have you started yet???

It's what everyone is asking, and it always makes me feel a little anxious, regardless of who's asking!! I suggested to the girls that instead of calling what we do "school", maybe we should call it "routine" -  because we did start a new routine this week (the first of many that will organically emerge during the year, as we need them to).  We re-started our habit of Ani and I waking early and reading together on the couch (one of the books was about symmetry - which of course lead to snowflakes, and yes, it's chilly here in the mornings, but not quite that cold yet.); piano practice soon after breakfast; tidying up around the house together, and then sitting at the table for a game or some writing or art.  

This week, new notebooks in hand, it was learning a new poem by writing it out.  Eliza loves this kind of work, and got out her calligraphy pen and ink, writing in her best cursive.

It is a bit more laborious for Ani, but she has asked for more practice writing and, though she does a lot on her own (she likes to ask me if I need a shopping list made?), this is one of the areas she has asked for help with, so we just take as much time as it takes.  She will often opt for dictation, which I am glad to do with her, but today she wanted to make it about getting those letters right.

In the process, the poem got memorized, which was sweet...

The goldenrod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringe
Is curling in the sun.
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

"September" by H.H. Jackson

We decided to take our lunch out for a hike...it was a stunningly gorgeous fall day that met us.

those dusty milkweed pods

The girls were so giggly - I could hear them quoting the donkey from Shrek, which was cracking them up.  That cloud? That is a niiiiiiiiiiiice cloud.  I love that mushroom, that is a niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice mushroom.

During lunch we looked at all of the tall grass around us.  At least we think a lot of the plants were grasses, but we took a better look to be sure.  Jointed? Yup.  Clustered seed heads? Yup.  Long, skinny plant, with long skinny alternate leaves? Yup.  Hollow? Um...Well, most of them. For the others, we recalled this little ditty...

Sedges have edges
Rushes are round
Grasses have joints from the top to the ground.

Wait a minute, was that how that goes? I have a Hands-On Nature book that cleans that up nicely, but the way I learned it from Dan (and I shared it oh so long ago, here ), was more like:

Sedges have edges and rushes are round and
grasses, like asses, have holes in the middle!

For some reason, the girls find that version a little easier to remember.

Ah, my girls. They are getting so big.  This is their "first day of...routine" picture.

This path took us through the woods as well, where we were spied on by deer, sat and wrote some of our own poetry, and found - OH JOY! - some mushrooms!!! 'Tis the season.

a puffball!!!

Such joy, being with these two, on a day like this.  So much laughter and sharing and wondering and more laughing (watching your mother try to pee inconspicuously in the woods is, apparently, hilarious).  And so, we have started. Something. 

pawpaw seeds found on a log