Our Days: September & October

A friend of mine recently gave me this idea to try and capture what we are learning during our days. While we do a fair amount of book work, we are really trying to build a family culture of lifelong learning. Meaning that learning isn't something that only happens during a set portion of the day; we are learning all the time!

One of the difficulties of this is that sometimes it's difficult to recognize everything that the kids are learning. And sometimes, we also tend to go back to thinking about learning as what we they read about in history or science or what math problems they accomplished or which phonograms they learned. So in an attempt to remind us all of the scope of what we do during a day we have started capturing some of our days on a whiteboard. We just write down snippets of what stuck in the kids heads or what they felt like were interesting points or highlights of the day.

I'm going to try to remember to do this (and share them here) throughout the school year! Here's a sampling from September and early October.

Florida: Summer 2016

Our last summer vacation this year was a trip down to Florida. Our activities consisted of the usual fun rotation of swimming, golf, and beach but here are a few of the highlights:

• Julia and Ben had their first "real" golf lessons. And became true golfers as we were caught in a thunderstorm while out on the range and now they can say that they "play - even in the rain"
• After a couple of storms we found a coconut that had dropped from a tree in a nearby park and took it back and dissected it. We didn't eat it because it looked like it been around a little too long (there may or may not have been mold growing inside - we weren't going to test it!).

• Ben had his first waffle cone of ice cream. Yes, it was as big as his head! And yes, he ate it all!

• Julia had her first cone of Cappuccino Chip. She really enjoyed it at the time. Andrew and I did not appreciate it so much when she couldn't get to sleep that night! It might be awhile before she's allowed to have it again.

• We saw a fantastic art installation at the Botanical Gardens created by Patrick Doherty out of willow branches.

Julia's Art Class # 2 - The Solar System

This second shorter art class video demonstrates the painting of the planets including Jupiter's big red spot!

1, 2, 3 Flip!

The Olympics has inspired our children to explore their gymnastic capabilities!

Book Art

Now that the kids are a little older and more flexible, I have a goal for our homeschool this year to finally take some of the field trips I've been thinking about! To that end, we and Grandma Laurie made a 2 hour journey up to Amherst, MA last week to explore the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art located in Amherst, MA. 

I have been wanting to go to the museum for awhile and this summer they had exhibits by three of our favorite authors: Beverly Cleary, Robert McCloskey, and Eric Carle. So it was the perfect time to make the trip and it did not disappoint. The museum is small, perfectly sized for kids. There were scavenger hunts to do through the galleries but Ben and Julia really just wanted to look at the pictures. 

Our first stop was in the gallery with Robert McCloskey's illustrations. The kids loved seeing the drawings from Make Way For Ducklings, One Morning in Maine, and Blueberries for Sal. It was very cool to see some of his preliminary sketches and how the pictures came to their final state. Ben declared that gallery his favorite of the day.

From their we headed to Klickitat Street and the world of Ramona Quimby. A favorite of Julia's!

Next up was an exhibit of Eric Carle's work, divulging some of the hidden easter eggs in his art. It was a lot of fun realizing that there are hidden caterpillars and initials in some of our favorite stories!

Ben seemed to have quite an affinity for Eric Carle. I found him looking intently at this photograph of the author and when he turned away he said, "Mom, he is staring right into my soul." Wow!!

Benj and his "soul mate"

Eric Carle

 We loved this illustration from Little Turtle's Great Adventure by David Lee Harrison because the dog looks just like Benjamin's beloved Bubbles!

a boy and a butterfly

hiding inside a caterpillar

There was also an art studio where we created our own unique animals.

creating a bunny and a fish

We also saw a video of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus - hilarious, of course! Checked out the fantastic gift shop, and ate a picnic lunch on the beautiful grounds. Which were perfect for practicing handstands and cartwheels!

Beach Boy

Julia's Art Class # 1 - The Beach

Julia's interest in movie-making has continued with art lessons. Her first art class video is a tutorial for painting a beach scene.