1st day homeschool blogging

      Today started with Julie reading to us from The Swiss Family Robinson.  When we got to the part about them seeing flamingoes and penguins, we looked up the ranges of both types of birds to see where they might be.  We've been reading range maps for our science lessons lately, but these two species are not in our guide for North America, so we looked on wikipedia.  Their ranges overlap along the west and southern parts of South America, and also the southern part of Africa.  Then we found out they were in the South Pacific, so it must be somewhere to the west of South America.  This is an adapted version of the story, so later we also plan to read the full story.  We'll add it to our library list for next week.
     We watched a video on China  (PBS "China from the Inside"). It was very interesting and talked about the communist party both nationally and locally, and then a section on the women in China talked about rural life for women, with a wedding shown, and then various interviews with migrant workers.  Their lives are really hard and most of their children are left at the farm being raised by other family members, so the children rarely get to see their parents who work in the city.
     Rebecca finished her math and language arts (Abeka videos and worksheets).
     For science we reviewed leaf types, and collected various leaves around the yard, labeling them in a book after putting their shapes in the book with pencil rubbings of them.  We collected the following today and labeled them in the book:
    Red Oak - simple pinnately lobed leaves
    Red Bud - simple unlobed leaves
    Pecan - compound pinnately lobed with sickle-shaped leaflets
    Walnut - compound pinnately lobed (very similar to pecan but leaflets symmetrical instead of sickle shaped)
    Live Oak - simple unlobed leaves, with acorns (developing now) also collected
    Cedar Elm - simple unlobed with teeth, with seeds collected (seeds look ready to fall soon)
    Sweet Gum - simple palmately lobed leaves (found several red? wasps hanging out on a shaded leaf near our collection site)
   
     Julie worked on her Saxon Math (addition doubles plus 1) and in her language book (learning language arts through literature).