My little poetic line for this month is simple. Just something I read while heading to a hike in the mountains.
“Linger Longer”
That’s it. “Linger longer” friends.
For the desktop, click on the image below to view the large size image.
Two years ago we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
I don’t love it when Easter falls so early in the year, because I feel like I haven’t gotten fully into the swing of Spring yet, but it is a great kick off for the season.
Easter morning photos (Tim is missing because he had services to lead at his work)
Dying Ukrainian Easter eggs as part of our “Good Master” Book club. It is such a beautiful layered process – you use very intense dyes paired with layers of beeswax to create really beautiful eggs.
We read “The Good Master” for our book club. It is a story about two Hungarian children on a farm – a perfect portrait of spring. Our book club is never complete without lots of literature inspired feasting!
Sneaky little bugger…
Making seed bombs
Lots of fun hunting easter eggs –
And of course a visit from the Easter Bunny
We spent a morning studying birds nest and eggs
And wrote bird postcards
Harriet rediscovered her love of hedgehogs
Matisse inspired “backwards color” portraits
We delivered this art piece to Houston
And we maneuvered a family crisis with a lot of love and help from our friends
We spent a day in rainbow land (including color themed outfits)
Rainbow snack time
Light table fun with magnatiles
Learning about cavities the importance of teeth brushing
Buzzy showtime on our table top theater we made last year!
Fun with ropes and pulleys as part of our Simple Machines exploration
And we made an official inventors kits!
and finally, we built little circuit lanterns with Tinker Crate
The blessings came in waves
and could be felt for days
O, how my bones still shake at your names
In sweat we set the stones
in blood we brick the roads
a holy breaking comes for every home
Give me your hand, we’ll climb up the balcony
Ditch the front row and sway with the symphony
Make as much noise and be as we want to be
Your voice in my voice and hands are the canopy
Feel the old rhythm play what’s inside of me
The fields are glories now, the fields are glories now
So guide your wild eyes down
The promise in the pain, the code that’s in the grain
We’ll move beneath the weight ‘til you raise
When I was a child, around this time of year on the orchard my dad would prune all the apples trees. I would help look for branches that were crossed, or growing in at strange angles. We would then clip off the offending branches and sometimes prop them with these little red supports to help them grow straight so that they could get the best light possible and eventually grow the best fruit.
Tim and I are moving to a new house in 10 days. We bought a “fixer upper” in the middle of town near a big park. It’s a MUCH bigger house in a nice quiet neighborhood. We weren’t really planning on moving yet, but then suddenly everything fell into line at the same time, like it does.
This whole moving thing is crazy… crazy exhausting, crazy nerve wracking, crazy exciting, and crazy scary.
Ten Years.
Ten years we have lived in this house I am sitting in right now.
I know where every light switch is and where to step over the crooked floor boards.
I know the name of every plant in the garden,
why there is a funny hole in the kitchen screen,
how to walk in the middle of the night so the squeaking floor doesn’t wake the children,
the funny trick to the bathroom door downstairs,
and the story behind most of the nail holes on the walls.
It’s where I found out I was pregnant for the first time and where I brought each of my four babies home to. It’s the place where we’ve had so many wonderful Christmases, Thanksgiving feasts, and simple, every day meals.
It’s where my children took their first steps, laughed their first laughs, and tried their first foods.
It’s also where Harriet broke her leg,
where the basement flooded too many times,
where I had my anxiety breakdown,
where Tim and I had our most difficult fights,
where we had belongings stolen off our front porch,
and had to call the cops on the neighbors so many times.
This house is old. It’s been around more than 100 years.
It really has seen its fair share of marital fights and make ups.
It’s flooded but it’s dried back out.
It’s been cold and drafty and also cozy and safe.
I hope it will be around for at least 100 more years. I hope it will be the same gift to the next residents as it has been to us. (Please take care of my planty’s!)
I am sure for this home, 10 years is just a blink. But it feels so significant to me.
Somehow leaving this house feels much more substantial then leaving high school or leaving college. I suppose if you look at it that way, those were only four year institutions. This home has been ten of mine.
Ten years of themed birthday parties and late night hard conversations with friends sitting on the kitchen floor (the best place for those kinds of talks),
nights pacing back and forth with wakeful babies,
ten years of pinching pennies to patch the wear and tear of everyday life,
of having tea on the front porch,
hosting cooking clubs and wedding showers,
play dates,
years with miscarriages, mistakes, and misadventures.
All the rhythms of our days and what I know have been centered in this place for ten years.
