Sunday

This praying mantis heard that we are all about nature study these days and figured we'd like to study him. He scared the bejeebers out of me when I saw him on the porch, but my darling brave son helped him back out into the grass. We prefer our nature to remain at a fair distance from the house, thank-you-very-much.
(Just look at the size of that thing!)


I finally got around to having the kids make their salt dough maps, which were supposed to be done three weeks ago.

These were supposed to be creative maps of islands and maybe a small continent which would help familiarize the kids with things like peninsulas, inlets, atolls, and all those other nifty geography sorts of things. Only I think I whipped through the terms a little too fast, and the only ones that stuck were the ones like "island" and "volcano," the kids already knew. So their geographical formations are whimsical, to say the least. A mom at our church who also uses Tapestry of Grace with her kids recommended edible maps, and if we do this again I think they might focus better with just a single island out of peanut butter dough.