A Morning of Horses

Our Keepers of the Home scout group had a simply wonderful meeting today - every girl's favorite subject - horses!  Mookie was SO excited! We met at the house of one of our buddies who used to be a jockey.  Sitting on her lovely porch, we started out with the going over basic terminology.

Next we learned about the proper brushing, maintenance and mannerisms of horses, followed by saddling and bridling.

Some of the families in our scout group either have or work with horses often, so the older girls took turns in showing how certain things were done.

Then came the best part - riding!

Each girl worked according to her own ability.  So, if they didn't need just to try out riding, they worked on training, etc...

We are so blessed to have such a great group of scouting friends!

My Little Potter

Today we had our monthly Keepers at Home meeting and we focused on getting our pottery patch.  My friend who does her own pottery taught us the different styles and techniques in pottery making.  I knew she was an excellent teacher, Mookie and Bubby loved her art class at our homeschool coop, but this was my first time seeing first hand how amazing she is! 

She had the girls make a pinch pot, a coiled pot and then showed them how to throw a pot on a potter's wheel.  Some even jumped in, got super messy and tried their hands at the wheel too!

Mookie was in her element with creating the pottery.  She enjoyed both styles she tried, but really took her time with the coiled pot.  

She's a little regretful she didn't dive in and try the potter's wheel - she's never been into messy things - but maybe we'll have another chance sometime:)

A New Scout Experience

  A couple of years ago, Mookie was a part of an American Heritage Girls troop in Topeka but the cost was a little more than our limited budget could handle, not to mention the gas & time it took for the hour round trip.  So, we sat out a year and prayed that we would find something similar that was more of a fit for us as a family.  Well, we found it!  A homeschooling friend of ours turned us on to a Christian based scouting program that can be done independently or as a group - what a blessing!  It's through Keepers of the Faith with their Keepers at Home program.  Several other homeschooling families were also interested so we created our own group that is going to meet once a month.

  We had our first meeting Friday and had a blast!  The subject was tree identification.  We met at a friend's house who has several acres and an ample amount of trees and gathered examples of 10 specimens as we hiked around her lake. 
  The girls (and moms) had a blast!  The weather was a perfect fall day and the fall colors were just beautiful!  Mookie and her friend pretended that they were Indian princesses on the trip, "you can be Pocahontas, and I'll be Sacagawea".  Of course it wasn't all work, the girls took time out to pet the local "wildlife"...
We then retired back to the house for some excellent hot cocoa and trail mix provided by our leaders for the day.
  It is such an answer to prayer to have this opportunity to do scouting with our friends!  Next month, I'm helping lead the meeting and we're going to have tea parties as our topic!