First Day of the new school year

Reading lesson

Miss Madeline was really excited for the first day of school today.  She put on her fancy purple dress and chose to start the day with handwriting, reading, and math.  She is now working on Handwriting Without Tears - Printing Power.  She did the first few pages, which were just review, and I'm curious how the rest of it will go since it's now at the next level and smaller handwriting... but she says she's ready for it.  There was a bit of a struggle with math, which also was a review, but when I explained that we wouldn't be able to make our plans this morning if it wasn't finished, she quickly remembered her addition and subtraction.  I've honestly not seen her work so fast!

Kennedy, Madeline, Nina, Reagan

We then went on to have a picnic lunch and a
fabulous afternoon at the KY Children's Garden with some of our friends.  If you are in the Lexington area, I highly suggest checking out this place.  It's beautiful, the workers are phenomenal, play and participation are strongly encouraged, and there are always different educational activities going on.  This was only our second time visiting, but we will be regulars until the season is over at the end of October.

We arrived at the Children's Garden just in time for a couple stories about panning for gold and fossils, and another about streams.  Then, Madeline, Travis, and their friends sifted sand for fossils and played in the creek to reinforce what was learned during story time.

Getting their nets ready

After a little while, the kids grabbed some butterfly nets to help a lady who works there, Emma, try to catch a Monarch butterfly.  Emma and some of the other workers have recently started tagging the Monarchs and she was trying to catch one all morning.  Everyone headed over to the sunflower area to catch their own butterflies.  Each of the big girls (Madeline, Nina, and Reagan) caught a Tipper butterfly on their own and had help putting it in the bug jar.  The other girls caught theirs first and Madeline became very determined to get her own.  She snuck around a flower bush and did it all by herself!  She also told me that was her favorite part of the day and that she was super proud of herself.  :)

Madeline catching a butterfly.... terrible editing, but I had to include this picture.

Fishing buddies

The kids did a little fishing after that and played in the creek some more.  Finally, Emma caught the Monarch and asked if the kids wanted to watch her tag it.  They all gathered around, and she let Madeline put the sticker on the wing.  She also showed all of us how to record the data and explained how it contributes to the overall understanding of the dynamics of the monarch population.  For example, there has not been a year in the 117 years of climate records for the United States that has been close to what we've all experienced in the last 12 months.  It has been incredibly too hot and too dry for good monarch reproduction.  If the milkweeds were all past their prime due to flowering earlier everywhere, it could possibly diminish the size of the migratory generation.  There are many questions regarding how this past year will affect the fall migration, and it was fantastic fun learning about it.

The Monarch in the net

Madeline placing the tagging sticker

What a wonderful way to start the new year!  Looking forward to many more awesome days like today.

In front of the recycled bottle cap art

Ok... I've learned from today's photos that my phone takes decent pics (viewed on my phone), but they look totally sucky when I edit from the phone and upload to the computer.  I'll try not to do that again. I did take other pics which would have been adorable had I not played with the editing stuff.  My bad.