Nurture vs Nature

Lori’s view

Happy Labor Day!  Hannah Ruth and I try to work on our blog on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, but with the holiday, we procrastinated a bit.  I still have lesson plans to finalize for the Essentials class I tutor at Classical Conversations tomorrow, as well as lesson plans for our week.

This past week was an interesting week for school.  I had to be out of town for a large portion of the day on Monday.  If a teacher in a traditional school has to be out, the school hires a substitute teacher.  When you are a homeschooling Mom, you have to figure out what to do. Homeschooling Moms don’t have sick days. The students often accompany mom wherever she needs to go if she has an appointment. Sometimes Dad is available to step in the gap and other times another homeschooling mom will let you drop off the student at her home – sort of like an exchange student. Before I ever homeschooled, that was my burning question: what do you do if you need to go somewhere during the day? This week I had a treat.  In addition to nine year old Hannah Ruth, I have two sons ages 23 and 25. The 23 year old left this week to begin his post college career three hours away in a new city. Before he did, I asked him to be the substitute teacher for the day.

What a great experience! I could do what I needed to do, but we were not losing precious learning time. I made a lesson plan for Hannah Ruth, stacked all the books she would need and left them to it. I admit there were a few phone calls with a few questions.  I also asked him to also take her to the Natchez Trace visitor center for a nature walk and to have her National Parks Passport stamped. My son is a nature lover and the two of them had a great time together.  He taught Hannah Ruth about poison ivy and she wrote about it in her nature journal. Even more importantly, the two of them had some quality time together before he left to begin the next phase of his life. When I am very tired from homeschooling, I forget these little blessings along the way.  One substitute teacher has moved on, but we have another month or so before the other brother leaves. This brother is working every day, so I can’t ask him to substitute, but I do need to make sure I take advantage of the time he has with his little sister.

Hannah Ruth’s view

On Friday, Mommy and I went to the lake in our neighborhood. We sat down and drew. I didn’t actually draw the lake. It was disgusting. I did a page about the lake’s status. The lake level was low. It looked slimy, oozy, bubbly and filmy. On the Gross-yness scale, (1 being super gross, 10 being swimmable,) it earned a 3. The water was sitting still. I also drew a tree. We decided the tree was an Ash Tree by using a tree identifier on Mom’s phone. The reason the Ash Tree stood out was not because Ash Trees are beautiful, they’re actually quite ordinary-loking trees. That particular Ash Tree was cool because it was HANGING OVER THE WATER! Half of it was, at least. All the roots were on land though. It was growing sort of lopsided.You’ll see the pictures of my drawing and the actual tree below. Anyway, this is the lake in one of it’s yuckiest times. TADA! Isn’t it gross? What number would you give it? On the scale I mentioned earlier, I mean. It almost looks solid, the way the sun
is shining!

<—————–The Yucky Lake—————–>

Drawn Ash Tree

Actual Ash tree

Lori again

We walk the same path most weeks for our nature walk so we can see how the view changes as the seasons change. Our walk usually ends at this little lake.  I’m sure you will hear more updates about the trees, the lake and the other discoveries as you read throughout our year. By the way, I think this Ash tree is pretty beautiful!

Hannah Ruth sitting under the Ash tree.