Pyramid Lake Fish Ladder

A few weeks ago my friend Tara and I took our gaggle of kids out to Pyramid Lake to have a tour of the fish ladder. It was a cold, windy, grey, and wet day without any fish ready to go up into the Truckee River but it was still a great outing! We learned about the native variety of trout, the Lahontan cutthroat trout (threatened) along with the native Cui-ui a lakesucker (endangered). 

After touring the fish ladder facility with an awesome Dept. of Wildlife Ranger we went over to Popcorn beach to see the pelicans waiting on the fish and to have a bit of a picnic. There were a ton of pelicans and we learned that one of the small islands there is the largest pelican rookery in North America! Popcorn Rock is a bulbous tufa formation like the pyramid in the lake that it is named for!

Mom School!

During the holidays when our studies where a little lighter and I wanted to share something interesting with the kids we did a couple weeks of learning about Julia Childs! I love to cook and I have a couple kids who enjoy cooking and well we all LOVE to eat good food so this turned out to be tons of fun! 

We watched a few episodes of her original black and white show, and some of the newer ones. PBS has some available and there a lots on youtube too!

This was such a treasure...so much so I *almost* was a bad library lover and did not return it. It was an original first edition! The Potato-Leek soup was VERY tasty and very yummy!

This was a fun comic style book all about her life, Bon Appetit! ~ the kids enjoyed it.

They also though she was wildly hysterical!!

This was the kids favorite book we read about her, Minette's Feast ~ its all about her cat!

And then we fell in love with her a little more when we turned to this picture at the back of the book...Minette was a tortie! It takes a special person to love and be loved by a tortie!!

Riley was so gung-ho to make crepes but being knowing their reputation I was a little nervous so I kept putting him off...so he just jumped right in not knowing that they can be tricky and made GREAT crepes! He even followed her directions and was flipping them in the air! It was awesome!

Another great resource is that her kitchen is in the Smithsonian and you can take a virtual tour.

Not to share as a family but on my own I read My Life in France and Julie and Julia, (and watched the movie) which is what started this whole interest in Julia Childs! They were both interesting reads in their own ways. 

Do you have a favorite Julia Childs recipe?

Bon Appétit! 

A Day of Our Homeschooling Life!!

It's been a while since I've given a peek into our day and since Simple Homeschool put out an invitation I thought I'd join in! So welcome to our Wednesday!

Our mornings are slow, I am not one of those mamas who get up early and get things done. Too many years of sleep depravation is my reasoning but really Im just not a morning person if anyone is going to talk to me! ;)

This day is one where Dan is home, he travels frequently but when he is in town we often get days with him home all day. This was difficult for us the first few years of homeschooling, but thankfully we have found a rhythm that Dad fits into and can also slip out of.

Our morning starts with a warm breakfast, blankets, and heater vents. We also take care of animals, giving the cats attention and waking up the bunnies. Which is not so hard on this beautiful sunny morning!

Legos in the morning, Legos at night, LEGOS ALL DAY LONG in our house!! But I find it a gentle way for the kids to transition from morning time to schooling time so you'll often hear me suggest it! And yes there are legos all over my house!!!

Just before the call to come together my oldest comes to me with Cookie his rat who seems to have a mass, he also brings his rat book. So we take a timeout to check on her, read about rat ailments and call the vet to get an appointment. I love that his first go to was a book! 

Every morning I write out all that we would like to accomplish for the day, my kids like having all the information at once and I like that I don't get asked 20 times what else we are going to do! Its all right there! Our family schooling time is by far the largest chunk, but the kids do have some individual things that we do.

We have quite the mixture of homeschooling philosophies here in our home! A little Waldorf, a little Charlotte Mason, a little TJed, and a little crazy all mixed together!! Its great! I am a firm believer that your philosophy/curriculum should serve your family not that you should be a slave to your philosophy/curriculum. We start our day with a Waldorf-ish verse and a scripture we are memorizing. After everyone memorizes the scripture we go out for a fun family activity. Today our family study activities will be after our individual work because of their length. But usually it is done right after our scripture.

Jake learning how to read Fahrenheit and Celsius on a thermometer...

Fern writing numbers...

Leili acting out our story of the week with finger puppets (Little Red Ridding Hood)...

Brother and sister are drawn to the puppet theatre like magnets!!

Riley is reading Matilda and LOVING it! This is a picture that just makes my mama heart go pitter-pat. This guy, my first born threw me right into trusting in schooling. Reading just did not click for him when society says it should. But we took the leap of faith in just trusting that he would get it when he was ready as long as we did not squash his innate love of learning! Now I have to tell him to stop reading and go to bed!!