You can hear it in my lists… It is breaking me to leave. It feels like a close friend.
Like family.
And I am scared.
Scared this new home won’t be me.
Scared I’ll hate it.
Scared something will happen to the kids and I’ll somehow blame this decision.
I am scared it will change me. Change us.
And yet it’s time.
Time to move on, time to adventure out, time to try something new, try our hand at starting with a blank canvas, try this new place out. It’s time to move.
Time passes so damn fast, doesn’t it?
My babies are getting bigger. It comes to the end of the day and I wonder. Wonder if I did it right, wonder if I could have played it out differently, wonder if this is it, wonder are we centering our lives on the right things? Wonder if we are making the right choice.
10 days. We are moving in 10 days.
So I’ve been obsessing over this new place. This new house.
It’s not the one I would have picked. I did not like it at first.
I love old and history and craftsmanship.
This is black shag carpet which was recently cleaned by Carpet Cleaning Hendersonville and popcorn ceilings. And florescent lights. And 80s. On a cul-de-sac.
So I have created every pinterest board, design mood board, photoshopped room, shopping budget, detailed plan I can possibly do with out actually living there.
And I am starting to see it.
See the lovely that could be revealed there.
I know I can make it beautiful.
I know WE will make it beautiful.
I think about how it’s only about a block from a huge green space,
and a pool,
and how I found rhubarb sprouting up near the fence,
and how this one room feels like the barn I grew up in,
and how the layout is perfect for us,
and how we will have room to spread out,
and be able to have people over more easily,
and host house concerts,
and how I want to give every room its own theme,
and how we are going to start off by pitching tents and camping in the great room,
and so many other new things.
It will be a challenge to start from a blank slate.
But we can’t wait. We are so excited.
And still, the packing and processing all the memories and moments sucks. It is such an emotionally wrecking experience.
Is this pruning?
Pruning is painful but good. It helps us grow straight and true so we can bear more fruit.
The truth is that I am scared about not being able to find the light switches,
and whether I can hear the playroom from the kitchen,
and having to use a 1980’s electric stove for the next ten years,
and life on a cul-de-sac,
and even more that feeling of being exhausted and wanting to go home and not being able to.
But then I take that step back.
I am reminded of my white privilege and how we are going to be living in a mansion compared to the rest of the world, and how millions of refugees can’t ever go home again, and I feel stupid. Stupid white suburban mom. Ha.
You make it work and you make it beautiful and you invite people into the mess,
because it is NOT about it being beautiful.
And it is NOT about it being ugly.
And whether it is HERE or THERE doesn’t matter.
It is about WE. And US. And TOGETHER. And HOME. And LOVE in the best way we can.
And so, let’s adventure on family.
Two years ago we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
We continued our world tour this month with a “trip” to Japan. This was definitely one of our favorite countries/cultures yet! I surprised the girls by setting up a Japanese style low table in the middle of our dining room with zen inspired decorations and gave them each a silk kimono (twelve dollars on amazon!).
We had a Japanese tea party –
We practiced calligraphy and mark making with these lovely Teagas water scrolls –
We played with origami –
And REALLy loved getting to try all these yummy Japanese snacks from our TopMunch box!
Watched fascinating videos about silkworms and zen gardens –
We of course went out for sushi at the end of the month!
A reoccuring theme for January for us is “Snow”! Thanks Colorado!
A day at the best sledding hill –
All the snow books –
Building a funny snow man (snow deer?)
Painting snowy scenes
Lots of letter play for this little one –
The two big girls joined the Secret Society of Letter Writers
And for Harriet this month we worked REALLY hard to read every day. She has been doing so great!
We had lots of fun making some little stop motion videos with my iphone and also made lots of oven bake figures.
So many fun art projects this month. Buzzy helping me do the underpainting on a canvas –
Painting owls inspired by Owl Moon
Painting our to-do list clip boards
Face painting fun
And a really cool art show up at the university
For book club this month, we read Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
We got to experience Chinese Hot Pot
Went on a journey to find the Old Man of the Moon
Had a great discussion
And celebrated the Year of the Dog
Our Natural History Museum at a really cool touring exhibit of dinosaur skeletons, so we adventured to Denver to check it out.
Digging for dinosaur fossils
Some days, when the chaos is winning, it is best to take the morning off from normal homeschool and learn about the lost arts of homemaking. Headphones and fun music help (Annie soundtrack all the way for these girls)
Harriet came up with her own recipe for Orange Cake. Turned out pretty tasty!
