Satori Smiles

Satori was going over her new Highlight Puzzle Buzz magazine and I got this idea. I took pictures of various fruits around the house… Normally we would have more fruits to choose from, but we go through them fast and grocery day is tomorrow.

Opened up Picnik.com (free online photo editor) and used their GOOIFY tool and let Satori go crazy! She got a big kick out of gooifying the foods. Fun and free activity if you have food (or anything) laying around the house and want to get creative.

Try to guess what they all are!

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8 Rather than guessing what this was, which one from above did we start with before Satori went crazy with the effects?

Normally Satori goes to daycare on Mondays while I ship everything ordered in our Baby Sling Outlet shop over the weekend. But the locals said we were going to get two feet of snow today, so we stayed in as a snow day. I did ship my 5 orders out and we got alot of homeschooling in today, so I feel quite productive!

We did not get the 2 feet of snow, but there’s another chance for it to arrive on Thursday.

The cold conditions made for a perfect method to make our “icy roads” or “skating pond” for our Blizzard of Geopolis re-enactment tomorrow!

In the afternoon, we just rested and enjoyed ourselves. Here Satori is looking over her Geopolis map we made earlier today. I noticed she took our road signs and put them all around her castles upstairs.

We then played a few word games. I got this Lakeshore Learning word game a month ago. It goes over beginning word sounds, but it is already too easy for her. I thought this would last us two years!

Two blog posts ago I showed a picture of our first glimpse of Walden Ponds. A salt-caked, dried up sight. We discovered this last summer, and it did have lots of water, shady trees, and a nice boardwalk to view frogs, turtles, various wildlife and tons of birds. We’ll visit again in a month or so and hopefully it will be more as we remembered. If it wasn’t for oasis like these and the mountains we live in, I would hate dried up Colorado.

Walden Ponds map

Although we didn’t visit all the ponds that day, we did see a few that actually had water. Armed with binoculars (next time we will bring stronger ones) and 4 bird books, Satori had everything she needed to identify the birds she saw. I opened it up to water fowl and shore birds and had her identify the birds themselves.

First was the Canada Geese. We see these all the time, even when we lived in Minnesota, but it was fun for Satori to actually find them in her books!

This pair was very curious and friendly with Satori.

We also saw some mallard ducks and turtles sunning themselves.

As we walked along the ponds, we met other birdwatchers and photographers. Some grandparents with their grandchildren told us they’ve visited Walden Ponds for many years, and they keep getting drier and drier. The water in the area goes to the farmers and city first.

Angela also got to chat with photographers with big cameras. I brought my 70-200mm lens which got me a closeup view of the birds, but I wish I could afford an $8500 600mm telephoto lens! I’ll just have to settle for a teleconverter or two.

Here is the mountain range you can see from Walden Ponds.

I should’ve lined this up better and taken it at f/22 or so, but here are the actual mountains behind the sign. (Again, you can see the dried up salt marsh behind the sign.)

Walden Ponds is a great place for bird-watching near Boulder, and we will be visiting many times later this spring and summer!

Just as predicted, we woke up today to a cold, blustery day with SNOW! The power even went out a few times, making our first rowing of Katy and the Big Snow even more relevant. At first I was a little worried about Satori not enjoying rowing this book 5 times, it being about a snowplow, but I have a whole week of fun things planned to bring the story alive for her. There was much more to learn in Social Studies than I imagined, so we might have to break this up into two parts.

After our first reading, we colored our lapbook cover page and then did a few lapbook entries. Here is a description of what Katy does in the summer (repair roads) and winter (plow roads). Satori has always enjoyed filling in the letters, and she has improved a thousand-fold since she first attempted copying letters in February.

Next we learned about important jobs in a typical city, what makes cities run smoothly. Hospitals, fire station, post office, school, library, etc… Both the community helpers (people) and their buildings and vehicles all play a part. If one goes down, it can spell trouble for a city.

Then we learned about different road signs and as we drive around this week, I’ll be pointing out typical road signs. I also want to show her the power lines that “connect” a city with electricity and telephone service. We made cute little signs and stuck them in clay piles. Tomorrow they should be dry and we can use them in our Katy and the Big Snow reenactment!

Then we filled out the map of Geopolis. This will be a good review for Math Day, as the book has all its buildings by number on the map.

Satori enjoyed herself and did not want to stop her “learning”.