Trains are a big deal around our home. So even though Gary was suffering from some pretty major jet lag a few weeks back, he was all for going to the Nashville Model Train Show, especially seeing how we are building a model train that travels through the boys’ rooms.
After visiting the Tennessee Central Railway Museum, talking to the train engineer in the driver’s seat, asking the conductor questions in the dome car, and eating lunch in the diner car, we drove to Nolensville to see to an HO model train layout (the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad Layout) that fills a 5,000 sq ft warehouse. (It was not easy to find this place, and they only had about 5 parking spaces, but our diligence paid off). We were especially interested in the tunnels and bridges, since we will have to use both to complete the type of layout the boys want.
We’re also planning to create some small cities in the corners, since it is the only place we will be able to “build up” any substantial scenes.
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| Not sure that we will plan a scene like this one, but… |
And for the first of this major project, we now unveil the shelving in David’s room…
and an opening for the tunnel leading into Stephen’s room on the left.
My estimate is that this project will take at least half a year to complete, but it is fun watching it go up.
Other things we’ve been doing?
Our homeschool group finished their school year. (But we still have six weeks of work before we can declare it the end of the 2011-2012 school year.) The boys built birdhouses with Daddy to give as gifts to their tutors.
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| The Ten-Thousand Stalactite Room in Cub Run Cave |
We visited Mammoth Cave, along with about 7 other caves in southern Kentucky. We went sluice mining twice, and sat inside a Corvette at the National Corvette Museum, and petted a Kangaroo at Kentucky Down Under, and visited Kentucky Stonehenge, and hiked a Civil War battle site (Battle for the Bridge), and went horseback riding, and visited Abraham Lincoln’s Birthplace & Early Boyhood Home, and even stayed in a Wigwam. I don’t think we’ve ever done as much as stuff on a vacation as we did this time around. It was great fun!
We’ve started classifying the trees of Half-a-Hundred Acre Wood. And the Red-Spotted Purple Butterflies are fluttering around here now. I can hardly contain myself – Nature Study, here we come!
Our house now has a matching stain finish (sort of).
The guest house walls are (still) in the midst of demolition phase.
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| Check out this old hornet’s nest we found underneath one of the windows. Wasp nests are the only insulation we’ve found in this old house… (besides the mice nests). And THAT would be the reason we’re ripping out the walls… |
We celebrated Easter this year together as a family (much better than last year).
We’re still working on our Easter Paper Scene from My Little House. (Books 7-10 are for the Easter Story. The other books are all for the Christmas Bethlehem Village. Didier also has a great Easter diorama, Dino MiniWorld, flannelgraphs, coloring pages, several animations, and other paper crafts he’s created.)
I’m pretty far behind here. I don’t even know what or how I should organize all of it. I mean, what do I do first?
- Our trip to Kentucky’s Cave Country?
- Prominent Features (I really want to host a link-up for anyone else who has visited any of the geographical locations we’ve studied this year. Wouldn’t it be great to have a virtual “field trip” to all the prominent features, or all the Appalachian Mountains…. If you have visited a geographical feature and want to share – even as a guest post on this blog if you do not have one, please comment or send me an email!)?
- Our Sign of the Beaver Book Club?
- My school plans vs. reality (which is probably quite enlightening)? The good news is that this year I found some stuff I really like (and some other stuff I really did NOT like).
- The next six weeks of school? (Believe it or not, I used my planner to plan the next six weeks!)
- Cycle 1 Resources? (Umm… that one won’t be next. I’m not even sure what we’re doing NOW, so it is way-wishful thinking to know what we might be doing next school year. But at least I have Weeks 1-12 of Science covered with Mr. Q’s Free Elementary Life Science Curriculum, Chapters 1, 9-16 – Be sure to not only download the student version, but also the parent version, which contains the experiments and tests.)
Whatever I choose, it will likely be the path of least resistance. 😀
Now that we’ve taken off a couple of weeks, we’ve got to get it in gear to finish out strong. But then we’ll turn around and keep working because we actually kind-of-sort-of homeschool year round. (But our summer school is for more games, more discovery, more reading, and more of the great outdoors!)