My Father's World--The Letter Q (Quail)

A little over a month ago we did our second-to-last week of school and the focus was the letter Q.

We enjoyed learning all about birds, but it was difficult to find any books on quail at the library.  Even our animal encyclopedia, which is a favorite resource for us and contains almost every animal, bird, and fish under the sun did not contain a single reference to quail! 

I found a coloring printable and the kids colored, cut, and pasted the pictures for their binder pages.

Our key words were: I do not grumble or complain; I am thankful.  I had Ali read aloud from her Bible the story of the Israelites grumbling about the manna and how the Lord sent quail.  We talked a lot about gratitude/thankfulness this week.

The key words for Q are definitely among my top 5 "MFW key words" that get frequently quoted to the kids!

We walked to a friends' home who has ducks, geese, robins, etc. to talk to her about birds and observe them in their pond.  We listened to different bird calls on this nature website and tried to learn to identify the birds we commonly hear.  We went fourwheeling with my parents as a pre-Mother's-Day excursion (something my mom enjoys doing) and saw beautiful scenery, and heard our state bird, the Western Meadolark, singing.

In other events of the week, our kids performed in the kids' musical, "Sermon on the Mound" which a lady from our church organized and helped them put on.  It was very well done and I was so proud of Ali and Jer!  Justus, on the other hand, wasn't quite old enough to be in it.  Through most of the program he was sitting when he was supposed to stand, standing when he was supposed to sit, exposing his belly button, hugging his neighbor, rocking back and forth, staring off into space, etc.

Ali and her friend Marlee had a speaking part together about the armor of God.

Jeremiah and his friend Creighton had to read a part about the spiritual armor too.

Ali was THRILLED to get to be a Dandelion in the show.  At first, it looked like only the little girls would be able to do it and she was so disappointed.  But then the director was mentioning that she didn't have enough and I told her Ali would love to be one.  She quickly made her the "leader" and so Ali was in charge of helping the littler ones do what they needed to do during the show.  A sweet lady from our church made the THIRTEEN dandelion costumes all by herself!  One little boy, Justus' best friend, insisted on being a dandelion, along with the 12 girls.  No, he didn't wear a tutu, just a green leotard!

This was after the show--a few of the dandelions that remained on the church playground decided to dance around together and I just so happened to have my camera on my arm...ready to capture the sunset glow falling on them!

The night before Mother's Day I gave Ali a lesson in how to make chocolate-dipped strawberries for her Mom.  Selfish?  Maybe.  Brilliant?  Absolutely!  If I get nothing else on future mother's days I will be happy!

Fourwheeling through the canyon was so much fun.  We had a picnic and hiked around. 

Ali took this pic of us on my old snapshot camera that is now Josiah's.

We saw all kinds of neat things, including butterflies, a white snake, and our state flower, the Indian Paintbrush.

This is Wyoming Rush Hour Traffic =)