Backyard Blue Jays!

Our backyard blue jays, photographed by Eoghan.

Photos by Eoghan (Grade 5)

Kids are really enjoying studying our backyard critters and habitat. We went to our local feed store and bought lots and lots of bird seeds and squirrel food. We are using a great book, "The Natural History of New York" (Freemand and Nasuti) to identify our visitors. The goal the kids have set for themselves are to eventually be able to hand feed our local backyard birds. In the meantime, photos were about as close as they could get.

One of the perks of homeschooling is that the kids get to stay home and bond with their pets during the daytime hours. We always enjoy watching these two best buddies pal around during playtime outside. Gem, our cat, and Angel, our golden, adore each other.

The kids found it and named it "the perfect leaf"! We are enjoying fall in the Hudson Valley!

Enjoying Life in the "Barn"

Our Pre-K/K Group Eggs - hatching in 21 days!!

Just put our eggs in the incubator, so 21 days they will be hatching hopefully at a time that our Pre-K/K group will be here:)! The lighter colored egg is a Speckled Sussex and the darker is a Blue Orpington. They are incubating at 99.5 F degrees with 50 percent humidity in the incubator. Fingers crossed they hatch for us:)! They have to travel all the way from Arkansas to NY in the mail so they do get a bumpy ride before they land at our house, but last time we had a good hatch rate.

An Outdoor Classroom and Playgroup prep!

Today we were too tired to go to swim club so took a break and stayed at home. I took the opportunity of being at home to clean and prep for the Fall. I still have IHIPs (NY paperwork) to do! But since those aren't as much fun as creating an "outdoor classroom", I focused on the new addition to our learning environment. All 3 kids were great helpers and had lots of fun. They caught insects and spring peeper frogs to put into our aquarium on the table, wrote on the chalk board and begged for more "science" animals (pets)! They couldn't convince me that the idea of adding a snake was a good one. Yes, I'm sure there are lots of learning opportunities that snakes would bring to science class, but they still give me the creeps! The outdoor classroom will also be used this Fall with my youngest's new playgroup! He's really looking forward to having a group his age since he's constantly being dragged to the big guys activities and classes. Enjoy the pics of the new "Outdoor Classroom" designed by mom and kids and future space of the PuddleJumper Playgroup (that's what we've been nicknaming it here since the kids are big frog fans!) (And while working on it all, our cat, Gem, was being lazy and enjoying our company - Eoghan snapped this picture, I thought it caught the mood of the day well!)