Wrap Up Catch Up

I fell off the blogging bandwagon, and now I have a few weeks to catch up on!

We finished our row of The Salamander Room with a diorama of Brian's room and a trip to the Insectarium.

Jono, eating a piece of cricket fudge.  Nasty.  He loved it. 

Hazel wasn't so sure. 

Our caterpillars grew and changed! We so enjoyed watching that process.  I want butterfly plants in my yard now!

all four, as chrysalises (is that how you spell that?!)

We fed them oranges until they all emerged, and then we let them all go.  

Here you can see the nasty red juice that squirted out of each chrysalis as the butterfly emerged.  Looked like quite the battle scene in there by the time they all came out to play!

Kids, waiting anxiously for our butterflies to take flight! It took some gentle encouragement in the end. 

After that, we did a unit on The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.  Daddy left town in the middle of this unit for a week, and well... mama lost steam.  We didn't do as much with this book as I had planned, but we enjoyed the story, and our DIY lighthouses were very popular nightlights for a few days.

We went on a field trip with our homeschool group to see a children's concert at the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. It was so fun! They had stations set up with a couple of people to introduce us to the various instruments.  After we cycled through the stations, we got to listen to a short concert with the whole orchestra.  

violins

oboe

full orchestra

Mama and her entourage, after the show

While Daddy was gone, we drew and painted pumpkins, and then took a trip to the super awesome Miss Heather's Pumpkin Patch.  

face painting

"pony" rides

my adorable children!

While Daddy was gone, Grandma and Grandpa came to visit!  They were lucky enough to be in town for a Johnette Downing concert.  Everyone who knows us knows that we LOVE to go hear Ms. Downing's free children's concerts in the French Quarter.  Grandma and Grandpa were excited to get to go along.   Last week's concert was pretty crowded with field trips, but Hazel and Charlie didn't let that stop them from dancing to the Boogie Woogie Jive!

Grandma and Grandpa also took a trip with us to Storyland.  Playing at this park makes me want to go home and read fairy tales.  Or, watch Once Upon a Time. 

And then finally, with Daddy home and grandparents gone, we got back on the school bandwagon with a few day's study on the election.  On Tuesday, we read If I Ran for President, which was definitely the best overview of the election process for this age group that I found.  Then the kids came with me to vote.  On Wednesday, we colored in our US map with dry erase markers to represent election results and discovered that we had re-elected President Obama.

Next up, a unit on Thanksgiving! Thanks for catching up with us!