We got back late last night from our trip to Florida. This time we went to 3 new places near Chipley, Florida.

Our first stop was Falling Waters State Park. This park has the largest waterfall in Florida. It's 73 feet high and falls into a sinkhole. Sinkholes are formed when rainwater seeps through the soil and limestone in the ground. Over time the ground will cave it. This forms caverns as well, as we saw next.



Our next stop on Saturday was Florida Caverns State Park. The cavern was discovered in the 1930's when a storm uprooted a tree. A sinkhole was found under the tree and the cavern was discovered under ground. The cavern is about 5 stories under the park. The guide said that it's the highest elevation in Florida that would allow us to even be underground. He said that if you had a basement in Florida that after it rained it would be a swimming pool instead. The one cavern is open for tours. Other caverns found in the park have been studied by archaeologists and other scientists. Indians are known to have lived in this park based on items found in other caves.



The last stop was on Sunday. We visited Seacrest Wolf Preserve. This charity rescues wolves and wolf dogs. They were hosting a work day on Sunday but were still gracious enough to take us around and introduce us to their animals. They are building some beautiful, large enclosures for the animals as well as an educational building. We did get to enter 2 of the enclosures and pet the animals. One large male wolf named Kiowa kept coming to me and William to be pet. Unfortunately, all the pictures I took of William and Kiowa turned out green :( I have to see if my brother can help me fix the color so I can post them. But it was amazing to be able to sit in the enclosure and be around these animals. We spent over 2 hours there visiting the wolves and dogs and seeing the enclosures they are building. Two of the volunteers, Wendy and Rebecca, were very gracious and informative.

While we were there a representative from the Florida Board of Education came in with his video camera. He is working on a documentary on the preserve that will be aired throughout the state of Florida on the local PBS stations. We gave our consent for our faces to be shown on the show, so you may get to see us on TV, if you live in Florida. We plan to keep an eye out on the local PBS station website to see when it will air in Florida and purchase a copy of the show.



I do have more pictures that I will be uploading to my home page. I'll post when they are ready to view.

We started on our butterfly garden yesterday and finished it today. My neice and one of William's friends was out of school, so they helped. They all seemed to really get into making the garden. We had a trip to the nursery that just opened for the season and got some good deals on some bulbs and things from last year. The kids were all pretty good during the trip. We used the hoe and the shovel to get the grass up and dig to plant the bulbs and flowers. We discussed the layout of the garden. I told them what my plans were and then they decided how to plant the flowers and what colors would go where. We all had a good time and got dirty and muddy. If you've ever been to Georgia and seen the red clay mud, then you have an idea of what we all looked like :)

They also hosed off the equipment when finished and put it away, helped feed and water the dogs, and changed the sand in the hermit crab aquarium. This evening they are all driving mules at my mom's, so they all had a good day. My neice and William's friend thinks homeschooling is always like this. I let William have these 2 days without book work so we could work on the garden and he could have fun with his friends. He likes them to think that he never does any book work, although my neice wanted to see his books and do some of the work. She is always playing school and giving herself stuff to do. She was recently in a spelling bee and took it so seriously she was looking up spelling lists online so she could study.

Here is a picture of our garden in progress:



The sand in the middle is to make a puddle for the butterflies to water and wash their wings. It's in a partially buried dishpan. We planted phlox up front - it will be the ground cover over the red dirt and also will bloom with little flowers. We also planted some bulbs but I cannot remember the names right now. We planted some snapdragons and violets as well and the bushes in the back are butterfly bushes. We plan to go back next month and get 2 more bushes - one called Veronica and another one that escapes me for a moment. We got the rocks from the creek on my parents' land. We need to make about 2 more trips for more rocks. The pea gravel was an afterthought. I'd bought it to mix with the sand in the dishpan but we had a lot left over, so we decided to scatter it between the plants and make a kind of pathway around them.

Hopefully everything will live and we'll have some pretty butterflies in a month or so. The kids are wanting to come back and see the flowers growing. The little boy even offered to build a bench :)

Tomorrow William will be doing book work again and we'll be getting ready for our trip to Florida. I still have to call the wolf preserve - I need to be sure to do that tomorrow.

More of William's curriculum came in and I have more on it's way. We received the math and the history / geography. I'm waiting on the Bible curriculum and a science kit. I tried ordering the butterfly garden from Alpha Omega twice and both times the order was apparently cancelled. They can find no record of it. So, instead of doing the butterfly habitat, I decided to buy some bushes and flowers and we'll create a butterfly garden in the back yard. We had talked about doing this last year and never did it.

I found a great site with lots of information on the flowers and bushes needed for various butterflies. We won't have a large garden, however I would like to be able to expand it over time. To start, I plan to purchase maybe 3 or 4 bushes and set them in a semi-circle. In between the bushes and in front of them we'll plant the flowers - we'll probably grow them from seeds instead of replanting. Butterflies also need some rocks to sun themselves on and an area for puddling. The site recommended burying a bucket filled with sand up the rim and filling it with water to create a shallow puddle. I think I'll find some time of shallow dish instead and do the same thing. We're going to start on it next week. Dh is off tomorrow and Tuesday, so we'll all go into the back yard and begin to clear the area for the garden. We have to cut down some grass and hoe up the dirt before it will be ready. Then we'll head to the nursery to buy the plants the following week.