A dinner Lucy and Harriet made.
One day Lucy really wanted to build something. So they designed, built, and painted this shelf with a cup holder for next to their bed.
Last year we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
With all the Christmas shipments (and a couple of new tool purchases for art projects), we found ourselves with an awesome stash of large cardboard boxes.
As well as revisiting this favorite book –
We made all sorts of fun structures.
A castle with multiple rooms and a draw bridge –
A gingerbread house –
We had a lot of fun making homemade gifts this year. For grandparents, the kids designed and made wood cut out paintings. It was neat listening to them decide what image to make for each person. A fish for grandpa ed because he loves painting, a pie for grandmama because she is the queen of pie making, a girl with a dress for grandma DiDi because she loves buying little girl’s dresses, etc.
As part of our science club, we made bath bombs. So easy and fun! Next time I want to try hiding little surprises in the middle!
Our homeschool bookclub is turning into this magical much anticipated event. This month we read Benjamin West and his cat Grimalkin by Marguerite Henry. A historical fiction story about the father of American painting.
We experimented with making our own colors our of clay and charcoal, made quill pens out of turkey feathers, and practice life drawings of cats.
We feasted on homemade porridge at the “Door Latch Inn”
And even tried Peas with Honey (a funny reference from the books)
And learned how to play Blindman’s Bluff
Hydraulics, robotics, and engineering. What a fun world we live in. So many cool topics to explore and neat things to make. And so thankful for grandparents gift subscriptions, uncles sending cool robots, and libraries sharing their resources.
We have started having one day a month of learning about simple home making skills – how to fold laundry, how to iron, things like that.
We didn’t make huge batches of Christmas cookies for neighbors this year because our kitchen was torn up for most of December (an unexpected dishwasher replacement) and an expected and much anticipated new countertop and backsplash!
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But when it was finally done, we broke the new kitchen in with a glorious sugar cookie explosion of awesomeness with the help of Grandma DiDi.
I love this time of year so much it makes my heart hurt. Here are a few moments from December that I want to remember.
Instead of heading to KS this year, we had a little staycation (and played ALOT of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey) and then had a fun night with friends on New Years Eve
Happy New Year Friends! May your 2018 be as fresh and beautiful as these paper whites, but hopefully not nearly as stinky.
Last year we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (1). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
For October we did a whole anatomy and physiology exploration because – skeletons!
Our favorite layered body puzzle. We all really love this, lovely wood pieces.
I picked up this cool skeleton model at Target on clearance a few years ago. Its great for learning all the organs and bones.
Some magic school bus reading –
Looking at diagrams of the different systems of the body as well as playing with some cool body rubber stamps I found at a yard sale over the summer. (Book is the Firefly Visual Dictionary)
The girls helped me get my moon painted for my installation piece for the Children’s Museum in Denver.
And helped celebrate the closing of my time as Artist in Residence.
We learned about Leonardo Da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. Here is lucy with her Mona Lisa, smiling her Mona Lisa smile.
Harriet “painting the world blue” at the Children’s Museum’s VW bug installation.
Buzzy (and Lucy) painting at easels at the museum
Harriet putting on a shadow puppet show for Arlo
Lucy and I participated in Inktober (a fun instagram challenge to paint one ink sketch a day for the month of October)
We collected leaves and tried our hand at preserving them by dipping them in beeswax. Which we then made into a lovely wall hanging.
Collecting and breaking acorns to make acorn flour.
Learning about Andy Goldsworthy (watch this documentary if you haven’t!) and collecting a spectrum of leaves.
A trip to a local farm for fall festivities –
Our first snow of the year!
Enjoying the fallen leaves by making “leaf angels”
Apple picking!!
And alllllllll the halloween goodness.
Carving jack-o-lanterns
Howl-o-ween at Centennial Village
Lucy bobbing for an apple –
A trip to Pumpkin-Pickers-Paradise –
And we made our own scary movie – “Nightmare Mansion”! Complete with all kinds of cool special effects.
Making Halloween decorations
And our yearly reading of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven (made better by pop up books)
Thanks to a delicious Top Munch box, we learned about Diwali and got to taste all kinds of traditional Indian snacks. (and dressed up in costumes…)
Making a mandala from rice and beans –
Coloring India on our giant world map –
We had our very first Homeschool book club! Our book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was so so fun.
