Feburary Catch Up

It's been awhile since I've posted (big shocker!) so here's another photo post of everything that's happened in Feburary since my last post that doesn't really fit with a particular theme.

Birds nest we found on a walk after a rain storm

Bonding over Plants Vs Zombies

Box play!

Enthralled by a leaf blower

Learning to fish! 

Helped the big kids make a really cool sand castle.

Painting with hot wheels.

Construction

 There was some road crews working in our neighborhood and Malcolm wanted to watch them.  We went outside to see what they were doing and how the machines worked.  The men were so great though!  The foreman noticed us watching and came over to talk to Malcolm.  He posed for a picture with him and then let Malcolm sit in one of the machines.  He was thrilled!

Laguna Coast - Feb 23rd

 'Hiking' at Laguna Coast.  Allie has gotten to the age where she really wants to explore her surroundings, deeply.  So she will walk for a few feet, get intrigued by something, sit, and won't budge for a long time.  So our 'hike' didn't go very far.  In most of the pictures you can still see the parking lot.  But the kids had fun digging rocks up from the trail and we loved just getting outside.  Although there aren't any animal pictures this time around, I have some great shots of Malcolm which are few and far between so enjoy!

"Can we keep walking now?"

Down the trail.

Malcolm takes some pictures!

Digging with his finger, annoyed Mom told him to look up.

What do rocks taste like?

Where the trail would have lead, if we had walked.

Look, a bench!

Cuddle time.

And back to the car.

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)