A Day on the Farm

Welcome to the farm, I'm glad you stopped by.

We are on the way!

"What for me!"

This brand-new baby goat is just perfect for Gracie.

Luke loved the donkey.

Even Daddy had fun with the animals,

and he was the only one that could feed the peacock!

"What are you looking at?

"Which way do I go?"

"Hey, is Mom still taking pictures!"

"Should I go this way,

or that?"

Our cowgirl Gracie.

Playground time

Gracie is wearing out.

I want to hug just one more goat.

GO! JOSH! GO!

I am not posing with these weird people.

Gracie is one of these weird people!

Oh no, it's not time to go already? What for me!!!!

St. Jerome and the Lion

St. Jerome's feast day is Sunday, September 30, so we decided to celebrate it today. (We have a very busy weekend scheduled.)
Using the Catholic Mosaic

we all enjoyed reading St. Jerome and the Lion. Following the read aloud, much discussion took place regarding life in a monastery and the importance of not jumping to conclusions about people and animals.

We then colored our pictures from the Catholic Mosaic companion coloring book, Fenestrae Fidei.

This lovely lion came from my favorite, very easy, craft site, DLTK's crafts.

One down,

and at least 5 more to go.

Halloween is coming and I have just finished one dog costume.

We have a problem right now though, but I guess I will just let him wear it to bed.

Now that is a cute little tail!

Now, on to the bunny costume.

A Birthday Cake for Johnny Appleseed

In honor of Johnny Appleseed's birthday today, (which so nicely falls during our apple unit) we have made an apple cake with caramel frosting.

The virtue of patience was practiced, as it takes small hands a lot of time to dice up enough apples to equal 3 cups. (We called this math class also.)

It is especially hard to cut up a lot of apples with a butter knife, but that is the only knife I would give them.

Stirring-Stirring-and more Stirring

Anticipation

The kids did the frosting of the cake themselves.

I added the embellishments. (I apologize to Rebecca, my resident pastry chef.)

A New Non-Planning Plan

I have made the decision to not "plan" this school year for my kindergartener or my 2nd grader.
In the past I would write out a full quarter of the school year plans at once, and many times I have needed to start a new plan book because of all the cross-outs, corrections, and additions.

We started school at the beginning of August, and yesterday I was looking through my plan book. I have added things everyday--what read alouds we are doing and what pages we completed on that day--math pages completed and test scores recorded. I have documented every little unexpected learning moment in this book, nature walks, cookies baked, crafts completed, and feast days celebrated.

Hopefully, I will be able to look back into this planner and see what a wonderful, learning filled year we have had.(even if there are some empty days here and there)

What's Happening Outside

We started our morning today by using apples to stamp our apple tote bags. They came out nice, and hopefully we will use them in the apple orchard this weekend.

This afternoon I plan on starting this book as our read-aloud in honor of our apple unit this week.

After our apple printing we heading outside in search of nature.

Every year this maple tree is the first tree to show its colors.

We noticed our beautiful pine tree and all its pinecones.

The sunflowers are bending low, ready be harvested.

We laid them out on the picnic table to dry.

Hopefully, we can keep the birds away long enough to dry some for planting next spring.

We heading into the fields to look for signs of autumn.

We picked some milkweed pods to open.

We made the observation that they are a little to sticky yet to handle. Maybe it will be better in a week or two.

Out in our field there grows a wonderful apple tree. It is very heavy with apples this year. We have been reading about Johnny Appleseed this week to help celebrate his birthday tomorrow. Mark is pretty sure that Johnny Appleseed probably planted this very tree since it was here when we moved in 15 years ago, and that certainly was verrrry long ago.

Mark and Grace picked a few to nibble on today, but in the next few days we will pick more into our apple totes and bring them in and make applesauce from them.

Luke enjoyed his apple.

While Grace looked on, Kimberly ate hers,

oh, no, was that a worm!

I spotted some strange animals out in the yard. One monkey,

and another monkey!