Some pictures from the last few weeks.  Sorry because it's really choppy but I wanted to get some pictures up because it's been a long time!

We have been taking advantage of the nice weather to go on many nature walks. Adelaide enjoys walking her baby.

We learned about the Transcontinental Railroad.  The boys raced across a cardboard box, stapling pipe cleaner 'rails' and laying popsicle stick 'tracks' to see who could reach the middle first.

In April our artist was Winslow Homer.  We studied a couple of his ocean and landscape scenes and then made our own.

This one is Austin's painting.  He painted an ocean scene.

And this one is Gavin's painting.  He painted a landscape.

This time both boys did an ocean scene similar to Homer's.  This was Day 1.

Another nature walk.  This time to a new trail.  We have to mix it up once in a while!

This might be my favorite picture of all time!

Adelaide at a soccer game.

Day 2 of our ocean paintings.  It was really funny because I held up Austin's painting from the day before and said, "this is what I think of your painting" and then started ripping it in strips.  Austin wasn't quite sure how to respond.  He was pretty sure I was joking but I was ripping the paper so he wasn't sure if he should laugh or be offended.  It might have been a little mean but his expression was priceless.  But then I explained that the rips would look like the white caps of waves when we pieced it back together.  The one with the red sinking boat is Austin's painting and Gavin's painting is the blue boat.  I think they turned out kind of neat.

In May we have turned to Monet.  This was a re-creation of his water lilies painting using tissue paper.

And, another nature walk.  This one was to a local bird sanctuary.  We saw lots of birds but they were all ones we had seen before.  We did see an Eastern Bluebird, which is somewhat unusual, and a woodpecker.  We heard a ton of birds.  I wish I knew bird calls because I'm sure there were many more species than what we saw.

I've been making the kids find a 'special' place to sit, away from everyone else, and setting a timer for 10 minutes.  Then they can focus on what they see and add an entry to their nature journals.  They are actually pretty good about sitting and observing for 10 minutes.

Gavin started playing baseball this year.  Here he is ready to go.