{This and That}

Happy Sunday!  Last week was a bit of a blur--it was actually a good week, but so busy.  I'm feeling much more balanced now thanks to some binge reading of The Giver quartet, a long run, and a nap...

...and a lovely morning with friends on Friday studying grass.  Yes, grass!

It was actually lots of fun.  Our goal is to identify as many of our local wild grasses as we can.  I have pictures of the varieties we found and will be working on figuring them out for the next couple weeks.  It's the perfect assignment for a drought season.

(And we found a skeleton, maybe of a possum?  That upped the excitement factor a tad too.)

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And it doesn't hurt that I finally have this in my hands:

My hard copy is set to arrive tomorrow or the next day, but I have a soft copy loaded to my tablet right now.  I've read just the foreword so far--by none other than David Hicks, of Norms and Nobility fame--and I can already tell it's going to be wonderful.  (By the way, Karen is giving away a couple copies on her website, so head over to enter!)

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Speaking of books, I finally got out our fall books--my favorite season, and some of my favorite books to read aloud.  The simple, soothing lines of Rylant's In November, the charming illustrations and sweet rhythm of Now It's Fall...  Have I written about fall books already here?  I guess I haven't.  Suffice it to say that those are two of our very favorites for this time of year.  I'll have to spotlight those and a few others soon.

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You know you have a lot of children when...

...they take up every swing at the park.  (And I was wearing the baby!)

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And more book chat: we're listening to By the Shores of Silver Lake right now, on audiobook read by Cherry Jones, usually a chapter a day.  The Little House series was my very favorite as a girl; it's one of the few books from my childhood that I can remember reading over and over.  I would finish the last one and start on the first again.  But it has been ages since I read it, and I forgot how powerful Laura Ingalls Wilder's writing is.  There are turns of phrase that take my breath away.  Such a quintessentially American voice.

Even my kindergartener has been inspired. :)

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I'm looking to do a pond study this term at one of our favorite spots.  

I have relevant sections marked in the Handbook of Nature Study and Natural Science Through the Seasons, and Donald Silver's One Small Square: Pond is currently waiting for me at the library.  We're all about wonder-based science here, so my overall goal is to let the kids observe and study without too much intervention on my part, but anyone have other suggestions?  I'm all ears!