Terrapin, Tortoise, or Turtle

We know that tortoises are actually the ones that swim in the water, and terrapins are the ones that live on land; but how many of us just call them all turtles?  I know I do.  But what makes them different?  For one thing, it's the shell.  Most sea turtles have a soft, flexible shell.  This week, we've had to learn to have a flexible shell, too. 

I knew that my husband was supposed to get a four-day weekend for Labor day, but we were quite surprised to hear, on Wednesday, that he would be off for a full week, going back to work the next Wednesday.  Needless to say, that threw our routine off, one that we'd worked hard to maintain for the first three weeks of school, and one that is quite important when the teacher also has to go to work at night. 

Thursday wasn't difficult.  We headed to co-op and my husband went fishing.  Friday wasn't too bad, as it's our non-traditional day; we practiced our phone number, until she could write it from memory, and talked about what to do in case of a fire; she watched Monster Math on Netflix, and we called it a day.  Of course the weekend wasn't going to throw a wrench into our plans, but I knew that Monday and Tuesday would. 

So what did we do?

We changed our days around.  I typically work on Sunday nights, but I had take a few hours off, so when we got home from church, we had school.  We did a full day's work, then we went to the park, where we had science with Daddy, while he fished.  We changed our school day so that we could spend Labor Day together.  I had to work that night, but we wanted to be able to have a family day on the holiday. 

Since we'd done our work on Sunday, we were able to skip the schoolwork and head to Montgomery Bell State Park for the day.  Nine years ago, we'd gotten married here, and our kids hadn't been here since they were too young to remember.  We took time to show them where we'd gotten married, play in the creek, catch crawdads, chase minnows, and take a hike through the woods. 

We got married under this tree nine years ago.

 

Technically, we could have called that a school day, since we talked about poisonous versus non-poisonous mushrooms, fungi, how waterways flow into one another, and of course, the marine life we played with in the creek.  Learning can be so much fun!

She loved finding acorns, mushrooms, and iron ore in the forest.

We didn't actually let her hike barefoot, this is just off the edge of the creek.



Tuesday was no big deal.  My husband took time to help around the house, while I taught.  We still made time for family time, going to the park to meet up with Grandma and have lunch and a playdate. 

Flexibility is one of the beauties of homeschooling, I'm learning. What I foresaw as a completely messed up schedule, and a week behind work, turned into no big deal at all, and a little extra science time. 

 We had to drag them out of the water.  I think we'll be back soon.