Oak Canyon

Yesterday was nature study day and, while I haven't posted in awhile I wanted to try and post at least nature study again.  Maybe I'll go back and add some of our bigger trips in as well.

Oak Canyon was a beautiful park and hardly anyone was there.  Although I've been told if you go during the summer they have summer programs where the park is just packed in the mornings with kids.

We walked along the main trail past many little creeks and beautiful oak trees.  Malcolm was running ahead most of the time and when he was near, was just a blur so I don't have many photos of him.  Allie is asserting her new found independence by insisting she walk by herself as much as possible.  I think in the future I will just forgo the carrier and let her ride on my head when we need to do a quick catch up with the group.  She had so much fun exploring the dirt, leaves, and acorns all around her though and I love giving her this opportunity to explore the world around her. 

There was plenty of rock climbing, stream crossing, and tree climbing going on for the bigger kids.  And when we took a break at the end to do our journaling the kids had a blast just playing together.  The small stage was the perfect place for the kids to put on an impromptu dance show, an action scene with stick guns 'booming', or just pretending to be babies crawling around.  We had so much fun.


So, of course, here's a lot of pictures!

There were streams EVERYWHERE which is hard to find here.

Wood ducks, male and female.

I just love tiny waterfalls.

Exploring her world, looking over the bridge at the water.

Break for lunch and cute smiles!

Birds nest in the tree above us while we stopped for lunch.

Just couldn't resist that awesome smile.

Playing peek-a-boo on stage.

The big girls are tickling the baby!

Trying to climb and keep up!

Climbing on rocks at one of the streams.

San Diego Safari Park

It's Thursday!  That means it's nature study day!  I love Thursdays.  We get outside, see cool things, and just explore.  But since our nature study group hasn't resumed for the year I decided to take the kids to the Safari park.  It's a long drive, but Malcolm is finally at the age where he just gets excited and he's really starting to learn a lot more about the animals.

It ended up being a great day and I fit in a lot of science into it.  The very first thing we noticed was the Crowned Cranes eggs had hatched recently.  We compare/contrasted the chicks to the parents.  I was so excited when Malcolm actually pointed out differences to me.  It seems as if every day lately his understanding is expanding.  We also guessed how long it would take the 2 day old baby elephant to grow to the size of another little elephant nearby.  (If your curious, Malcolm guessed one year).

We saw so many animals.  Malcolm informed me later that his favoriate thing was seeing the baby lions which made me laugh since there weren't any baby lions.  He told me they were just really tiny and only he could see them because he has tiny eyes.  Love my little guy.  I think Allie's favoriate part was the African Tram ride.  She made friends with a 14 month old sitting in the seat infront of us.  They kept holding hands.  So cute!

So, here are some pictures of our day.  There aren't that many since most of the time I was pushing a huge stroller by myself which doesn't leave a lot of time for picture taking as well.

Baby Crowned Cranes with their parents

Blue-tongued stink the volunteer bought out for Malcolm to see

Zoo Keeper Talk about the Elephants

We watched this one take a bath

It's hard to see, but the big one in the back has the 2 day old baby under her.

Hanging out in the stork nest

3 Banded Armadillo - Animal Ambassador. 

Allie making yet another friend :)

Missed You!

So I haven't posted in a long time and I do have to admit I missed you!  I know nobody is really reading this (but if someone is leave me a comment so I know I'm not just talking to myself!)
My excuses for being away?  It was summer, and we changed what we were doing completely for school anyway, we had a lot of activities and fieldtrips, and having a baby that is now mobile makes things much busiser during the day!

Some hightlights:  we visited the Los Angles County Musuem of Art with some friends and looked at a few of the tar pits next door.  We renewed our membership to the San Diego Zoo and had fun there with some other friends.  We have, of course, done Disneyland!  We got to experience Cars Land before the general public thanks to my brother and were there on opening day for the crowds.  Malcolm loves Cars Land.  We have discovered a museum in Vista, California that we will probably never go back to called the Gas and Steam Engine museum (a lot of old farm equipment, no trains...).  We also played at the Ladera Ranch Water Park (so cool!) and The Lagoon in our own subdivision.  Both of these places were perfect for the summer and the kids had a blast going.  But due to a close class at The Lagoon, it also prompted swimming lessons for Malcolm.

What is our new plan for school?  So glad you asked! 

