First day of school? Who knew! :)

So yesterday Ashton stepped on an ant bed and got about 14 ant bites on his little foot. This morning when the kids woke up they decided that they really wanted to learn more about ants. So we got out this book we've had for a while on all types of bugs. We learned that the males and queens have wings, while the worker ants never get wings. The male and queen mate while flying thru the air and once the queen has it's babies "in her tummy" she chews off her own wings and drops to the ground to "nest" and oversee all the worker ants she produces! Ashton also learned that it was probably the soldier ant that attacked his feet since they are the ones that protect the colony.

After that the boys wanted to go out and explore the various ant beds. We observed the ants making their tunnels and returning to the surface of the ant hill to drop off some dirt, only to return back again and again. We had read in the book that the ants will carry the dead ants out of the hill on it's backs in a "dumping ground"...sure enough, we actually watched two ants do this. The boys thought it was quite hilarious.

We studied the anatomy of the ant, how many legs it has, etc...

We came back inside and colored an ant picture. Ethan wrote about what he learned in his journal and Ashton did some tracing and coloring exercises.

Ethan then wanted to work on telling time. We did that and then read a couple of books. It was a fabulous, full of learning, morning.

My girlfriend Jenny called me and said "be sure you write all this stuff down, it counts for school!" Really? I was just having fun with the boys. But I guess this is what is so awesome about homeschool. School just becomes part of your life. From everything I've read, the problem with homeschool burnout or kids not liking it is when you try to hard to reproduce "school" at home. Instead, just live and learn like we did today! Cool!