jenlar's adventure into excessive randomness: whatever's on my mind...

This is just a spot for my random musings on the things that I enjoy... family, friends, music, TV, pop culture, and all things Disney. I probably won't be doing any "deep thoughts" types of entries. It's all about having fun. Enjoy!

Monday, August 09, 2010

First day of public school, homeschool style

This year, GirlKid is in 6th grade and BoyKid is in 4th. We decided to start our school year last Monday and had an absolutely great first week. Both are actually eager to learn, and they are having fun with the subjects. As a reward/incentive, we decided to celebrate the first day of public school, homeschool style: We went fishing!

We decided to spend the morning at Mary Alice Park. This is a very well-kept park on Lake Lanier. There is a large, roped-off sandy beach area, paved walking paths with handrails, and shaded bank areas for fishing. There is an entrance fee of $4 (probably why it's so nice) and they don't allow pets. It's too bad that we can't bring Bella, but if it means no free-range goldens trying to "retrieve" my lure and corks, then I'm cool with the no-pets policy. (That's the way the last couple of fishing trips went down... and when you only get a few trips a year, it's NO FUN!!!) We didn't catch any fish other than some to use for live bait, and we didn't even find the geocache that was hidden off one of the walking paths, but we did make some even better finds.

GirlKid found an absolutely gorgeous American Indian projectile point at the water's edge. It's made from a combination of milk quartz and rose quartz. You can see the markings from where the maker chipped flutes from the edges, which are still sharp after several thousand years. This is our first Atlanta-area arrowhead find, so we are pretty excited about it. Here's a short video so that you can see all sides of the point. Tell me what you think!

The other find was something we stumbled across while unsuccessfully searching for a geocache. We found some amazing wild muscadines growing in the woods! We grabbed three smallish plants and brought them home. It seems like every time we are unsuccessful with geocaching we find something amazing for our native wildflower garden. I'll take maypops (passion flowers), queen anne's lace, trumpet vine, and muscadines over signing a log any day! (Photos not mine)

Our day was still educational *and* we did all of our normal subjects this afternoon. To make tomorrow fun, I think that we'll make milkshakes in bags.