Spidery Halloween!

Anders went as a very cool spider this year for Halloween.

Kindergarten High

Kuba took his first field trip today with his class....a fabulous group of five and six year olds.
The day was spectacular, crisp, and beautifully autumnal.  Here is his teacher, arms waving, joyfully welcoming the day out of doors!  How lucky is he? 

The Country Fair

We went to visit Uncle Claes and family last weekend and spent 2 days at the Sandwich Fair.  The fair was a small town event with lots and lots of animals.  We saw a ventriloquist, a sword swallower, a mind reader, a couple of great bands, hundreds of cows and oxen, horses, tractors, a parade with marching bands, and we loved every single minute of it. We want to do it again next year.  The boys even did a tractor pull and won a blue ribbon, a blue bandanna and some french fries.  Absolutely fun.

 

 

Play at Five and Eight

 

The boys have a few of those little hex bugs...really fun micro robotic creatures that truly move like small insects.  The boys built a hex bug stadium/maze for the little buggers...using nearly everything they could find.  Who needs the real hex bug stadium when you can build your own crazy  maze?  There are about five of them here in the photo...sort of I SPY-ish.  Where are the hex bugs?  I think two are obvious.  Both boys like them a lot and on this particular day clean up was a whole lot of fun.  (Not)

Still, their number one favorite play toy --- continues to be animals.  Plastic animals.  This has been true since they were very young and I don't see the animals losing their importance.  The play is just getting more sophisticated these days.  Here are a series of animal habitats with food that the boys created with Anna.  It was a half-day Saturday project mind you.  All two hundred animals lined up and waited their turn for their own unique and custom made habitats.   There is no way our boys have a problem with using their imaginations. 

What is Important?

We've begun to talk about what is important to our family....our values.  This was our first list created at our Sunday evening family meeting.  We will be spending more time on this over the next month or so.  It's just the beginning of the conversation.   This week we named: Love, Playing, being Together, Kindness, Wisdom, Creativity.....oh and at the bottom of the page are the boys chores for the week.    

Road Trip to Nowhere

It was just the boys and I out on a road trip today...hours together in the car as we travelled to nowhere along country roads and then back again. We stopped a lot.  We stopped at old barns, in fields of corn, in fields of hay, and anywhere else that looked interesting as we drove by.  Anders saw this old barn...it had metal roofing falling off the top, rotten wood, a few rusted old vehicles.  Decrepit, but fun.  All of it  beautiful.  I like taking photo's of the boys and they completely and totally get into the spirit with me.  Sometimes, I get a good photo out of it.  Always, I get them...

"Pause My Time!"

This little phrase is a daily expression at our house, along with "Start my time!".   The "time" is 20 minutes that the kids get on the computer, or iPad, or iPhone.  That is our deal about how much screen time they each get.   So- if they have to take a bathroom break, or get interrupted somehow and need to stop - they yell  "pause my time".  I was struck the other day about how much meaning that phrase has here at our house, and how vigilant they are about getting their full 20 minutes.  They can earn extra time by playing outside- when they go out by their own choice...10 extra minutes for each hour of playtime out of doors.    The amazing part to this collaboratively created system is that the buy in is great.  Everyone does it.   It is a system that works.   That doesn't mean there aren't issues from time to time when their time is up...but 90 % of the time it is a highly successful agreement.