Walking hummingbirds are nuts ;-)

We do a phonics lesson everyday and we use these letters from a leapfrog game. Having these helps a lot. He now knows without counting (although sometimes he likes to count) that there are 26 letters in the alphabet, that the red letters are vowels, and there are 5 of them, and the blue letters are consonants. We have a number of words he can read, although he forgets most of them and has to sound them out. He knows LOG really well (but that was his first word he learned.) I wonder if I'm starting phonics too early, but he knows all his letters and the sounds that they make, so I am telling myself it's the natural progression to start. If we need to, we'll go over it again next year since I'm starting a year early anyways. As time goes on, he will sound out a word without me prompting him (sometimes). We have started to decipher what consonants are in a blending sound (like B & L in blend). We have gone over the letters L, O, G, P, T, H & A. We got A last week, so now we have a lot more words we can make out of the letters we have.



Here is a close up picture of the leaves of the nut tree I am having a hard time identifying.













We had a hummingbird in our house. Chris had the 2 doors open in the living room and it flew in. A hummingbird gets in our garage every so often. In the last 2 months, I think there have been 3 - which is high. They always go to the ceiling and can't figure out how to get down. We have a butterfly net I got at the Dollar Tree and Chris caught the bird with that and let it go.




WALKING STICKS - OH MY! Peyton had a walking stick on his window one day last week. We observed it for quite some time, and I googled up some information about it to let him learn a little about what they eat (and I wanted to know if they would bite). I actually would have liked to keep the walking stick, but it said you need something 2 1/2 times taller than the bug, and I couldn't think of anything that tall to keep it in. I guess they shed, and females can reproduce without a male counterpart. They like to eat bramble, ivy, privet and lettuce - and you need to spray it with a little water - as that is how they like to eat it. They don't take much care. And they move their legs a little to make it look like they are moving in the wind like a real limb. Amazingly, there wre 3 dead walking sticks on our front porch (they walked past the spray - unfortunately). I haven't seen a walking stick in over a year, and found 4 in one day. I thought that was interesting.

Little Trees

When I mowed I would always run over these - which I thought were weeds. Then one day I looked at them and thought that maybe they were trees, but still 'trimmed them' - now I KNOW these are all trees...but they are Sweetgum trees, which produce these little round balls with spokes on them - not fun to step on. I don't mind having trees in this part of the yard since nothing will grow there - but I would prefer anything but a sweetgum tree. There are a lot of sweetgum trees in our yard.
Here is the start of a pine tree. I tell Chris he should dig up some of these trees and plant them in the front yard. He has told me that the trees are connected to a big root system and if he digs it up, it may not survive. I cannot verify this as I do not know how transplanting trees works - but I do know we have a pine tree in front of a window that we moved and it has survived - Chris says that one was all by its lonesome.








I know it's hard to see in this picture, but this was an ant hill - you can see by the little holes in some of the dirt. We 'died' the ant hill (as Peyton would say) and when they left, we went back to look at it so Peyton could see some of the tunnels and inside of an ant hill.










I have been trying to figure out what tree this is, but without seeing the fruit of the tree, I am having a hard time identifying it. I do know it's a nut tree of some sort - hickory, beech - I just do not know the exact one. There are between 5-9 leaves on each little stem, opposite each other.

I know the homeschool journey is about Peyton, but I need to learn what is around us so I can teach him. I'm so proud that he can identify a few trees by looking at the leaves. He asks me quite often when walking on campus 'What's that tree, mom?' - right now I don't know since I'm just learning, but one day I hope he can ask that and I can give the right answer. ;-)