Hiking fun at Catoctin Mountain!

This weekend we took Shay for her first hike. Her uncle Troy was in town, and he loves the great outdoors. Plus he's strong, so if she got tired he could carry her. Although that didn't happen, she out hiked us all. We did two 1 mile trails, complete with some slight hills. She had fun collecting leaves, acorns, and some other assorted things. Her favorite thing to collect was "Canada Leaves!" We also walked by a park ranger who was explaining how to tap a maple. Unfortunately, he wasn't tapping this weekend. Shay was disappointed. She also did not want to go home and wanted to hike all day long. The old people in our group were ready to go home.

 We did manage to learn some new things:

We counted rings to find the age of the tree.

We checked out rock formations.

We observed towns in the distance.

We had some opinions on other's conversations.

We enjoyed a new hiking food- Slim Jims!

We all had a great time. We're hoping to get some more hiking in before the winter hits. It's been a weird fall so far, so who knows how many more great weekends we have left.

Did I mention we love these magnetic letters?

Magnetic letters purchased at the school store for $18= hours of fun learning!

Where are you from?

Shay has been interested in where people are from recently. This week we were learning about Virginia. A lot of famous people are from Virginia. Most of her favorite people are too! I bought her a Melissa and Doug United States Floor Puzzle a few weeks ago and just gave it to her this week and she has been in heaven! She's been playing with it non stop. When I went up to see what she was doing, this is what I found:

Her "friends" are standing or laying on the States they were born in!

Grammy and Mommy on Virginia.

Shay (Sleeping Beauty) on Arizona.

She has such a great imagination! I love it!

                                 

What's That Taste?

Today, we learned about the sense of taste. What better way to teach it than with a taste test. I put them in little containers because last week we did smell, and she kept opening her eyes. Little Cheater! I chose salt (salty), sugar (sweet), dark unsweetened cocoa (bitter), and lemonade mix (sour).
And the results:

Salty!

Bitter!

Sweet!

Sour!

 

 

 

 

 

Hmm. It seemed she took more than one taste in one. Which one?

The Salt! She said that salt was her favorite out of the 4.

Place Value Fun!

We've been using the MathUSee Primer program this year. We are in week 6 for our United States curriculum, and week 9 for our math! She loves math. As someone who struggled with math, this makes me so happy!

This week we are working on units and tens. She immediately "got it". The way the MathUSee program works is with cube manipulatives. The units are individual cubes and are green. Once you get to the tens, they switch to a long blue rod that equals 10 unit size cubes. There are more manipulatives, but this is as far as we've gone. I think the pictures will give a better idea of what the program is about and how successful she was today!

The green cubes are Units. The blue rods are the tens.

She had to color in 3 rods and 1 unit.

The answer is 31!

So proud of herself!

The Amish Market

To end our Pennsylvania unit, we took a trip to our local Amish Market. The Market has been here for years and is open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It's a really neat place and smells heavenly! I snapped a few pictures of Shay having a good time, and tried not to catch any Amish in the photos.

Sampling the Apple Cider. MMM

Reading about the different Pennsylvania apples.

Picking out some Salt Water Taffy.

Checking herself out while looking at some awesome handmade furniture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we were leaving, we stopped by the pretzels. Shay watched the ladies make pretzels for probably 15 minutes. I think we might have made them a little uncomfortable. I wanted to snap a picture of how enthralled Shay was with the process of making the pretzels, but the Amish don't like to be in pictures, and so I respected that. 

We need to remember to come here often. It's not cheap, but their stuff is a great quality and the food is yummy!

Pennsylvania Cookies

Ok, well I don't know if you would call these "Pennsylvania cookies", but since we made them from Quaker Oats and Hershey's Chocolate that's what we called them! We worked on reading the recipe, measuring ingredients, cooking times, and cooling time (that was a hard one!) We tried to learn about serving size, but they were just too good to limit to one cookie!

MMMM.

We had a great school day!