Aviation Learning and Play

Hero(10) loves airplanes. He has for a while now. So he's really enjoying the assignments that I'm giving him from the Doctor Aviation program that we're working on for one of next month's reviews. I love that he's extending the learning into his free time, and so are the younger kids. The boys are having such a good time that they're going beyond what I've asked for, and they're building stuff in their freetime that's based on what they're learning. I love it when that happens. Hero's was very specifically modeled on one of the real airplanes that he's been learning about; Dragon(6) modeled his on Hero's. Gotta love the intersection of learning and play.

Ring Around the Rosie

We just finished reading about the Black Death. Our book mentions that historians think Ring Around the Rosie dates to that time, and, that being a favorite game, we had to spend twenty minutes playing.

 

 

 

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Are You Sleepy?

Nah. Of course not.

Why do I even ask such a silly question?

Sweet Sleep

I love to watch them sleep. We spent the morning at the park, leaving as soon as we got out of bed to each breakfast with our friends from the ward, and staying to eat lunch with a smaller group. The boys played hard, and now they're sleeping. I used to call it "baby gazing" when I just sat and watched them sleep. I'll have to call it something else today, because neither one of them can rightly be called a baby.

Scrapbooks and Missile Kisses

I've recently discovered digital scrapbooking, and I love it. I've been working on Dragon's baby book while I try to figure out how to make digital scrapbooking work for the family books and Monkey's books. Creating the pages is a blast; printing them is a challenge. I don't have a system, but I'm getting closer!

Tonight Dragon saw this page I made for his book, for February of 2011.

When I told him, "That's Baby Dragon," he responded by kissing his hand and saying, "BOOM!" Around here we are raising manly-men, and they don't blow kisses. Nope, they stick 'em on a missile and shoot 'em.

"BOOM!!"

Green Hour #3: Drawing

The third Green Hour assignment was a fun one. Monkey's too little for a nature journal just yet, but I have a sketch book that I've been using as a nature journal, and it's been a long time since I did anything with it. I drew some spent lilac seeds in March, but I haven't touched it since then. It's hard to pay enough attention to be able to draw things well when I've got to keep such close track of the Monkey. Our yard's not fenced in, plus the flowers that I wanted to draw are in the front, so I took pictures of them and drew a tulip after Monkey went to bed last night. I haven't done tons and tons with color, so I was pretty pleased at how this turned out.




We're still working on outside words: "mulch" "garden" "(wood)pecker" "finch." We spent plenty of time outside since the last challenge. We're putting in a vegetable garden and trying the lasagna gardening so that we can neglect it a couple of times this summer and hopefully still have a good harvest. Found a couple of good links for gardening & composting & things with kids:

On KidsGardening:
Making Haste with Waste
Building Soil Nature's Way

One thing that I was worried about when I started to think that Charlotte Mason's nature study ideas, her suggestions of spending large chunks of time outside, had merit is that I'm completely terrified of bees (and anything that looks like it could possibly be a bee or wasp like object). I've been known to scream if one comes within several feet of me. The last time one landed on me I was working right up to crying when a kind friend flicked it off for me. So going outside is a bit of a challenge. Especially since we've removed about 6 nests from our property since we moved in. There was a time when I could hardly stand to go out my back door because several times I opened the door to find huge black wasps trapped between the screen and the door. But Monkey loves to be outside. It's a difficult thing for me, but recently I started praying every time I see a bee. And it's helping. We spent all day outside on Memorial Day, working on the garden. At the end of the day I was happy and relaxed in spite of the fact that I'd been buzzed a couple of times. I'm so grateful for the Lord's help with this - and I wish I'd asked for it years ago!

Here's another post from Barb about drawing in Nature Journals. She's got some great ideas among the things she's included in hers.