At the Arboretum

It would have been a shame to stay inside on Wednesday!

In my part of the world (Kansas) the weather was absolutely beautiful.

We did all of our chores as quickly as possible, called another homeschooling family and convinced them to spend several hours working on their sunburns with us!

We spent our time exploring the lake and surrounding areas at our

local arboretum and botanical gardens.

Here is the view we had as we ate our lunch.

We walked all the way around the lake, stopping and hanging out wherever and whenever we discovered something interesting.

Here is W rolling over one of the wooden bridges.

We had as much fun as possible and learned a lot in the process.

We spent a fair amount of time looking for and examining the many fossils in the rocks surrounding the lake. Once they were taught what to look for both of my boys were able to locate numerous fossils and were thrilled with the ability!

This photo is of J pointing one out to his friend!

And W brings our attention to another.

We also found a few interesting and unexpected things inside the water!


I believe these shells are from freshwater mussels. I had no idea there even were such things!

One thing I love about having kids (and homeschooling),

is learning as much as they do throughout the course of any given week.

You can learn more about the mussels here.

We also saw a lot of Green Sunfish...mostly because one of the boys dropped some bread in the water to see what would happen.

They didn't photograph well but there were quite a few of them.

When we spend a day out like this we always like to document it in our "wild days" journals. We each have one set aside for just such occasions.

J and I like to paint with watercolors and W always prefers a pencil.

Here are their pieces of art for this trip.

Well, hope you enjoyed the field trip! Have a wonderful day,