The Best of Halloween 2011

Autumn Leaves

My boys are always so willing to join in some big activity if it involves doing, and I am so very grateful for this. Today it was another "leaf day" at our house. Fall doesn't really last too long - at least the beautiful saturated colors of fall leaves. I remember ironing leaves between sheets of wax paper with my mom when I was a kid and then using them as fall decorations. The smell of that warm leaf is etched into my memory. As an adult I've tried all sorts of ways to capture the autumn leaf and bring it inside, but it always fades to brown and crumbles. Today the boys and I played in the park and on our way home we collected some pretty amazing maple leaves; yellow, bright orange, and red-orange with bits of green. I decided to coat them with mod podge as a way to extend their brilliance and beauty, even if only for a little while. So the boys and I got busy painting leaves. I've been sewing them on a thread, (sort of like popcorn on a string) trying to make a garland long enough to hang above our kitchen counter. When the painting was finished, my kids ran back out into the back yard where they played until dusk. Climbing the apple tree, running in and out of the chicken coop to welcome our new adopted chicken, and in general just being kiddish. It was a wonderful Fall Sunday at home.

Beach Math

Our trip to the cape this past week was full of everything: fun, love, automobile breakdowns, frustration, worry, play, sun, big sky, and of course beach rocks. I came straight to the cape after having been at a parent teacher conference for Anders and I think school was steeped into my brain. I was thinking a lot about how to enhance learning and the love of learning at home. I thought about this off and on for hours as I was driving. So, we played a lot of fun made up games that were centered around math and reading and science. One truly fun game we created was a spontaneous game called "Guess my theme." I would categorize this as a definite math game. Each of us had to find rocks and create a small group sorted by whatever theme we chose. If you look at the groups above you can see we had the grown-up and simple white rock group, the amber rock group, the freckled group, and then a few way more fun and interesting groups by Kuba and Anders....the big-small-big-small group, the mama-baby group, the bumpy-rock group, and the rocks-with-holes in them group. FUN was had by all. And it made me think that school on a beach would be a terrific way to learn. We also got to inspect a dead seagull and a small dead and decomposing whale. TERRIFIC. Serious learning going on.

And Almost Four

My amazing little three year old.

First Homework Assignment in First Grade

Anders is doing a unit at school that begins with home and moves outward to town, state, country, and continent. This prompted his first homework assignment ever. With help from a parent he was to build his bedroom in 3-D. Cool! Anna, being the architect that she is, had him draw each plane of his room because she wanted him to observe and document everything that he saw. He really took it to heart, all the way to the smoke detector and the glow in the dark stars. His details are pretty amazing if you look carefully at the drawings. This was followed by measuring the room so they could scale it. Then they brainstormed different ways he could portray the different objects in his room and together they decided what materials to use. Anders took photographs of some of the things in his room, especially the things on his wall. Anna showed Anders how to scale down the photographs in a computer program so they could be used (she is telling me that he did it on the computer himself.) And then the building began...re-creating his bedroom - materials included fabric, wood, cardboard, paper towel, colored paper, cotton balls, photo of things in his room, etc. If you look carefully you can even see him and Kuba in their beds. Pretty wonderful, don't you think? I love my family!

Autumn Hikes

We took two fantastic hikes this weekend and I have to say that hiking with the boys is probably my most favorite way to spend time with them. I loved every single minute of it.

Spontaneous Sunday

Today it was rainy, cold, dreary, and relentless.

And then things got interesting.
People kept stopping by at our house. I was on the couch reading to Kuba when the doorbell rang. Our neighbor down the road stopped by with food for our chickens and her 2 1/2 year old son. Not more than five minutes later, Anders came home from a playdate, playdate in tow. Again, about five minutes later the doorbell rang again and three more friends and their mom stopped over. Imagine going from one child to seven in a matter of minutes.

This could have easily turned into chaos, as every kid needed to do some gross motor playing...it started with lego's and puzzles which were quickly becoming the new floor cover. I then introduced the "art project." Crayon leaf rubbings and watercolor. Simple, fun and soon we had many colorful papers lined up across the counter to dry. Four are now on our front door welcoming Autumn.

There you have it, a reversal of the mood in no time at all.