Homeschooling and the Possible Dead Thing in My Front Yard

Loli is only 4. She'll be 5 years old this coming January. I don't feel rushed about schooling(we homeschool, by the way). But I'm starting to feel a need to do my research on HS curriculum.

There are lots of different methods of homeschooling. Some believe in a method that is more structured, some like it to be as un-schooling as possible. My personal preference is no stress. To me, that means structure right now, until I learn the ropes and can teach my younger children what I find is most important for them to learn at these young ages when structure can be so discouraging.

My current plan is to begin a real curriculum starting in March or so. Hopefully we'll have all of our homestudy and other adoption application materials completed by this time, and I won't be dealing with both stresses.

This is a little earlier than Loli would be starting (Aug/Sept. to go along with the school systems), but she'll be an older 5-year-old for that group, so I think we'll be OK starting then.

Right now, we're having fun learning just by exploring. I'm teaching loli about insects and plants right now, along with just a little bit of penmanship, reading and mathematics (she already knows her alphabet, how to sound out easy words, how to add numbers up to 10).

We have been checking out books about ants and bees from the library. She got interested in these insects after watching a Magic School Bus episode. A few of the books have been a little advanced for her, so we simplify by looking at some of the pictures and discussing what is happening in them.

We're also learning about plants, especially flowers. When I opened up a ripe rose-hip the other day and showed loli the little ovaries inside, explaining to her that they are the seeds to make new plants, she was fascinated. Every day that we have gone outside she has wanted to pick some new rose hips, open them, and then plant the seeds in the rosebed. (I'm a little doubtful that they'll actually grow, because they're still green, most of them, and I think that roses are one of those plants that are tricky to start.) But she's having a lot of fun.

So my question is this: can decaying rosehips smell like decaying flesh?

I know, that's a pretty unsettling question. But I'm a little unsettled. For the past couple of days when we've been out by the rosebushes, I smell this yucky smell kind of like my trunk smelled the time I forgot to remove 10 pounds of hamburger (this was pre-vegetarian conversion) for a few days. It was green and hooooorrrible.

Well this smell is not as bad as that, but it's getting steadily stronger. I'm hoping it's just the way that decaying rose hips smell, or maybe it's how decaying horse-manure smells (we have horses in the pasture next to our house) because I do NOT want to go looking through my bushes to see if any animal has died recently.

oooh... I should, but i just can't.

Maybe I can make that Skywalker's Saturday project. (Evil laugh.)