Make Charlotte Mason Proud

Among all those days that looked like fall but felt like summer, we went for a woodsy walk with limbs unencumbered. I justified not doing 'formal' school by making animal tracking cards; we gathered and identified leaves, poked around in small animal burrows, and set free enough milkweed seeds to cover a world of fields, and all this while Susannah slept soundly in an upstairs room.








We gathered a few nuts from the shagbark hickory in my parents' field.



Millie played on a dangerously dead limb.




All things milkweed...





Millie was quietly singing a song about the "soft, soft, soft seeds to float."





Peering into the mouse's entryway.




Fishing from hay bales always provides a good catch.






Here's the inside of a hollow tree that's taller than I am.




Millie crouched by a different track after having found a deer-- "a running deer"-- track.



On our way to the stream behind brother Andy's house, Dad, Cassie, and Tom found us. We followed their lead to the dry stream.





Millie braved a rotten log.




And then we walked back through fields.



We came home with baskets full of leaves, bracket fungi to draw on, hickory nuts, and part of a deer skull, to boot. Now I'd call that a productive day...