Julia's Gallery - The Peacock and the Fish

The Chef

Friday morning, 5:45am.
Footsteps racing down the hall.
"Mom, Mom, look at this"
A book pressed against my face. Eyes still closed, no glasses.
"What is it, Benj?"
"Look at it!!!"
"I can't see Benj"
"Come over here where there's light."
"No, I mean I don't have glasses on, I really can't see."
"Oh, here. Here are your glasses - LOOK"
"Ok. Wow, a cookbook. ummmm. lemonade?"
"yes, we should go make this, RIGHT NOW"
"hmmmm"
"and THIS"... some shuffling pages... "CAKE!"
"ummmmmm"
"Please mom, please? I want to make them for our friends to have this afternoon!"
"OK!"

5:55am
Out of bed, down the stairs, into the kitchen.
Bowls out, flour, sugar, milk, vanilla...
Strawberries, butter...
lemons...

7:30am
cakes baked, lemons squeezed, strawberries sliced.
assembly time.

he cut the strawberries himself

1:30pm
anxiously awaiting arrivals.

yum!

Plie!

Benjamin chose to take a ballet class over the winter. It was his first class and we chose to have him take a pretty laid back class at the same place that Julia took lessons a few years ago. 

Unfortunately the experience wasn't exactly what we had hoped. While Benj loved the dancing, he was disappointed in the class itself. There were a lot of kids and it seems that most of the time chaos reigned. But he came away knowing new steps and positions and will probably seek out something different in the future... Like teaching his own class in his room for himself, Julia, and his friends, as he's been doing this week! 

The serious ballet student

Recent Creations

Pharos

Julia was inspired by the 7th Wonder of the Ancient World, the first lighthouse - Pharos, to create this replica out of paper. From what I'm told a Minecraft version is next.

A Cape

Benjamin designed and created his own superhero cape.

Duckling Nest

Benjamin took my co-op class, Make Way for Ducklings, and made duckling nests with his friends.

The Artists

Julia and Benjamin, the artists, made their debut at an art show at our local library.

Julia's "Bird Under the Moon" and Benjamin's "Butterfly"

Sibling Love

Snuggles and Peanuts!

Julia taught Benj some stitches while she was doing her sewing homework for co-op.

Color Science

We've been exploring the science of color! When our thermometer dipped below zero, we tried out an idea from some friends to make colored ice globes.

Of course, I don't have any pictures of the finished products! But they were very cool. We had added food coloring to the water inside the balloons and the colored water formed an inner sphere. So we had colored spheres encased in clear spheres. We unwrapped one of them a little too early, it sprung a leak, and all the colored water flowed out leaving behind just an empty sphere. That was pretty cool. But then the temperature rose and that was the end of that.

 Next we moved onto mixing colors. We did this with crayons to create a color wheel, and paint to make some pictures, and then we did it with colored water. Kids and water - what more do I need to say?!

Julia kept track of the colors she was making

Benjamin, the chemist

Both Julia and Benjamin played happily for a quite while creating different colors and combinations. And then somehow, they ended up turning it into an olive oil, lime juice, and lemon juice factory!  They're very entrepreneurial these days! 

Our final activity, so far, was creating spectroscopes so we could see the colors in different lights. It worked best in the bright sunshine!