Currently, my school schedule is reading poetry (The Real Book of Mother Goose) everyday and one book for literature.  We also work daily in our preschool Handwriting Without Tears.  I like the structure this gives and it makes sense to me.  Keeps me more on tract and it includes manipulates, songs, and a workbook at some point.   Monday/Wednesday/Friday we do Spanish.  This MOSTLY consists of watching Salsa videos from Georgia Public Broadcasting.  We also have a Spanish bingo game we got from the dollar section at Target just to mix it up.  I also hope to add some Spanish kids songs to that list to keep things interesting.  Everyday we listen to our composer study music while playing and this term that is Debussy (taken from the Ambleside Online website).  We do Artist Study on Monday, this term is Renoir.  So far we've looked at Girl with a Watering Can, Two Sisters on the Terrace, and La Grenouillere.  Malcolm actually really likes this and says they are all his favorite! And, Tuesday's are Malcolm's swimming lessons which he just started this week.

Coming soon, I hope to add in Signopore's Earlybird Kindergardten Math and just take it at a slow pace and space it out over 2 years.  Malcolm loves math and is doing really well with it so I don't see a problem adding it now and giving him a head start in it. In two weeks Malcolm also starts T-ball!  His practices will be on Friday afternoons and games on Sunday mornings. 

All of this takes us less then 30 minutes every morning, and days that we don't do Spanish it is only about 10 minutes!  Structured, but still very easy going and not overwhelming for a 3 1/2 year old.  

And of course, one thing that HASN'T changed is nature study.  We do that every Thursday and I hope to get back to our nature study group we found the beginning of the year (or end of the school year depending on how you look at it!) 

So, since this blog will probably mostly center on that, here are some of my pictures from out nature study day last week at Santiago Oaks Regional Park, one of our favorites that we go to. 

Tiny, little inch worm crawling on my finger.  We tried to save it and bring it home but Malcolm knocked the cup we saved him in on the floor and he was so small we never did find him again.

Resting dragonfly.  We saw some orange ones as well, but this blue dragonfly was the only one to sit still for us.

And because I can never resist, here's other pictures of things mentioned earlier as well as my now mobile little girl!

Our new easel!

She loves the swing.

Hanging out at the bounce house.

Disneyland!

Orange County Fair

Sensory play with shaving cream

Malcolm liked it a lot more then the baby though!

At the zoo.  Allie loved seeing the turtles.

Playing in the sand at The Lagoon

Borrowing some toys at The Lagoon.

Learning how to move around with her new shoes.

Very first swimming class!

She loved the Merry Go Round (Disneyland)

Say Cheese! (Disneyland)

Play!

So it's been awhile since I posted last, over a month!  Time flies when your busy, right?  We ended up not doing any of the fieldtrips I thought we would, which is disappointing. 

The airport was canceled due to rain, blackberries postponed because they weren't ripe yet, and the museum was canceled due to funds (which went more baby clothes!).

But we have done some other fieldtrips and just fun things with Daddy.  Last week we went to Tanaka farms to pick strawberries (more detailed post to follow).  We also went to Disneyland with Daddy and had a lot of fun there too!  And of course, the Renaissance Faire!  Malcolm got a costume, hugged a fairy, made a rag doll for his sister, and adopted a baby dragon!  (Not all of this is historically accurate of course)

Watching the show

Making a rag doll

For school we've done K is for kangeroo, L is for Ladybug, M is for Monkey, and N is for Nest.  We didn't really do any big projects for any of those, although we did check out some books from the library to learn more about Ladybugs, Monkeys, and Kangeroos.  Although we also didn't end up reading any of the library books before they were due!

In reality, the past month was spent playing.  A lot of playing.  Which is exactly what a 3 year old needs to do most.  We've played with the hose, walked to the playground near us almost every single day we've been home.  Read a lot of books.  Played with blocks building really, really, really high towers and then knocking them down.  We've pulled the cushions off the couch and made a 'house' out of them.  We've played hide and go seek.

Allie has learned how to sit unsupported.  And she rolls all over the place now!  She passes toys between her hands, and grabs EVERYTHING.  She babbles and talks constantly now as well.  And, she had her 6 month check up last week.  She is in the 95th percentile for weight, and 45th for height.  So she's still chubby, but at least she's getting longer.  And her shots this time around didn't bother her at all! (Of course, we did go strawberry picking right afterward so I think that was a good distraction for her).

And in the future?  More playing, fieldtrips, and maybe someday we'll manage to finish the alphabet :)

And of course, more photos of my adorable kids!

6 Months old!

Being Silly

Being sweet

Being lovey

Being crazy

Nap time!

Playing his new Wii game

Planes, Trains, Cars, and field trips!

