July Learning~

Since July was the 50th anniversary of Appolo mission, we spent the month learning all about it~

We usually call the new school year beginning in July so we drew self portraits and made goals~

We have also begun Writing Workshop with Writing notebooks~

Nature is all around us and if there is a frog to hold, Evie will find it~

Remember EC's swollen hand??? Look nestled in the trees~ 😱A hornet's nest~

We couldn't let it stay there because it was so low and two children had been stung so our exterminators came to spray it... we all watched diligently~

More space fun with chalk pastel art~

After we THOUGHT the hornets were dead, Scott cut it down and we began observing it... then we saw one crawling out!!! YIKES! We ran to get a bin and placed inside for them to finish deceasing~

AND of course, we brought it in to sketch~

Aren't they magnificent?~

EK was out with Mimi and found this Hercules beetle in the parking lot~

We did a beetle drawing tutorial ~

EK wanted the hornet hive for the nature shelf so we found a beautiful container and put it inside~

More chalk pastel painting because we read a beautiful line in a poem: Waterfalls are rivers washing their hair~

SO beautiful~

The girls found a luna moth, ran in to get their sketching bags, sketched~

and released it back into nature!
A wonderful month of learning for sure!!!

A Little Summer Learning~

We clearly love nature and journaling it so here we go...
We found a beautiful butterfly just lying on the ground for observation~

We enjoyed muffins and poetry for breakfast one morning~

Scott hung old maps in our sunroom for geography study~

 Sometimes we like to illustrate a Bible story we have read and write a summary~

Written summaries of books is one of go to writing activities too~

We love taking morning walks right after breakfast and on the way out we discovered a bird nest in our Crepe Myrtle~

On the way home, we checked the blueberry bushes and picked a bunch~

Then we sat out in our backyard and sketched something we saw on our walk~

Evie found this cicada on the ground, placed it carefully on the tree, and ran in to get her sketching things~

"How do we prepare a child, again, to use the aesthetic sense with which he appears to come provided? His education should furnish him with whole galleries of mental pictures, pictures by great artists old and new... in fact, every child should leave school with at least a couple hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination, to say nothing of great buildings, sculpture, beauty of form and colour in things he sees. Perhaps we might secure at least a hundred lovely landscapes too, - sunsets, cloudscapes, starlight nights. At any rate he should go forth well furnished because imagination has the property of magical expansion, the more it holds the more it will hold." (Charlotte Mason~ Vol. 6 p. 43)

THUS... all nature we take in, sketch, and make part of our souls. :)