did not get their Saturday cleaning chores done in a timely manner). 

They also constructed a sort of barricade to keep the farm critters out. 

I sent brother M outside today to take some pictures.