Garden - fall makeover

Each fall, when we start school we spend our first week getting the garden areas "fixed up".  It's time to clean up, add new soil, and plant new seeds.  This week we did just that.  We now have:

Eggplant (made it through the summer)

Tomatoes (made it through the summer)

Potatoes
Carrots

Cucumbers

Bell peppers

Onions

Radishes

Lettuce

Herbs

Festive gourds

Micah built our herb garden box.  We pulled out our last 5 watermelon to make room for the festive gourd seeds.  Whew, we made it before October 1.

"WINTER" Day

It's the first day of fall, but it's been all about "Winter" for us today! We have been waiting since spring for this day to arrive - the day "Dolphin Tale" came to the theatres. When we met Winter a few months ago, while visiting Nana & Papa Joe in Clearwater, FL, we learned of the movie and marked our calendar. Today we wore our Clearwater t-shirts and took our neighbor, Kyle (who'd also been talking about going) to the show.

Here are some pictures of our trip to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. It was really neat to see these places on the big screen.

1. Micah with Nana & Papa Joe pointing to Winter

2. Winter and her friend

3. The boat they used in the movie with the advertisement for the movie

We enjoyed the movie very much and highly recommend it for families!

School starts with a Dolphin Study

We are looking forward to the Dolphin Tale movie coming out on Friday.  So, we decided to start school with a Dolphin study.  It will include:

• Reading Dolphin Adventure by Wayne Grover (A true story about a diver's incredible undersea experience!)
• Dolphin coloring pages
• Drawing dolphins
• Reading dolphin facts and writing out notecards
• Visiting the official "Winter the dolphin" website:  http://www.seewinter.com/
• Learning more about dolphins through video:  http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/bottlenose-dolphin/
• Learning about prosthetics:  an artificial device extension that replaces a missing body part; on humans (http://www.rslsteeper.com/) and animals (http://www.lifewithinme.com/2009/11/animal-prosthetics-amazing-stories-of-rehabilitation/)
• Reading a board book:  Dolly Dolphin and creating a similar version about Winter
• Going to the movie!

Eastside Explorers "FALL KICK-OFF"

Tonight was the Fall Kick-Off for Eastside Explorers (our homeschool co-op).  It's a huge carnival with games, prizes, information tables, and snacks.  It was fun seeing familiar faces from our previous years of homeschooling and to get to know some new families joining in.  I worked the yearbook table for most of the night.  From my post I could see Micah & Lilly running around the gym (Matt was keeping his eye on them too), going to their favorite games, getting more of the same prizes (we have 15 bath ducks), and getting their faces painted.  It was a FUN night!

Summer Catch Up

Over the summer the blogger website has been doing some updates.  I was upable to publish my entries for most of the summer, so I'll be catching up on those and putting them in chronological order.
However, we are ready to begin school and get some of those entries online.
Don't forget to come back and scroll down!!!

Basketball Season begins

We signed Micah up for the YMCA basketball league again this fall.  It's September and it's time to begin.  Micah's first practice was September 1st and his first game was September 10.  His coaches are:  Coach Stearns and Coach Rich (Matt).

"Let's go Cheetas, let's go!!"