Ghost Town and a Dry Creek Bed

 

"Sometimes her mom pretends she's sick and takes her to do fun stuff."
that was a little boy's explanation for why Mockingbird wasn't in school that day when his mother asked.  It's true, and was pretty much how we did Kindergarten.

This time it was joining Mr. Owl on a business trip to St. George, UT. The children and I ended up taking field trips of what once was.

Silver Reef ruins

 Silver Reef, a ghost town originally settled for mining, was a spot we visited twice. Once for the crumbling walls of by-gone homes, and again for the amazing personal museum tour that must have lasted well over an hour. The kids got to ring the actual mine bell, heft an iron iron, try out a hand drill and other contraptions pulled off the wall of tools. But the best was learning about the legendary  Charlie Parkhurst. He was the most colorful stagecoach driver of Wells Fargo, and his story got even better when he died and it was discovered he was a she.

Great stuff, we went home and our library kindly order a children's book for us about Charlie called Rough, Tough Charley. Written in unique, sparse verse this biography also has a map following Charlie's life and travels into the west.

Our hikes took us to Anasazi ruins and up a dry creek bed. The children had to help eachother up 5 foot dropoffs and around boulders and bushes, as I had a baby in a backpack. Besides, someone needed to take pictures.



Back down the creek bed

Anasazi food storage ruins

I wouldn't recommend this with an 8, 6, 3 year old, and 9 month old in the heat alone, with no reward but red rocks and more red rocks. But Mrs. Magpie hadn't been out in the wild in a very long time apparently. Fortunately children don't know any better, and humored my need to "just go and see what's around the next bend--I promise."

 

Handwriting Y3

What we have done for handwriting this year, that is transitioning from print to cursive is this:
For learning the letters we did something each day with one new letter

Monday--Draw new letter in the air with hand big. Trace the capital letter I've drawn on writing paper, and write some of her own.

Tuesday--Do the same thing with the lower-case letter.

Wednesday--Combine the letters with words using what letters have been learned so far.

Thursday--Do copywork of some exerpt from readings.

Once this is done for all 26 letters (26 weeks), I copied out several Children's songs (using words, not "song language") onto wide lined paper using 3 lines per capital, and skipping a line in between. Then I put them in clear plastic sleeves in her school binder, with notebook paper in between each.
Now she will trace them with a dry-erase marker (if needed) then copy on her own paper what she has just traced, maybe half a page a day. I know it is recommended to to exerpts from readings, but I found that it takes a lot of concentration to connect letters at first, and knowing what was coming up in short words is more doable--and as side benifit helps us hum our way through at least this bit of school work.

What does 'hostage' mean?

We are reading in This Country of Ours, albeit a bit controversial for some--but a book great for discussions on viewpoint.
This week it was Pocahontas being traded for a copper kettle then held hostage on a ship by colonists. I asked Bowery Bird, "do you know what 'hostage' means?"

A pause then she sits up off the couch, "Yeah, Princess Leia and Han Solo were held hostage by Darth Vader in the Cloud City until Luke came and rescued them from Jabba the Hut--"

"and C-3PO was shooting the Stormtroopers and saying "Die Jedis! Die!" and then "What am I saying?!-- Oh Pardon me." ( Kingfisher interjected, complete with facial expressions).

It went on from there as they relived a few more scenes.
"So I guess that's a Yes..." and I tried to reel them back into the 17th century.