Beczac and Book Club

W and I went to a class at the Beczac Environmental Education Center in Yonkers on Friday. This one was all about marshes. Again, the Hudson River view along with the Palisades across the river were really gorgeous. The instructor talked about tides and how land pollution is brought into the river and will be carried all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean. The kids got to see how this works using their 5' river & land model. They poured water from the Adirondack Mountains and watched it come up onto the land, and how the tides keep everything flowing - north and south. We then walked down to the river to see the high tide and look for water chestnut seed pods, which reminded me of gargoyle heads.

After that class, we headed over to W's monthly book club meeting (ages 7-9). This month's story was "Little House in the Big Woods". We had been reading that already and were thrilled to hear it was on the schedule for June. W has learned how to really listen to a story now and does a fabulous job with narrations. The difference between September and June is really amazing. Good narrations are supposed to be the precursor to excellent composition skills, so we'll see. We're also just starting with multiplication. He couldn't wait for that to start. He totally gets it and feels like such a math whiz, lol. Every day he prefers to do more sample lessons from the TT website. We're running out of them, lol. I better get the new program soon. He wants to start it right away. Isn't it funny how much he loves math? I hated it at his age (and up until college). I remember the endless drills and tests and how miserable they made it. Then an hour of homework every night - 25 crappy boring problems - that was so unecessary. Boy do I hope my kids realize how good they got it, lol!