I love this time of year- when the trees change color! Sadly, many of the leaves in our apt. complex are rather gross and yucky after they fall on the ground because of the many times they spray the trees and plants with pesticides. It's something I don't like about living here, but they spray all over the city, in most apt. complexes.
I love it when you can see the drops of rain on plants! Today I went on a walk with the kids and I saw some- and the kids pointed them out to me as well. It's beautiful!
For the last 6 years now (or maybe 7?) I've had a tradition of collecting rose seeds in the fall. My kids have seen me do this and help me find rose seeds. They are in the rose hips. Where we live, the roses aren't usually cut back regularly- just at the end of the year. As the roses die, the rose hips eventually turn orange (around this time of year in the fall). That's when the seeds inside of them are ready. We pick off or cut off the rose hips, cut them open to get the seeds out. air them out to dry (usually for a day or two) and then put them in a ziplock bag with some dirt (and a bit of water). I label them with the date I picked them and then put it in the fridge to "winter." Around January of February they might start to get roots- that's when I plant them in a pot of soil in the house and then later on transplant them outside (usually in the summer or late spring). Over the years I've been doing this, I've got rose plants to grow and they've even grown small, cute, baby roses (about the size of my thumb), but the plant seems to die in the summer heat. I have to find a way somehow to try and get them to survive. It's a good challenge for my gardening skills!
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| This is one of the tiny roses that I got in 2016. |
Ok, so we've actually finished our 6th week of school already! Usually we take 1 week off after every 6 weeks but this time we're going to do 7 week so that our 1 week off corresponds to a national one week holiday here. "1 week holiday" sounds nice, but when there are so many people (over a billion!), that means that the parks, vacation places, museums, restaurants, etc... are all super crowded. We'll be staying clear from parks and places like that and enjoying time with friends instead. I've included some pictures of our homeschool year so far. It's going well; I really love homeschooling!
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| At one of our fav. parks |
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| We got a milk foaming machine so we can make fancy coffee at home. |
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| Nature study (one of my fav. classes!) |
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| Flowers in the park |
I just finished 2 books about Oregon and Washington's History for Kids. They're available as a PDF file on my other website (www.inknewspaper.net). They go through these two states' histories and geography as well with questions and optional project ideas. They're only $2.50 each.
In other news, we start our homeschool year next week. I'm excited- this year I have a pre-schooler, 1st grader, and 3rd grader (they grow up so fast!).
This week I've been planning for the school year. Some homeschool moms hate lesson planning but I love it. It's one of the things I look forward to every year. This next year will be a little different with 2 of my kids in formal school- a 1st grader and 3rd grader (from 1b and 1a). Quite a few of their classes they'll be doing together but others (like math and reading, etc.) they'll be doing separately. Generally, our family does Chinese history the 1st term, world history the 2nd term, and American history the 3rd term. One of the books I'm excited about is Animals of Asia for Kids. We're also going to try and make it a point to watch a few animal documentaries. We watched some before from time to time, but not regularly. I enjoy animal documentaries, esp. where they're working with endangered animals to save them. The picture below is at a park (on a super hot day!) earlier this month.
I just finished another book: North American Animals for Kids. It's available currently as a PDF on www.inknewspaper.net. (my other website). I might later on publish it as as printed book but for now it's available as a PDF file you can print out. Here's the description:
Follow Samantha (fictional character), a young girl who has to write a report about a North American animal for school. She looks at 15 different animals. As you read about these 15 animals, look for clues and try to guess which animal she decides to write her report on. At the end of the book is her animal report, a poem about North American animals, and a list of books for further reading.
We've been on summer break almost 3 weeks (or has it been 4 weeks?). It's been a really nice summer break. The last few weeks have been super hot- in the 90ies and often with humidity. For me, the humidity really drains my energy! We're SO thankful we have a 1st floor apt. with a yard so we can have a small swimming pool. It's been such a great way for the kids to stay cool and exercise in the summer (and work on their swimming skills!). It's also nice to be on the 1st floor because it's not nearly as hot as the upper floors.
We have a few summer goals: getting each of the kids in the kitchen cooking and baking with me more (something I always want to do in the school year and I do, but not as often as I want to so summertime is a great time to focus on it), working with clay, doing a memory and blindfold tasting game to work on developing their senses (they love these games and it's something I want to do more often but run out of time for so, again, summer time is a great time to do them!), and some handicrafts. The kids have enjoyed having their friends over often and even sleepovers! They just started having sleepovers and LOVE it! There's another family that have 2 boys and 1 girl, similar ages to our kids and they've done a few sleepovers lately. The picture is a park that is probably super busy on the weekends but since we homeschool (and since the other kids are still in school), we can go when it's not crowded (which is SO nice!).
We went to the aquarium today as an end of the school year treat. We finished our school year yesterday- it's nice to have a break. For summer, we'll still do our read alouds and I plan to cook and bake with the kids more individually, which we should have time for in the summer.
Today we went to Weiyang Palace Remains Park. It's a huge, huge park that's the exact spot of where the old palace used to be. Xi'an was the capital of the country for a few different dynasties. The big palace we saw today was destroyed at the end of the Han Dynasty, around 200 AD. There's not many buildings to see (almost none!) but they have the outlines on the ground of where they used to be so you can get an idea of how huge it was. Although there are so many historical places to see in Xi'an, this park isn't one of the ones commonly seen because it's so big and on the outskirts of town. I enjoyed it, even though it was so hot today! It was great to see how big it was and to think that I was walking where some of the people I've written about (children's biographies and the Storybook fo China) have been.
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| This used to be where the wall for the palace used to be. You can see how thick the walls were. |
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| There's a plastic window with a drawing of how this exact place looked like many years ago. |
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| The park goes all the way to the trees in the back. |
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| Where the trees are are probably where the main roads used to be. All the green fields are where the old city and palace used to be. It's huge! |
I finished another book, this time it introduces 22 birds:
This is a story about a grandfather who writes a book for his grandchildren to introduce them to some of his favorite birds of America. He was a truck driver for many years and had been to most of the continental states (although he also includes a few birds from Alaska and Hawaii). Included are 22 birds that he describes to his grandchildren to try and get them interested in bird watching. This is not a bird watcher’s guide or spotter’s guide- it’s meant to encourage kids to learn about birds. It’s geared for primary school age children.
It's available on Amazon or www.lulu.com.
I recently finished a short book to introduce 25 birds from California, Oregon, and Washington through stories. A girl lives in Oregon and travels to California to visit her grandparents. Her grandfather is an avid bird watcher so she starts to learn about the birds where they live and also in Oregon and later in Washington when her family does a road trip there. This book is available on www.lulu.com or www.amazon.com.
Yesterday we met up with another family to go to a park together. This park has some buildings from the Tang Dynasty (roughly 600-900 AD), a small lake, and this time of year tulips! The first time I went to this park, I didn't know they would have tulips and it was a pleasant surprise. It was about 10 years ago. 10 years later...the park is still there, but it's changed significantly. I didn't know if there would be tulips or not and I was glad to see them still there this time of year.
The local museum has a day in the year when people can bring in their apples to press into apple cider (apple juice). Today was that day and...
