Is it Fall yet?

Every day Eliza asks me this question.  So we talk about what we see and feel going on around us...leaves beginning to yellow, leaves beginning to fall...plants going to seed...

Queen Anne's Lace

We look for flowers that blossom at this time of year...

Thistles!

There is a crab spider hiding in this one - can you see him?

And we spotted this one with her dinner!

While the calendar has become an important part of Eliza's world - she checks it every day and adds new events to it constantly - I am interested in her knowing herself whether or not it is Fall.  Today we worked on the autumn quarter of a season wheel, depicting what we've observed happening out there in the world. We'll add to it I guess as the season progresses, using stamps, drawings, words...

 Ani's season circle, fall quarter

Eliza's season circle, fall quarter

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Sunday evening we hosted a potluck for Dan's program-mates.  It was great!! The girls were wonderful hostesses, there was amazing food to be shared, and we enjoyed an impromptu salsa dancing lesson from one of Dan's Columbian classmates.  Eliza thrives in this company, and I was happy to see that my day with Ani set her up well for enjoying herself with the 25 or so guests that showed up.  I had a trying moment with the spouse of one of the students who was incredulous that we homeschool our children.  How do we motivate them to learn, if not with grades? Surely they do not learn simply because they are curious? And what about missing all of that time with their peers? And what will I do when they need to learn higher mathematics and physics???? How I wished I could pull out a Masters degree in physics right about then...Oh well, he's got me there, doesn't he.  I didn't know how to begin to explain that I consider everything we do to be a part of our homeschool curriculum, including the dancing Eliza was doing with his wife in the other room right at that moment; the conversations the girls were having with intelligent people from several other countries; the game of checkers he played with Eliza later that evening...

After all this Sunday evening homeschooling,  we took it easy on Monday, playing in the morning and then packing a lunch to take with us on the hike.  We settled under a favorite beech tree to read more of The Wind Boy.  We have been watching segments of David Attenborough's Secret Life of Plants, and Eliza noticed these lobelia flowers along our hike:

She noted that they practically have arrows emblazoned on their lower petals, as if to say "enter here".  We had to hang out for a while to watch while the bees visited and rubbed their backs against the sticky stamen.  We hoped they had pollen to share...