Adventures Close to Home

I'm sorry I haven't blogged much lately.  With the kids doing lots of home school on all the available computers, it's hard for me to get a turn.  When I do, I'm often preparing their lessons for the next day.

Home school is going quite well.  I have found lots of great resources online.  Some days are better than others, of course.  As I'm sure others have noted, the best thing about home school is that my kids are with me all the time.  The worst thing is that my kids are with me all the time.  I love having them around, but it is harder to get the "me" time that's so important to my emotional well-being. (Although I think it was easy to fall into the trap of having too much "me" time and not playing with and teaching them as much as I should have.)  But I digress.

This week for science with the boys, we took a 5 Senses Walk to the woods nearby.  We didn't taste anything, but it was wonderful to take time to hear, smell, touch, and feel so many things.  We took a few pictures of our discoveries.  The funniest was the empty snail shell we brought home.

Which, it turned out, wasn't really empty.

The pictures don't do it all justice, of course.  That's the point of exploring with all your senses.  The open seed pods above are amazingly velvety inside, and the green leaves had a lovely scent.  I tried to find if they were any herb regularly used in cooking, but I didn't find it.  I'll have to keep looking.

Three happy explorers: Sarah, BJ, Abraham

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Yesterday we spent a lot of time with our neighbor and landlord.  He showed the kids all around the garage where he now lives (he rented the house because it is really big for 1 person).  One of the biggest hits was this contraption that he uses to break up apples and greens into smaller portions for the sheep:

He made the children wait outside while he fed the sheep initially so they wouldn't get run over when the sheep came in.  It was really neat to see them all when he called them.  The pen was empty, but when he called them, they came very quickly.  I understood the idea of sheep knowing a shepherd's voice in a whole new way.

Watching him feed the sheep

After the initial stampede, we entered the pen and then the pasture, hand feeding them when they would let us.

He is slicing an apple in half so the kids can feed the sheep.

Again I noted the importance of the shepherd.  They were scared to approach us, even if we held food, unless we were near their shepherd.  Then they came much more easily.

I love living in the fresh air.  Feeding the sheep was fun, although I'm thinking that if the kids do it much, they'll each need a pair of shoes just for the sheep pasture.  We went for a drive in the evening, and the smell of sheep lingered in the car a little too much.

Speaking of which, I better go clean some shoes.