last night, we were out for a 2 mile walk...and i was wondering what our homeschool week would involve. truthfully, i'm plain tired of lessons about the civil war and revolutionary war.. i'm tired of biography's and inventors and explorers. not that we're over any of that ...it's just i needed a break! i am certain tommie did, too. during our walk, a neighbor was cleaning out his ditch- long story short- i asked if i could have a couple of the crayfish he was raking up... we found an old taco bell cup in a nearby ditch ... and I carried them home. here we go, thought I...TOMORROW'S SCIENCE LESSON... what a great free science project! i found a lot of information on the "rusty crayfish" on-line, printed off anatomy parts, questions and answers and we sat outside today, at the picnic table counting segments, talking about crustaceans and trying to figure out the sex of our crayfish...not as easy as you think!! We even pulled out our big magnifying glass and looked at the eyeball on pegs and strong jawline!

springtime really, really, REALLY puts me in the mood for earth science or living science... we desperately needed a shift in homeschooling...so, i pulled out a used library book on swans. tommie will be using this as his cross-curriculum for geography, applied math (a swan flew into an jet 30,000 feet high- how many miles is this?), science and anatomy, spelling, homemade reading comp. questions, cursive and creative writing. Our local newspaper had a sad swan story in Sunday's paper... i used it for creative writing.

swan facts you always wanted to know, but were afraid to ask:

they flap their wings 160 times a minute

the trumpeter is the largest swan

there are 7 species

they have 25,000 flight feathers

michelangelo and da vinci loved using them in their paintings

irish poet yeats wrote a controversial poem about them.

i'm excited to see what tomorrow brings! i'm thinking microscope work...and art week?