Homemade “golden ticket” invitations –
Picking out candy favors for the party at Rocket Fizz candy shop –
The whole crew with their candy sculptures! –
We ended the night with Chocolate fondue! (a melted river of Wonka’s chocolate)
Lucy’s homemade candy factory machine – 
Visiting the corn maze (where we tried the Left hand on the wall trick, and it failed, ha ha because of this bridge in the middle!)
We tried it again at the pumpkin patches maze and this time it worked, phew.
A favorite game – Labyrinth! (Master Labyrinth is really fun too)
And we had a blast solving all the mysteries in Graham Bases “Mysterium” book
We got our first Tinker Crate in the mail and it was so fun! The girls built their own spin art machine! So well designed and educational! Can’t wait to do more of these. Thanks grandmama!!
We also have been having a blast with Snap Circuits – a very cool electronics kit for kids. This is Lucy making an FM radio! It worked!
I missed posting this in August, but here is our yearly newspaper, the Coons Delivery
Harriet Orchard lost her first tooth!
The tooth fairy brought her this homemade doll – her name is Sky
The girls made a play dough feast out of a batch of homemade play dough we made.
And finally, we took the girls out to their first experience in really fancy dining at Acorn in Denver to celebrate my time at the Children’s Museum. They did a great job trying lots of new foods. Not a great photo, sorry, I was too busy snarfing down all the things…
Last year we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (6), Beatrice (3), and Arlo (10 months). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
I am a little behind and trying to get caught up (four kids man…) so this month is mostly just a picture journal. Enjoy the show!
One day a week homeschool enrichment program started up for Lucy and Harriet (her first time!)
Baby schooling for Arlo ha ha –
Letter play for Beatrice
Front porch reading/tea time
Beautiful new alphabet tracing board from Treasures from Jennifer
All sorts of alphabet play (An Artist’s Alphabet by Messenger, Animalia by Graeme Base)
Animal name alphabet matching
Such a weird and silly book!
Did a little general Africa study this month
Building sand and rock maps as part of our history study.
We read several fun books about famous building and then made our own popsicle stick houses – which turned into troll houses and led to endless play with their tiny troll dolls (“Branch” and “Lily”)
The girls also built some epic block structures
Buzzy created her first paintings.
Lucy had a great time drawing fairies
They also visited me at the Children’s museum and had a great time exploring all the cool things there. Here is Lucy trying out my stage art piece
A little “Greeley Gothic”
I sorted all my old jewelry making supplies which led to several days of jewelry making for the girls.
And lastly, we found a really cool velvet embossing kit at the thrift store. Such a fun and easy process!
We took a mid month trip back to Kansas and spent the week having a blast at the State Fair there.
Riding all the rides –
The beautiful quilts on display in the Domestic Arts Building –
Experiencing what it is like to milk a cow –
Sunflowers!
Fun on the giant slide
Arlo meeting Daisy the sheep
Our very favorite math books – Beast Academy. So So fun.
In Beast Academy we are learning all about shapes, so we played with Tangrams
and some Teddy Bear math –
Piano lessons started up – although practicing is made a little more difficult by younger siblings.
So that is when we have to get out the tiny piano
Listening to a marching band parade in KS
We listened to Classical Kids “Vivaldi: Ring of Mystery” and learned about different instruments in the orchestra and also learned about the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura – so neat!!
Playing mini golf in Hutchinson, KS!
Dance classes kicked off and somebody is finally old enough to have her own class!
Learning how to fish with Grandpa Ed
Picking apples
Enjoying the animals at a petting zoo in downtown Greeley during Ag Fest
Poudre river trail races
We read My Side of the Mountain which led to all kinds of nature collecting, learning about eating in the wild, and tree walks to find edible nature finds.
Lucy also picked up whittling
I love this series of books by Aston/Long – This month we focused on A Seed is Sleepy and had a lovely afternoon collecting all different kinds of seeds.
We enjoyed the last fruits and veggies of the garden.
We have two important birthdays in September. Buzzy turned 3 and Harriet turned 6!
This is a homeschooling photo journal of Lucy (8), Hattie (5), Beatrice (2), and Arlo (8 months). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
Photos from “camp” at Under the Radar’s Escape to the Lake – a festival Tim and I get to play at in late August.
Rock climbing wall –
Lucy helped Tim lead “Rootbeer & Hymns” on her little red ukelele
Kayaking on the lake –
Playing in the sand –
A stop off on the way home to visit Mark Twain’s boyhood home
And a little bakery education –
The night before our first day of homeschool. I got the kids each a new library bag from Out of Print Books.