Our kitchen table turned into math central today and Dad was the central command! Whew! One day off for Mama in the math dept!!

Beautiful Fern LOVES writing notes and now she has found she LOVES writing numbers!!

Leili is being like Little Red Ridding Hood and baking muffins for the family, she chose Coconut Banana! 

Usually Fern prefers to wait for me to do her reading with her, but Little Bear just could not wait!

I have a couple volunteer responsibilities and since today dad is home I run out all by myself for a quick visit. Dad finishes up the school work for the morning while I am gone.

Leili's muffins came out great! Riley played the piano! And lunch was made! Wahoo!

After lunch we watch a great National Geographic video on volcanos, geology is our family study for science/nature study right now and we are enjoying learning about volcanos (and my family is realizing just what a geology nerd I am...)!

After our video some friends come by for a short visit then after that we head over to the nature center across the river. Today we not only enjoy the warmth of the sun and the beauty in our own back yard but we also had a winter nature scavenger hunt! We found everything except an icicle but we are NOT complaining!! 

Cub and Boy Scout meeting end our night and now it is good night!

Thanks for stoping by!!

Schooling Around Town!

I thought I had a couple pictures of school around the house but mostly I found pictures of us schooling around town! We are mostly homebody schoolers but we do get to do some fun stuff around town too!

We got the amazing and FREE opportunity to see the Reno Philharmonic preform Peter & the Wolf! It is one of our FAVORITE music pieces! They even got the mascot form UNR to come out and capture the narrator (an anchor from the local news channel) at the end.

I was so overwhelmed to have the opportunity for my kids to hear this beautiful music performed right in front of them. I still get teary!

We've also gotten over to Ox Bow Nature Preserve a couple of times, it is one of our favorite nature walks plus the critters are always fun! The beaver dams and beaver chewed trees are among our favorites to spot!

Here is one from our backyard! Here are the kids making a village as we learned about the beginnings of Rome.

And of course we have been to the river! It is one of those places we go to unwind, or windup, wear out or calm down. Plus it is a great place to school! Leili and I were reading Three Days on a River in a Red Canoe and then Leili and Dad made a little boat to float in the river!

Inside, outside, here or there!

Fall Festivals

 

 

Schooling goes on even if the blog does not. I have been trying to spend less time in front of the screen and more in real life. I don't always succeed but I'm trying.
We have been enjoying the fall festivals this year. Above are pictures from our Michaelmas celebration. We made sword napkin holders, I made another dragon candle, and this year we talked Dad into baking us some dragon bread! Then at dinner we read the scripture account of the war in heaven and how Micheal drove Satan (the dragon) out of heaven with his sword of truth. Every night we will light our candle and watch how the flame vanquishes the dragon on the candle as we prepare for Christ's birth by vanquishing Satan from our lives and hearts.
We also made these cute little gnomes for our fall nature table.
Just this week we had our Martinmas dinner, I told the story of Martin with small dolls and then we cut our potato in half and shared it with our neighbor. After dinner we put together homeless packets we keep in the car to give out. We also recited the scripture, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven". The next day we made our lanterns symbolizing shining our light to others during this dark time of year that hopefully we will get to use for the local Waldorf school's lantern walk this week.
What does fall look like at your house?

Mono Lake

The kids and I drove down and made a stop at Mono Lake. What a strangely beautiful place it is! They have a great new (at least new since I was last there years ago) State Park Visitor Center. They have some really interesting displays not only about the lake itself but also about the Native people who lived there.

One of our favorite exhibits was three ordinary salt shakers one with about 1/2 inch of salt which represented the ocean, one with about 1 inch of salt which represented the Great Salt Lake, and the third with almost 2 inches of salt, that one represented Mono lake! It is crazy salty, believe us we tasted it!

We also learned why there are bubbles anywhere the waves lap up (it is super windy so there are small waves), and we have a recipe to make our own Mono water:

1 quart fresh water

2 1/2 Tbsp. salt

5 Tbsp. baking soda

2 tsp. epsom salts

a pinch of borax

a pinch of detergent

The baking soda or calcium carbonate is what forms the tufas that make mono lake so interesting to see! After Jake's legs dried they were white from all the dried salt on his feet!

The small islands in mono lake are breeding grounds for the California Gulls. They fly all the way from the Pacific ocean to lay eggs here. Also out in the middle you can see the atoll of a former volcano.

This was a wonderful stop on our very volcanic adventure!!

Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve

Friends of Mono Lake Reserve 

My Visit to Mono Lake