Catapults, Ducks and Kitty Walks

This Thursday we decided to experiment with making catapults. My vision was to make one sort and then take the things we learned from that and make more and tweak them to be more powerful, etc, etc. Well, that was a lovely vision. But the reality was that everyone wanted to go back to the Garden of Eden and swim. So, I abandoned the idea of making more and better catapults and we just packed the little ones we made with us for the trip to the river. Before we left we put together a little stick raft to play with while we were there. This was also a great idea that didn't fully get realized, because we ended up forgetting it in the car! Oh well, there is only the rest of the summer to play with boat building. Which is not as long as it sounds, at some point someone totally shorted us on summer vacation - we get just ten weeks. But wait! As a homeschooling family, I guess we get to start when it's right for us. Max, though is in a "real" school and will be starting back at the end of August. Oh my gosh, I actually have to start making lesson plans and . . . I'm going off on a tangent, aren't I?

Our duck pals were at The Garden of Eden when we got there, paddling around the river. Max got to know them a little better and they got very close to him, which he absolutely loved. Max loves animals as much as Coleman does guns. His eyes light up when he talks about them, he loves to "study" them at school. He just loves animals. He plans to be a paleontologist, I can also see him as a herpetologist or someone who studies living animals, like our favorite television personality, Jeff Corwin. Then again, he's six, things change...there's time for him to love many things.

Max made a boat with a fallen leaf and the feather of a fallen bird.

We took Kitty for a walk in the woods at Tara Redwood this Friday. It's a walk I regularly go on with Kitty that I just can't interest the boys in. But this day they gladly came with me because it was part of our list of things to do in order to do our Friday Field Trip. (Hm, note to self: "put it on a list".) Of course they had a really great time, as they always do once they get there (well, there was that one time...). These are Max's woods, he hikes in them every week with his teachers and classmates. He knows them. I can see how comfortable he is when he is here and it makes me wish his school went up to sixth grade, or even fifth. I love these woods too and feel more and more comfortable in them each time I come here. I have been hiking on Wednesdays in these woods instead of going to meditation since summer started. It's still meditation of a sort and I get to bring my dog with me.