Making a set of felt alphabet cards together –
A first day of school picture on the front porch – can’t win them all 🙂
Harriet practicing her letter sounds
One of our themes for August was everything Farm! We kicked it off with a really fun visit to Deanna Rose Farmstead Park in Overland Park Kansas.
Pony rides –
Bottle feeding baby goats –
Tractor racing –
Picking grapes at our own tiny farm –
Homemade farmers market –
Making their own play farm (complete with bunny pen)
Sneaky farm math –
Pig pancakes to kick off our Charlottes Web read-aloud –
Cutting practice –
“Milking” a cow –
Play at our own farm park in Greeley –
All sorts of wonderful Eclipse fun since we were very close to the zone of Totality –
Eclipse paintings –
A piece of artwork I painted live at a house concert –
Viewing the eclipse –
crescent shaped shadows
Eerie light mid day –
Amazing art installation at UNC gallery –
“Cave explorers” discovering the cave paintings at Lascaux
Before digging into our fun new history book we did a little looking back at the kids histories in their keepsake albums.
And we did an interview of Grandma Didi to look at our own family history –
For Geography we tried out a TopMunch box (snacks, music, and history curated from somewhere in the world) – this month was all about Paris
More robot building for this little engineer –
And SO SO many books read –
All of us enjoyed getting back to our morning tea time on the front porch with stories –
This year we began homeschooling Lucy (8), Hattie (5), Beatrice (2), and Arlo (8 months). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
During July, we don’t do any structured homeschooling, but we did still have some wonderful adventures as a family. Here is a little photo journal of our month.
We kicked off July with a bang – enjoying backyard BBQing, fireworks with friends, a fantastic parade, and some adorable vintage outfits on Arlo (that were Tim and his brothers when they were babes).
Inspired by Dogman, Lucy started drawing her own series of comics (it’s called Robot Rambush and Robot Hoverton)
A dress sewn by Lucy for Beatrice (with zero help from mama)
A pretty cool art invention discovered by Lucy –
And I started up my residency at the Denver Children’s Museum!
We also sewed this sweet little quiet book page all together in anticipation of our big camping trip.
This month we took our first family camping trip. We went up the Poudre Canyon to Roosevelt National Forest and camped at a beautiful lake there. I wouldn’t say it was as idyllic as these pictures make it look ha ha (kid throwing up from the winding roads, miserable heat in the afternoon, whining children, and bugs all put a damper on the idyllic). But we did it, and it had some really beautiful moments.
Skipping rocks.
Arlo was a camping champion.
Reading Harry Potter out loud around the breakfast morning campfire.
A picnic at our favorite Homestead Park
Enjoying their favorite Willow tree in the evening
A not-done-in-time-dinner from mama lead to a lovely restaurant put together by Lucy and Harriet at the “Flower Cafe” outside on the patio.
And a favorite summer tradition around here – UNC’s Concerts Under the Stars series – with the Greeley Philharmonic. Umbrellas are open here, but it only sprinkled for a few minutes and then cleared up for a lovely evening.
This month we read –
Clementine by Sara Pennypacker (how have I never read these before!?) and the new illustrated Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
The girls also worked super hard to complete their entire Summer Reading Program at our local library.
Summertime at its best.
And a session of swim lessons for all three girls.
Thanks to a little help from Great Grandma Goose, Harriet and Lucy got to take part in a local theater camp. In one week they put on an entire production of Snow White! The girls each had real parts and even had to memorize lines! Lucy was one of the narrators (Red), and Harriet was one of the seven dwarves (Wallflower).
As a family we all helped put on a really cool fundraiser event called the Greeley Wheelie for Turn Around Bikes – a local non-profit that takes donated bikes, refurbishes them, and donates them to kids in need.
This year we began homeschooling Lucy (7), Hattie (5), and Beatrice (2). We’re including this on our Giants & Pilgrims blog as all our family adventures seem to impact our art & music so much! Also, we just like sharing the stories. So we’ll be sharing posts on the themes we’ve been covering each month and calling the adventure “ABACUS”! Our hope is that these posts will help spark creative direction and inspiration for your family as well as giving us somewhere to be document and record our experiences.
May had lots of ups and downs for us. We wrapped up our homeschooling season with tons of fun adventures and explorations including taking a long trip to Kansas mid-month to rest and reset. Enjoy these tidbits and snapshots of our days. Life is pretty great.
A trip to Grandmama and Grandpapa’s farm is never complete with out learning some new birds and doing a little birdwatching.
We are now official members of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science (when you have a big family, memberships are cheaper!). So we had a blast playing in their new children’s discovery area. LOTS of cool science-y things to play with.
