The Golden Feather

Our story for the first half of the week was "The Golden Feather", an Israeli Fairy Tale from the Enki Education 1st Grade fairy tale collection. J (left) and I (below) decided to draw the hero of the story determining the difference between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death by looking for their reflections in the feather.

Zoo Boy chose to draw the golden feather lying beneath the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death. He also had the two trees sharing a cluster of leaves and apples, he mentioned this to me as though it were significant to him. He's taking a lot more time with his drawings in general the past week or two, adding details that are important to him rather than just drawing what he thinks is the bare minimum that he can get away with.

And his writing has come SUCH a long way! I reduced the size of his "forest paths" for the first time today (to reflect his smaller writing lately). Combined with the fact that the verse was a couple lines longer than what he'd been accustomed to writing, I thought for sure I'd run into some resistance, but there was none, he readily wrote out the first two words from each line.

My drawing, for comparison.

best day ever!

Yesterday afternoon we met my friend Tr and her kids, Q and O, at THE WORLD'S BEST PLACE TO HIKE WITH KIDS AND DOGS. No, I'm not telling you where it is (Christine, I'm sure you can guess!), because we want it all to ourselves!! (Well, us and the folks that already know about it, mostly owners of Labs and other hunting type dogs -- in fact, I used to frequent this place myself for Hunt Tests when I owned sporting dogs.) Thanks to Tr for taking and sharing the photos, because dopey ol' me left my camera in the car. (D'oh!)

Above, the boys doing their best to hold still for a minute (with one of Tr's doggies, Lola, in the background, waiting for someone to throw something for her).

Water, sand, fields, trails, this place has everything a boy (or dog!) could want!

Below: superheroes Zoo Boy and O on the trails.

We're going again. Soon. We loved it!!!

tinkering

I've been fiddling around with my blog settings today and think I've settled on the "stuff" I want in my side-bar. I put up some photos and info about us, links to the blogs that I visit regularly, and a list of cyber-placed I like to go. So be sure to take a peek and see if there's anything that might interest you there! I might even update them occasionally. (Though, considering it's taken me three years to bother to put anything up at all, I wouldn't hold my breath if I was you....)

Autumn Equinox

We had our little celebration of the Autumn Equinox last night, with a fire and the reading of the poem "Duchess Autumn" from the Enki Education Kindergarten Nature Stories collection. This has been our tradition for the past three years, and the kids (Zoo Boy in particular) were excited to repeat it. It was beautiful early Autumn weather, and we lit our fire at dusk and enjoyed the evening together.

Did you ever notice that the colors of a fire are the same colors as the Autumn leaves? That struck me as somehow significant last night.

When we read "Duchess Autumn" last year, we did a led drawing from the story the following day. Since I didn't want to simply repeat ourselves, we gathered leaves on our morning walk this morning, and used them to create a colorful background to write the repeating verse from the poem on. (See J's verse above and Zoo Boy's below.) I also made some leaf rubbings of a large Sugar Maple leaf with light autumn colors and cut them out so that I can write our weekly poems on them and hang them where the kids (and I) can enjoy them throughout the fall. I'll share the poems here on the blog with seasonally appropriate photos, too, as we go along.

Zoo Boy's leaf rubbings and verse. I had him write the first two words of this verse (which met with a bit of resistance in the form of silliness, but he did ultimately do it). Also, when he got to the "n" in "soon" I said "Let me show you an 'N'." As I wrote it on another piece of paper, he objected, saying he already knows how to make an "N". But without anymore input from me, he saw my "N" and claimed "Oh, I thought it went the other way!" and wrote a correct "N".

weekend adventures

No words needed.

(Ok, two words -- Go Pats!)

Wokwotoonok, the Wind Giant

Our story for the second half of the week was "Wokwotoonok, the Wind Giant", an Algonquin Fairy Tale adapted by Enki Education for their first grade fairy tale collection. Another of my all-time favorite stories, this one was a perfect fit for the start of Autumn, since it involves the North Wind and the Frost teaming up to cause leaves to change color, and gives a magical reason as to why the evergreens stay green.

Zoo Boy's drawing (J's is above) -- he wanted to make sure to include Keskum the Frost Giant as well as Wokwotoonok in his drawing.

Zoo Boy's verse (J's is above) -- he was playing around with the smaller writing again, although he's still using all capital letters. The Map Man actually did the verse writing with the kids for this story (good work, my Man!), so that's his handwriting filling in the rest of the words beyond The Boy's first words on each line.

My story drawing, for comparison.

fall sports

The homeschool fall sports program began on Friday afternoon. What a gorgeous day we had for it! It's being held through the YMCA at a sports field in a nearby town. J is in the 7-10 year old class, and soccer is the first topic they are taking up for this session.


Zoo-Boy, who prefers to be a sports fan rather than a sports player, hung out with Justin while J and Russell were in class and while Lori and I visited with each other and other homeschooling Moms and families.






I'm afraid a lot of my photos from this session are going to look like this -- we're just not sitting very close to where the action is, and I'm sure you can guess from my photos, I don't use a camera with a very strong zoom (it's just a little bitty pocket Fuji). But even at a distance I could tell how much everyone was enjoying themselves!


The kids loved the class, but my favorite part was afterwards, when the kids all got together to play some made-up adventure game where they were the crew of a ship that sailed to Mars to capture dragons. Each kid had a role to play, and they had a blast running around enjoying the open field and the beautiful weather. None of them were too pleased with us adults when we eventually decided to pack it in and call it a day. From now on I'll keep the remainder of our Friday afternoons open to accommodate as much play as the kids can muster. It's a great group of families, and the kids of all ages get along really well.