Do you know what a cryptozoologist is?  I didn't until recently.  Cryptozoology, as defined by Wikipedia, is "a pseudoscience involving the search for animals whose existence has not been proven. This includes looking for living examples of animals that are considered extinct, such as dinosaurs; animals whose existence lacks physical evidence but which appear in myths, legends, or are reported, such as Bigfoot". 

Little Man wants to be a cryptozoologist.  He wants to find a living dinosaur!  He has wanted to for several years already.  Unlike his older sister, who changes what she wants to be when she grows up as often as she changes clothes, Little Man has had the same dream since he was four years old.  Occasionally he talks about being a race car driver or a farmer or a Snowbird pilot, but he always comes back to finding a dinosaur in Africa.

Something I like to do with my children is take time off from our regular school work to do a week of fun, seasonal activities.  The start of the new school year is a great time to do a week of autumn activities and kick the new school year off with some fun!  Let me show you some of the things we did during our week of autumn activities. 

While Little Man was watching "his" cedar waxwing babies grow, Princess had a nest she was keeping an eye on too.  "Her" nest belonged to a mourning dove.  She got great pictures, not only of the babies, but also of the mother dove!  I will let her tell you all about "her" mourning doves herself.

My seven year old son, Little Man, found a nest with four eggs in it and he has been watching it and taking pictures of it all summer.  He agreed to do a guest post for my blog to tell us about "his" baby birds :)

Munchkin, our preschooler, loves animals of all kinds, but her favourites are definitely farm animals!  (She is a true farm girl!)  She is also my only child who really loves doing book work and work sheets.  When the other two were preschool age, we mostly played and if they learned something, great, if not, that was okay.  Also, if we did not do any school, it was not a big deal because they were not ready for it anyway.  Munchkin is completely different!  She wants to do school every day, all the time!  She is quick to tell me when her work box is empty and ask if I can give her more school work to do!  So, we started a new unit study on animals, consisting mostly of things I can find to keep her busy while I am working with her brother and sister. 

Last week we met a couple of other homeschool families at the Science Center and had a fun-filled day!  The Science Center had a special display with life-size, animatronic dinosaurs, which is what attracted us to make the two and a half hour drive to the city.

You may not be seeing as much of me for awhile as I am going to be super busy getting my new business organized!  In case you did not see the announcement on Facebook, here is our official announcement...

We are still pretty busy with the garden, but I am starting to think ahead to the new school year.  For science this year we will be studying Apologia's Exploring Creation With Botany (*Not an affiliate link!).  I was going through it to see what kind of supplies I need to get for the experiments and I realized that a lot of the activities would be best done outside in the summer.  I decided that on the days we are not processing our garden produce I will try to do activities from our Exploring Creation With Botany book.  We have been having a lot of fun since we started that!

I posted before about the Ant Factory that we started this spring.  Since then we have been having so much fun learning about ants!