Water tornados!
Aren’t these giant light boxes cool?
As part of our outdoor adventures, we downloaded a geocaching app and while we were in Kansas had a great time “treasure hunting” for geocaches.
Here is one we successfully found inside a hollow tree.
And this is an abandoned schoolhouse from the turn of the century where there was supposed to be a geo-cache which we could not find.
But still pretty neat to explore – especially since the whole building was surround by wild blooming prairie roses.
As the weather got hot, we playing in the water a whole lot (Kansas has a monopoly on really cool free waterparks)
And while we were in Kansas, we relived some of my childhood memories of summer nights playing softball as a family. I love Lucy’s determination in these pictures.
Mulberry picking for days.
Not sure what is happening here, but Buzzy and her cousin Clarkson are working hard.
The girls’ first canoe rides out at the farm.
Strawberry picking at Great grandmother’s house
And these girls are ready for summer!!
Lucy has discovered a new instrument love in her little red Ukelele. Thanks to a pretty patient dad and some YouTube videos, she is picking it up fast!
Grandmama found a real winner of a game called “Outfoxed“. Similar to Clue but good for slightly younger kids, it is a great game of mystery and deductive reasoning. The girls LOVED it. We probably played at least 10 games while we were visiting.
Which by the way, I also have a new favorite game – Qbitz is soooooo fun! I cannot wait to own it.
I hit the garage sale jackpot this month and got all sorts of cool Montessori math manipulatives – including these amazing tangrams.
Can’t wait to play more with these beautifully made tools.
I also discovered that Sudoku is SOOO much more fun when played with beautifully colored marbles (Colorku). Today, kids are looking into the online games, Medium Sudoku can solve all your problems. The game provided are fun and can make anything help you chance the setting from easy, intermediate and difficult as you ma please.
One of the main themes we played with this month was insects. And, inspired by Pinay Homeschool’s blog (she has so many great ideas), I started trying leaving out some trays for Beatrice to explore. At 2.5 she is right on the line of wanting to engage a bit more with what her sisters are doing. So for several mornings of the month, I prepped a tray the night before for her to explore during our homeschool time.
Here are some of the different trays I tried…
They were surprisingly fast and easy to put together and she loved them.
Beatrice investigating the world….
Sensory trays and plastic insects
A sticky mosaic craft from
Bugs pressed into kinetic sand
For the Very Hungry Caterpillar day we made a caterpillar themed snack to go with our tea time…
Those are grapes on skewers
Here are some of the Insect themed books we enjoyed. The Dianna Hutts Aston/Sylvia Long books are amazing.
Learning about bug classifications
And nomenclature
Illustrating butterfly life cycles
Harriet’s:
Lucy’s:
It was a bit of a splurge, but this beautiful puppet from Folk Manis was too wonderful to pass up.
Our visit to the Denver museum of Science and Nature fit right in.
Searching for worms and bugs under rocks in the garden.
We also got one of these cool butterfly hatching kits. It was amazing to watch the miraculous transformation of our caterpillars over the course of the month.
We released our five beautiful Painted Ladies in Hyde Park in Hutchinson, KS
As a fun tie back to our History studies from the very beginning of the Homeschool year when we learned about Leif the Lucky, we made a special trip to Denver to check out the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Vikings exhibit.
Here is Lucy with a Viking learning how to spin wool.
The best part of the exhibit, in my opinion, was this beautifully handmade to scale viking ship.
Here are are girls standing next to the boat and also a reconstructed guess at how the vikings would have made sails – can you imagine how much work would go into shearing, spinning, and weaving to just get a small bit of fabric?!
Some stunning gold Viking jewelry
Another one of our themes for May was rocks and minerals. Thanks to all of the mining history in our state, Denver has a pretty incredible collection of Gems & Minerals.
This is a reconstructed crystal cave at the museum
and some pretty incredible crystals formations
And a pot of gold found at the end of the rainbow. 🙂
We got this kit off of Amazon to start learning on our own some of the different types of rocks and minerals. It was so fun!
Lucy and Harriet began writing a play and creating their own masks and props for it. Probably one of those whim projects that will never get finished, but fun nevertheless to see their wonderful creative spirits.
We saw some really wonderful monumental sculptures in Denver.
we sorted all the crayons by color…:)
And finally, as a kick off to summer and a celebration of the official end of our homeschool year, we had a lovely outdoor tie dye session. Now we have all sorts of red white and blue gear for July 4th!
