It's Superb.

Cyrus was so very excited to share with us a bird he saw in a BBC nature video.  He drew up a picture.  Ava agreed, that's exactly what it looked like.

Matt and my first reaction: "really?  That's the bird you saw?"
Their response: "well, maybe it was a little more fan shaped.  Less round"

Yes.  As it turns out this Superb bird is the Superb Bird of Paradise from the rainforests of New Guinea.

Here's a few images from google:

Before~

And after he opens up~

This video clip.  It's pretty amazing.



It's pretty Superb.

week in homeschool #24

Our theme this week was Rainbows.

 

I brought out our books that we had on hand about weather, but we really didn't read much more than a sentence or two from each.

 

 

we
painted coffee filters for a future project,
created with rainbow sticks
strung crystals (Sol used wooden balls) onto thin wire for sun catchers
wet felted roving over rocks for the fairies
and
we felted rainbow surprise 'rocks' for our nature table

A Sunset in November

May's Surprise

Park

Finding Quiet

busy hands

During the quiet times of our day my children love to create.  I love seeing the work they produce on their own.   Here's just a few of the little projects they've made.

Ava, inspired by the Little House in the Big Woods series, painted little Laura and Mary wooden peg dolls, and tried to teach herself how to cross stitch a prairie sunset.  Unfortunately the fabric of her sunset took a bath with her youngest brother, and now is no longer flat.

 

Cyrus, inspired by a doll that Ava had made a few months ago, searched his scraps of felt and made his own little boy doll.  So sweet.  I didn't even know that he could sew like this.

Flower parts in felt.

We were talking about the different parts of life cycles during lunch the other day.  That lead to parts of a flower, which lead to magnifying glasses and dissected flowers, which eventually lead to making Parts of the Flower puzzles out of felt.  I made four different puzzles in the end.

1st, a simple flower.  You can identify the parts using the color coded labels.

 

2nd, a flower in more detail.  You can identify the different parts using a printed index image.

 

3rd, a simple seed.  Like the simple flower, you can identify the parts using color coded labels.  Labels were made using common terms/names.

4th, a slightly more complicated seed.  You can identify the parts again using the color coded labels.  These names are the proper scientific names.