She just loves doing this experiment

A couple of weeks ago we did an experiment with milk, food colour and dish soap. Put a bit of milk in a dish and a a couple if drops of food colour then add a drop of dish soap and watch the colours dance.
This is my first attempt at putting photos into a post I sure hope it works.

Since the last time...

Since the last time I posted we had a family trip to Florida. We managed to pick a cold week to visit the relatives in Naples...they had frost warnings while we were there.
DD did have fun on our trip. It was her first flight, so that was cool in so many ways for her. The least fun was sitting and waiting to get on the plane, but she was good about it.
Our first breakfast was interupted by having to go outside to watch the dolphins catching their breakfast in the canal. The first day was also one of the 2 warm days we had, so we of course headed to the beach. On the beach she collected shells and more shells. I think she wanted to take all the shells from the beach.....which was made of shells...so good luck with that LOL.
We then had a few days of not the best weather, being quite cool and windy. My cousin's wife thought that while all the boys were golfing we would take the boat out for a bit and head to a small island for a picnic lunch and more shelling. As we got out of the canals and into the Gulf we realized how rough the water was....DD was enjoying the ups and downs of the boat though.....it was too rough to venture to the island. We did get to watch some more dolphins and some small jellyfish in the canals on our way back to the house and then the kids got to do some swimming in the very large hot tub......yes I said hot tub and kids swam in it...the tub was huge.
DD got to play with tons of new-to-her toys and my cousins' kids, luckily the house is very large and we could remove ourselves from the noise of 5 kids playing loudly with each other.
On our last full day there it was warm again and after all the wind we had for several days some interesting things were washed on shore. We saw horseshoe crab shells and live horseshoe crabs on the beach. We also saw some dehydrated jellyfish (or really big globs left from someone sneezing LOL). We also found sea urchin shells and several pieces of what would have been very large sand dollars.
It was fun to be away, but it was also nice to be back home.

Back to learning.....in her own way.

Today dd is not wanting to get back to a routine of doing conventional learning after 2 weeks off for the holidays. She seems to be missing her Dad, who had to go back to work today.
Even though she is not doing conventional learning with a pencil in hand she is still learning. Today she is more interested in watching educational shows - which is very unusual in the fact that she is wanting to watch tv - she is really enjoying "How it's Made" , "How Do They Do It?" and any nature show I can find for her.
I don't mind if she wants to have a relaxed learning day. We have had a very busy 2 weeks with visiting, having visitors and many late nights. So as long as she is watching educational shows she is allowed to veg. The bonus for me since I do watch some of this with her I learn something new too.
She did say that after lunch she will do some work in her math book.

Welcome 2009

Hello! Happy New Year to anyone reading.
It's a new year and a time of new beginnings. Dd has already made a new "2009" sign for the pocket calendar. It was the first thing she wanted to do :). She wrote it in purple...her fav' colour of course. She didn't make it to midnight last night, but she tried. Unfortunately Dh and I were up until about 3:30 this morning so dd waking at 9:00 was a bit rough.
I hope everyone has a wonderful day for a great start to a prosperous 2009.

Zoo & sleep

Yesterday dd and I went to the zoo. We didn't stay too long because it was pretty cool on Sunday and overcast. We did go to see the sting rays because they are leaving the zoo after next weekend. Dd had fun touching the sting rays, she really didn't want to leave even though her sweatshirt was completely soaked. I'm glad a packed an extra jacket for her in my bag.
She was really tired after the zoo trip and needed a nap. Having the nap of course messed up her sleep schedule and she didn't go to sleep until close to midnight even though we put her to bed at 8. She still managed to get up at 8:30 this morning, which I was not ready for LOL.
She is a bit tired today and doesn't want to do any language or math work today. Maybe after dance class she'll feel like doing something if not there's always tomorrow.

It has been interesting so far

Homeschooling has been interesting so far.
We been relaxed and not following a strict schedule. Dd wants to do school work at odd times and on weekends. Which is fine since homeschooling can be done whenever. When she works when she wants to, she works longer at whatever she chose.
Dd is also enrolled in extra curricular activities so she gets to do stuff with other kids.
Today we played with lentils and cardboard tubes. It was part of an experiment I found from Tops Learning Systems http://topscience.org They have some free science experiments to try using stuff that someone might have on hand.

Starting the adventure

Well, lets see, how shall we begin.......
Welcome.
Here at Acorn Grove we are homeschooling our dd this year so I'm sure there will be many adventures along the way. I'm sure there will be bumps on the road as well, but hopefully they will be small and infrequent.
The naming of Acorn Grove stems from all the acorns covering our backyard. I really mean covering! Dh had to rake them up the other day just to see if we still had grass under the oak tree LOL.
It is the 3rd morning of homeschooling. Dd is just 4 so what she's learning isn't too hard for me to teach her.
Well I'm off to see how she's doing with what I left for her to do while I was here.
I hope the weather stays nice so we can head to the library to get some good primary readers for her to work on.