Reflection, Park Play and Learning

In this moment I am...
Sipping hot coffee, enjoying the warmth.
Feeling the snuggled body of a pup next to me...and hearing the other two snoring.
Enjoying the quiet early morning moments when I  can catch up on work, catch up on blog reading.
Reflect in silence as the sun comes up before the children wake and the day officially begins.
Pray in thankfulness for all my family is blessed with.

Even in moments of frustration over house hunting, or feeling our 'wants' pushing to the surface I take a step back and thank the Lord for all we have, that we are blessed with, that he is taking care of us and providing us with what we need and everything else will come and fall into place.

Park

 Monday afternoon we slipped away from the house and went on an adventure to view 3 houses for sale then took a break in between to just play!  At times, at nearly 13 years old our daughter is at that awkward in between stage...is she a child, is she a teenager, is she trying to be an adult- she frequently tries all of these hats on throughout the week, testing responses, figuring out her role for herself. And as I remind myself of my role: Mother, Supporter, Holder of high patience, Hugger, Role Model, Reminder that she is Loved always. At the park she was just herself, playing, having fun, joking. It was nice to see her be her.

Tuesday, yesterday we went through our normal morning routine of breakfast, dressing, family work- room tidying and taking care of the animals then went into our learning.

This week's Learning over view....

Terynity
*Teryn choose to finish her history channel documentary on the Titanic that she checked out at the Library- they have a few clips online as well:
http://www.history.com/topics/titanic
*And read more of her book she checked out- that interviews real survivors from the Titanic.
* She started a Mermaid series for fun as well.
*She also made herself a list of what she wanted to work on for the week so that she could keep track of her progress. She is very dedicated to her 4H and has set aside time to practice with her animals, go over her questions as well as work on an additional educational poster for the upcoming show.  *For Math, she has started to work on her expense report and attempt to project her costs for the year of raising more animals.
*Lastly she is working on a poster board presentation/report for the family about how ballet pointe shoes are made, she thinks it is extremely interesting and wants to share the information with the family then watch a 'how its made' video with us when she's done with her project.

Jordan
*Jordan and I read together his Chicken book again and then marked pages in his Pet Science Experiment book he checked out that he could do on his own. He enjoyed the ones that had to do with dog intelligence and plans on working with Rusty this week to find out just how smart he is.
*Jordan spent time reading out loud to me- he enjoys books about animals and related to his interests. He seems to gravitate towards harder books and likes to read and struggle through the words on a few pages of a hard book rather than read an entire easy book.  I don't ever discourage him from picking out hard books from the Library, he chooses what he wants and we attempt it if he wants. 
*After I brought home a new cage for our pets on Monday and explained that the previous owners had used it for Sugar Gliders, he was very interested to learn more about these creatures. He is anxious to look for books at this weeks library trip, but for now we used some online resources we found:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/animals/mammals-animals/kangaroos-koalas-more/sugar_glider/
We also found a few you tube clips from a pet store on what to feed them and special care.
We also looked on the map where Australia was and he drew a picture of a Sugar Glider.

Both kids enjoyed experimenting with baking soda, an oldie but a goodie. Jordan did all the measuring and recorded his observations and attempted different measurements seeing what would give him the biggest fizz reaction.

 This experiment prompted Jordan to launch into a full discussion about burps and farts as well..oh what a boy...but in turn it was not a 'disgusting' talk- he was actually very logical and smart as he watched the way chemicals mixed in his cup and stated that it must be doing the same thing on his insides with what he eats or drinks.

 And in talking about gardening later, Terynity decided she wanted to show Jordan just how plants eat/drink with a dye experiment, which he named the Vein-ator.

Today is Halloween, we do treat or treat, we do have costumes.  Tomorrow we'll head on our weekly trip to the Library then to the Park next door for reading time, play time and picnic time and Friday we'll follow where ever our interests take us.

It's a wonderful journey we are on and I love every day where life takes us...together.