Silly woodpecker

For over a week now, we wake up to the sound of drilling around 7am. It goes on intermittently during the day and quits around 5pm. We thought there was some work going on nearby. It was odd that we could hear construction sounds so loud, when everything seems so far away on 10 acres. One day I realized that the sound was reverberating through the fireplace, which was making the sound quite loud in the house. Listening closely, I decided "it sounds like a woodpecker!" We didn't see anything in the fireplace, or up the chimney. Outside, we saw the culprit: a woodpecker was sitting on the metal screen covering our chimney. He joyfully peck-peck-peck-pecks all day, relishing the sound that his clever beak makes on metal. It seems to be more satisfying than the hollow sound on wood:)

We seem to have more swamp area right now on our land from all the spring rains. Its beautiful, it looks like we have a few ponds. The frogs are very busy there, croaking out a variety of sounds. We hear a reeeeet-reeeet, and crick, crick. We took a walk down there to see what all the noise was about. Everywhere we looked were frogs, floating about in the water. We saw red colored, green colored, and some brownish looking frogs. I hope to find some frog eggs or tadpoles down there soon that we can collect and study. We saw the head of something swimming through the swamp - I'm sure it was a big turtle!

It was a difficult choice, but I have decided that we will study Plants first, this season, for our Life Science. I have picked Evan-Moor's ScienceWorks for Kids 1st-3rd grade. It has about 10 sections with experiments we can do on plants, and log books we can write our observations, and also some mini-books we can make. I haven't actually placed our order yet! I'm hoping to make a final decision on a phonics program before I put in my order.