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A Food Fight Party, Playing Planets, and Video Games Come to Life…. June’s Adventures in Homeschooling

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.

Ahhhh. Summertime.  We aren’t doing anything structured for homeschooling over the summer, but it is wonderful to see how unschooling (or chasing the spark) can play out on these long summer days.

Parties and Outdoor Play:

Lucy planned an Epic food fight battle for her 8 year old party. She decided to use party table linen for her party.
So fun! We did three rounds – breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Each round had a specific food and challenge. Thanks to some other mom tips online, it went off with out a hitch.

So silly and fun.

A letter Lucy wrote to her future self, with instructions to mom to give it to her on her 8th B-day.

Trying out her new penny board with some pro tips from friend Calvin.

June backyard pool party vibes…

And garden sketching and reading (also notice the Hidden Valley Ranch because they made themselves a salad from the garden as a snack – ha ha ha)

Rolling down the hills races at the University

Exploring the new city “stained glass” park!

First swing ride for Arlo-man (and the photo that motivated mama to give him his first haircut ha ha!)

Robots Galore:

Lucy got several Robot kits for her birthday. She LOVES robots. Her current obsession is trying to figure out how to get all her robots to do her chores for her. Hmmmm…..

Audio Books/Read Alouds:

We have recently “discovered” audio books (thank you read aloud revival audio deals!). Here are a couple we enjoyed this month – (Tim read Harry Potter book two out loud – so wonderful to get to relive these with our kids – and we have loved these Jim Kay illustrated versions)

 

Lucy dressed up at Mary Poppins

Outer Space:

The only “theme” we played with this month was planets and outer space. We used some Pinay Homeschool handouts and made polymer clay planets.

Lucy drew some stellar rocket ships

We enjoyed lots of space/aeronautic books from the library. I particularly LOVED the Armstrong and Lindbergh mouse adventures. Wonderful illustrations and stories – great sneaky histories for kids.

We also read Magic school bus in space

Did some planet play at the Windsor park

Circus Circus:

For Christmas this last year, Tim got the girls and me tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s “Luzia”. The whole show was about Mexico. It was utterly breathtaking. And so neat to be able to share with the girls after our Mexico study last October. I have seen a lot of their shows (and loved all of them) but this was by far my favorite.

I mean, they made it rain on stage – utterly magical.

Some Papel Picado inspired backdrop.

And then some fun circus books from the library

Lone Valley School:

Greeley has a historic park called Centennial Village that is run by the greeley museums. The two older girls participated in a day camp there at the beginning of June called Lone Valley School. They loved it. Lots of old fashioned activities and fun.

They were so into it that the second day they insisted on wearing period specific costumes.

Here is a photo of the old fashioned school house and some of the drills from their primers.

Morning breaks consisted of time playing old fashioned games like stilt walking and ring toss.

Making and Baking:

Fort building around the dining room table.

Marionette dragon making activity at the library

Lucy really wanted to invent a recipe and bake it. So, with a little help/suggestions from mama, here is her recipe she came up with “Lucy’s Mini Cupcaks”. They turned out surprisingly delicious!!

Dino Days:

Tim took the girls to Dinosaur days at the Colorado Model Railroad Museum

Art:

Lucy has really been honing her portrait/drawing from life skills. This is a drawing she did of Tim while he was reading Harry Potter out loud.

And here is Harriet’s wonderful “portrait” of her imaginary friend “Twinklebell”

Clay can get pretty messy, so summer is the perfect time to play with ceramics since we can do it outside.

Dance Recital:

Lucy and Harriet both danced in their studios annual dance recital.

Celebrating with ice cream in the park afterwards.

Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild:

Our best friends lent us their Nintendo switch at our house for the month. We are not really a gaming family, but we have loved all of the Zelda games since the very beginning. These days, the League of Legends is the most popular game, and it has millions of fans. If you have decided to buy smurfs on unrankedsmurfs.com, you will not be disappointed or bored. It has been so fun to play this incredible game as a family. It is breathtakingly beautiful and so fun – rock climbing, cooking, and so so much world to explore. So, we had to have a real life Zelda adventure as well… Everyone will be a little sad to return the switch next month.

Wonders of Your City

#wondersofmycity

What are the wonders of the area in which you live? Sometimes just recognizing the great places in your town, whether they’re restaurants, museums, natural wonders, or events can reinvigorate love for your home. The question we’ve been asking ourselves as we put our list together is, “Where would we take someone if they were visiting? or just moved here?”

Perhaps post a poll online for your local Facebook friends and come up with a list of 7 or 8 for your own city. Make a point to visit each of those places this month. Take some pictures and use the hashtag #wondersofmycity

For our 7 Wonders of Greeley, Colorado we had to split it into three different categories: places, events, and restaurants! These are places both very popular in our town, but then also have sentimental value to us:

Places:

1. Centenial Village (the hidden gem of Greeley where Betony and I were married!)

2. Glenmere Park (and it’s secret bird sanctuary)

3. Kress Cinema (a renovated, art deco experience)

4. UNC Central Campus (giant trees and an outdoor amphitheater to explore)

5. The Greeley Train Museum (one of the largest in the US)

6. Poudre River & Sheep Draw Trails (wide biking lanes through true Colorado plains habitats)

7. The Moxi (a high-ceiling space just for music and night-life worth catching a great show at)


Events
:

1. Block Party

2. Greeley Stampede

3. Potato Days

4. Greeley Chataqua

5. Baby Animal Days

6. Father Daughter Dance

7. July Concerts in the Park

Restaurants:

1. John Galt & Blue Mug (Betony and I’s favorite places to sit and be together)

2.. Alberto’s Breakfast Burrito (THIS is an institutionalized Greeley breakfast event)

3. The Rio (great building and large margaritas)

4. JB’s (a diner who’s most recent re-branding happened in 1972. Carpet on the walls and framed velvet clown paintings, people. It’s amazing.)

5. Sushi One (our go to date night place)

6. El Poblito (the undiscovered champion on this list)

7. Roma (the college experience with bazooka beers and a 45 minute wait for cheap and delicious pizza)

January Almanac Adventure: “Winter Jars” Pictures

We hung the set of jars in our new favorite park last week. It was a beautiful day and such a great adventure. Picking them up in the snow storm yesterday was not as easy, but it was so fun seeing people’s responses;  a glimpse into they’re dreams and hopes and prayers…

Here’s pictures of our adventure day!

You can read about last year’s rendition of this project here.
And here is a painting inspired by this project.

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