It’s late spring and the saguaros in our front yard have lovely hair-dos!
We got our first small batch of tomatoes the other day.
The flamingos are our scarecrows. They scare the vegetable eating bugs away.
Pumpkin
We also have a number of fruit trees. These apricots will be ready to pick in a few days.
Looking for fossils…I guess?
Deer and a dear.
This lovely lady taught us about bears.
Bird lady, or “Raptor Lady”!
Luke’s been wearing this Santa hat for a few weeks now…cute.
The Brinkerhoffs came with us.
Hawk.
The Bobcats were out!
Sylvia turning her earrings.
Do you see the little hummingbird coming close to Sylvia’s flower?
Once a year the Tohono Chul Park puts on a Park After Dark. As you can see, there were so many docents holding live reptiles, birds, insects, mammals and anything else found in the Sonoran Desert.
Here is a docent holding a Mountain King Snake.
This little snake eats rattlesnakes.
Our friend, Tommy, came with us. (the boy, not the tortoise.)
Here is Luke with his idol, “Karl the Bugman.” Karl was holding and playing with a scorpion! Ack!
This Great Horned Owl is missing an eye 😦
Elf Owl! I want to keep him in my pocket!
Bat Lady.
Poor little docile brain damaged bobcat. The docent was opened for questions and one kid kept asking, “would it eat us because we are meat?” and “could it kill humans?” ….no and no.
Hazel was there touching all of the animals too but I never got a good non blurry picture of her, so here she is eating some animal crackers from earlier that day.
The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is amazing. Today makes it three times that we have been there are we still haven’t seen everything there is to see. This indoor and mostly outdoor museum exhibits plants, animals and minerals of the Sonoran Desert. In the heat today we were only able to explore for a couple of hours. The restrooms are equipped with sunblock dispensers!
Here is a view from one of the paths.
Nature boy.
There are so many different kinds of animals int his desert.
My favorite part of this museum is that along the paths there are volunteers at a little set up table showing an animal to talk about, fossils to show, etc. Here we were learning about the “boots” in the Saguaros. Gila woodpeckers build their homes in the cactus and years after the cactus has died and rotted away, the boot, or little woodpecker home, is left.
We also learned from a “table person” about the Mountain King Snakes, Pack Rats, Fish Fossils, and here were are learning about “eyes in front, ready to hunt” and “eyes on the side, run and hide.” Meaning, if an animals’ eyes are in front of their skull, they are predators if their eyes are on the sides they are prey.
It is truly a whole other world here. And speaking of different versions of classic stories, The Three Little Javelinas is a Three Little Pigs story with a Sonoran Desert setting.
The heat was great because there weren’t very many people there, but I think we will wait until the weather is cooler before we visit again so that we can stay all day.
This first picture I had to take so that I will never forget how stylin’ Isabel has to be when we go to the pool. That is her pool outfit. The sundress, shawl, glasses, kerchief, towel/backpack and snorkel. Sheesh.
Wednesday we had our art history class. As you can see I am getting lazy with the hand out, but they are still learning a lot. They have learned about nine artists and can tell the difference between their styles.
Pablo Picasso
-his full name: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
-1881 to 1973
-Spain
-abstract and cubism
-Guernica inspired by Spanish Civil War
Afterward they worked on a picture mimicking Picasso’s “blue period” by using blue (of course) and making it look sad. Luke’s is a sad alien and Isabel’s a sad girl.
Today I took Luke to a desert insect class at the Springs Preserve. It was great, he asked a lot of questions and I learned more about insects than I ever wanted to know. Have you ever thought about how insects breathe? Pretty interesting.
Luke got to watch as the zoologist let a grasshopper go.
Lately Sylvia will make up a word and then ask me what it means. Today Sylvia asked me what “ashing” means. I said I don’t know. She said, “Well, maybe it means you want to take a shower and your family bees mean to you.” Me: “oh.” (what do I say to that?)
So I guess we are taking this week off from school. I wasn’t planning to, but decided it would be a good time for me to get things reorganized (which by the way I haven’t done yet.)
Yesterday we had a great unexpected field trip. We went with our friends, Tara, Stephanie and her three children, to Red Rock Canyon. Red Rock Canyon is a beautiful site with colorful desert mountains, desert plants, trails etc. At the visitor’s center the kids got booklets with different activities for them to do depending on age. For example, on one worksheet the girls had to find and draw a picture of four different types of cactus. They needed to complete four pages in order to become Junior Rangers.
After all of their hard work, they got a certificate, Junior Ranger badge, and raised their right hands and were sworn in. They were so proud and excited to help protect National Parks.
Our camera that we’ve had for four years (I guess that is a pretty good run) is dead, so here are pictures on Stephanie’s blog of our day.
Sabrina School 