William was able to have some time to play with friends last week. He's going to call them again tomorrow to set up another play date. He may stay at their house or I'll take the boys to the park. William is also happy because his riding teacher has come for a visit. She's staying with my parents for a month, helping them train a few animals and helping my mom while she's off her feet. My mom had foot surgery to help with a bone spur, so she cannot walk for about 6 weeks. She's already going stir crazy. William is looking forward to riding again. He does miss it.

We're planning to visit my mother in law in Florida next weekend. We'll be leaving Friday afternoon after lunch and should reach their house by supper. On Saturday, I'm going to surprise William with a few field trips - 2 trips will be to some caverns and a waterfall in a couple of Florida's national parks. One of them will be to Seacrest Wolf Preserve near Chipley, FL. I'm going to call them tomorrow to make arrangements to see their facility. William and Scott both have a fascination for wolves, so I think they will both love this trip. We'll probably head home on Sunday night. Scott will have to return to work on Monday evening and we'll have to pick up our dogs from boarding on Monday afternoon.

I printed out the book list for Ambleside Online and I think we'll continue using it for ideas, especially for literature. William can pick a book to read alone and a book to do with me as a read aloud. There are so many wonderful books on the site I hate to miss them. We'll work them in around his Lifepacs. I am happy with what I've seen of the Lifepacs so far. William is also starting to understand that he needs to do some work so he can be at his grade level. My neice is always asking him what he's studying and saying she can help him. He doesn't like it that she is younger than him but seems to know things he doesn't yet. He did agree to continue schooling part time through the summer. He said yesterday that he was supposed to be going into 6th grade. I said yes, but you're not at that grade level. I told him you can't do 6th grade math until you've learned multiplication, which he's still struggling with. I'm trying to look to the future and know that in the long run where he's at now won't matter, but he says he feels stupid. I know he's not stupid, but we do need to focus more on basics than we have been. But I think we'll have a lot of fun with the Lifepacs and the activities mentioned in the teacher's guides, as well as some other activities we'll do to enrich the lessons.

William is enjoying the science Lifepacs so far, but we've had to go back over the first section twice because he's not reading carefully. I'm not letting him move on to the next section until he knows the material from the first section.

I decided not to purchase the Language Lifepac at this time because I still have a good bit of a language workbook left from before and it covers the same topics. We started over on punctuation and comma usage the other day. He got pretty much all of the exercises wrong, so I'm planning to go over the topics with him on the white board next week so that he can practice these topics. Next year I'll purchase the Language Lifepacs for the next grade level up. This will help me save some money for this year.

I will be purchasing the math, history and geography and Bible from either Pennywise Learning or School House Resource. I found the sets there for about $5 less than Pennywise. I will be purchasing the Lifepac science kit from Home Learning Tools, the rest of the current grade science curriculum will be purchased used from Amazon or Ebay and I'll be purchasing the butterfly garden kit from Alpha Omega as well.

I have to get him set up on some type of schedule again because right now nothing is getting done until late afternoon or evening and all I am hearing is complaining because of it. We have to get started earlier in the day.

Dh and I spent yesterday out for an early Valentine's Day. We did some clothes shopping, had a lunch picnic in front of Publix, bought some books at a used bookstore, did some pet shopping at Petsmart, then had dinner at Outback Steakhouse. It was busy as usual, but the food and service is excellent. William hung out with my brother that morning and afternoon, then went to my mom's house and helped her with some things around the house and helped my father feed the horses. He said he had a good day with everyone.

The lunch picnic was a spur of the moment thing we did that ended up being wonderful. I had to go to this particular Publix because they had a bank that was open until 6pm on Saturday - something pretty much unthinkable here. This store was HUGE. While I was at the bank, dh amused himself looking all the different beer, cheeses, deli meats and breads. We also browsed for a long time the aisle of wines they carried. He found some Stilton cheese that he'd been looking for a long time, something he'd loved when he worked at a pricey restaurant at the Callaway Gardens resort nearby. We bought the wedge of cheese, a bag of small pita breads, some garlic hummus and some sodas. We sat in the car for over half an hour eating hummus and cheese on the tiny pitas. It was a wonderful lunch and was better than most restaurants. This is food we love but don't buy often because William won't eat it and the prices don't make it something we can always get with our regular grocery budget. For a Valentine lunch, though, the price of $11 was worth it.

I hope everyone else has had a good week and I wish Happy Valentine's Day to everyone.

Still here :) I've been busy with work and house stuff. I'm sorry I haven't posted anything.

William has started on the science lifepacs we got in. I ordered some from ebay. I have some others on the way. Once we get our tax refund back I plan to order the rest of the curriculum. He is enjoying the workbooks. He's working on one about animals and their development. It is beginning with environment and temperature. He's having fun reading the thermometers and doing simple experiments. I plan to purchase a science kit to go along with the lifepacs as well as a butterfly habitat.

He's been watching a lot of Animal Planet as well. I think he learns more from watching the shows than from his books.

He is still reading White Fang. I had to put my foot down and say no TV or games until he read for 30 minutes. He keeps misplacing the book and saying "I'll read it later", then later never comes.

That's all for us right now. We plan to take a long weekend trip to Florida to visit MIL soon. I plan to put up pictures from William's birthday party soon as well. He had a really good time and I believe it went well.