My Usborne Books Website

Just a really quick post to point you to my (under construction) Usborne Books website. Information and articles are available and more are added weekly.

www.TheBookLadyOnline.com

Bats, Bats, Bats

We recently moved to a new city, and consequently, a new home. Our new home included some wonderful wildlife. Of course we have the usual birds, squirrels and hummers, and our large oak tree is also home to a wonderful owl and a nice sized group of bats. We were blessed this evening to see the bats in action, swooping and swirling as they chased mosquitoes (love those bats!!). It was so interesting to see them as they used their echo-location to locate their prey. During most of their hunt, we watch 6 bats . Several times, as many as 3 bats went after the same mosquito, nearly colliding, but missing every time. The kids, dh and I were mesmerized. Several times, we were fortunate enough to have the bats fly low enough to hear their wings as they whooshed by. Amazing! The kids want to see the bats up close, so if you know how to gently capture a bat (to be released within a few minutes, of course), please reply with your tips.

So, now that the kids are excited about bats, of course we are going to study them. Tonight, after we came in, we read about them in our Usborne Children's Encyclopedia. We are going to read more about them in the morning in our Pocket Nature book and will check the library for some fiction books that contain bats (we're going to try to avoid Halloween books to avoid the stereotypical bat characters). Should be fun! We'll post pics of our art/ crafts and list the books we read.

Welcome to my Blog

Welcome to my blog. This blog will be to share our homeschooling journey and also to share my passion for Usborne Books and how we integrate them into our homeschool. Our children are 7 (first grade) and 4 (pre-k) and we loosely follow the recommendations in the Well Trained Mind in a very relaxed way. I love the Well Trained Mind as it brings to mind topics that my children may find interesting and that I might not have thought to have available for them. We are using Story of the World which we enjoy immensely. Of course we are using the Usborne Internet Linked Encyclopedia of History for our spine. We also love the way that The Well Trained Mind introduces science. We are piecing that together this year (earth science) with various Usborne books.