Someone mentioned blogs on one of the groups I belong to and it made me realize, I haven't updated this one in a long time!  But, that doesn't mean we haven't been learning.  So I thought I would just do a quick recap of the last couple weeks and look for some pictures to put in at the end.  (I also lost my camera!!!  So I'm missing pictures from everything that first week, including the christening.  So sad!!)

I mentioned before that we were having family come in from out of town.  So, we ended up visiting the Bower's Museum which is a great little museum.  It was a little over Malcolm's head but the adults really enjoyed it.  And Malcolm really liked watching the video they had playing on Ancient China, getting to see all the different ways gold is found in nature, and the masks created by the people in South America. 

We also went to Pretend City which was the perfect thing for Malcolm.  I need to make sure we go here more often and am considering getting passes when money isn't as tight.  Malcolm got to pretend to work a lot of different jobs around a city.  He worked in the grocery store, the gas station, as a firefighter, on a farm, a construction worker, at the marina, and he got paid for all of it!  He put his time sheet into an 'atm' and out popped pretend city money.  He was very excited and we didn't even get to everything they had there.  They also had areas for babies 6-18 months old so I think we might go back when baby sister is crawling.

We went to Disneyland once that week as well, but that isn't as rare an occurrence for us.  We have passes and Malcolm loves going.  We got to see Buzz Lightyear though and he was so excited since Buzz is his favorite!

And the highlight of this week?  The children were christened at the small church near us.  Their Great-grandmother, one of the first women ordained within the episcopal church, was the one to baptism them.  We feel so honored that she was able to do it.  Not only because of her history but also that we named baby Allie after her. 

The following week was really quiet, at least for me.  Malcolm got to go on his very first plane ride and went back to Florida with his cousin.  They let him into the cockpit and he got to play with the steering wheel and even push the throttle (obviously the plane was not running at this time).  He was so excited and I wish I could have seen it.  He had so much fun with his Aunt, Uncle, and cousin.  He went swimming for hours, went to Legoland, rode on a train, and was just spoiled to death.

Of course, the first day back for him was a tough one.  He needed a lengthy timeout to realize the rules applied again.  This is when it starts to get a bit vague for me so I apologize.  We did end up doing I is for inchworm.  I showed him a few videos on youtube about inchworms and showed how they moved.  He thought that was really funny.  And then we (I) learned a new song.  Inchworm by Danny Kaye and we watched the video on youtube for that.

We also did J is jellyfish.  We got some books from the library about ocean animals.  Even though it wasn't a jellyfish we got the book  Humphrey the Lost Whale.  Malcolm really liked this story, and it's a true store about the whale who swam under the Golden Gate bridge and up a tiny river before the people figured out how to turn him around again.  Malcolm was especially thrilled because I found a reading rainbow DVD at the library that featured this book.  He just kept repeating "Humphrey" over and over while watching it and requested it several times.  Very cute.  We also make jello jellyfish to eat for a snack which he thought was really funny.

We had two fieldtrips at the time period as well.  The first was a tour of the firestation with our nature study group. Malcolm loved getting to see the fire engines up close, seeing all their equipment, and they even took us inside to see their kitchen, beds, workout room,  and dispatch area.  It was quite a treat!

Then, with another homeschool group, we got to go to Legoland in San Diego.  This was also a first for us and Malcolm had so much fun.  It was just us with baby sister so he wasn't able to go on any of the 'big' kid rides which I was a little sad about.  He still enjoyed doing the baby rides like the boats and train, playing in on the playgrounds, building with legos including a little car that he was able to race with other children.  But the best thing about this whole trip was getting to watch him drive his own car.  They have a 'driving school' for 3-5 year olds so Malcolm was able to drive by himself in his own little lego car.  He crashed, a lot.  But he had SO much fun doing it and finally got the hang of it at the very end and managed to make it all the way around the track before time ran out.  I felt bad for the man running the ride.  He was running all over the place unsticking stuck preschoolers who crashed into each other and the walls, Malcolm a large number of the crashes.

Riding the train

Driving his own car!

We have some more really cool fieldtrips coming up so stay tuned!  Including picking blackberries, going to the airport, and visiting the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. Here are other cute pictures from our past month!

Spring is here!  Its warmed up and we can spend a lot of time outside now.

One of many trips to the playground.

Tummy time!

Playing with our trains we got from Santa.

Hanging out at the park.

Showing off her new cloth diapers, and how big she's gotten!

Cuddling.

Happy Easter!