A real life horticulturist and a real life botonist!

From my Horticulturist vs. Botanist? blog I received two awesome comments. One from Jamie the horticulturist and one from Nat the botanist. Luke loved reading them. Jamie praised the horticulture department at BYU Idaho and suggested we take a tour. I hear Idaho is beautiful, but that is way too far for us to drive. But, a great suggestion. I need to find out what Southern California college has a good program (Jamie, I am sure they wont have one nearly as great as BYU Idaho's of course) and see if we can take a tour there sometime while we are visiting my family. Nat sent us this link that was very interesting and fun to watch. Luke and I learned a lot from it! Now we want to try a Mangosteen! Today was a special P.E. day. We got together at a park with a lot of other homeschoolers and one fabulous mom with a lot of great equipment, games and leadership. My kids had a blast. We then went swimming this afternoon.

The other night Luke and I went out for sushi to celebrate him finishing his Math U See Beta book. Afterward we had a little award ceremony. We tried to get him to act normal for his picture, but this is the best we could get.

Horticulture vs. Botany?

I felt like we got a lot of great things accomplished today! Luke has three more Math worksheets before he is finished with his Math U See "Beta" book. Once he is finished he and I are going celebrate by going out for sushi. We are the only ones in the family that like sushi (I think Luke mostly likes it because they line the sushi up to look like a catapillar or dragon.) So anytime he got distracted while doing his math today I would yell at him, "I WANT SUSHI, GET BACK TO WORK." Joking of course....(and so very very serious.) Isabel and I have learned the alpha bet in Sign Language (ASL), counting to ten, and today we learned father, mother, family, brother, sister, boy, girl, grandfather, etc. We are using a book we rented from the library, Learn to Sign the Fun Way! by Penny Warner. She loves it and is very quick to memorize.

One of the things Luke wants to be when he grows up is a horticulturist. He has also heard of botanists, so last night he asked what the difference was. This morning I scrambled around on the internet trying to find the answer. I couldn't find any great "Horticulture vs. Botany" websites (gee, you'd think there would be tons.)  I went to dictionary.com and got simple definitions for both. There is a lot more to it than this, but let's just say horticulturists work on/improve/cultivate plants, flowers, trees, etc. and botanists study/analyze/dissect plants, flowers, trees, etc.

I then read to them out of our read aloud book, Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingles Wilder. My kids are loving this book and I find that we are having to stop at least every few paragraphs to have a big discussion on covered wagons, cabins built out of logs, wolves, etc. It gives them, and me, a glimpse of what life was like back then. A great history book for young children.