First Day of Summer!

It's the first day of summer! As a kid summer was always my favorite season, and understandably so. Now, most of the time my life feels like a summer vacation, so spring is now my favorite season, followed closely by fall.

The weather has fluctuated so much this spring that it's often seemed like winter, spring and summer all in the same week! We tried to take advantage of the hot days by getting outside as much as we could. A few weeks ago we met my sister and her son at Phillip's Park in Aurora. There's a free splash park there, but it's small and gets pretty crowded, especially on really hot days. Jared and Alexa liked the spray gun, but they didn't spend too much time running through the water.

On the not so great days, we've been opening up some art kits the kids received for Christmas and still hadn't opened up yet. I bought this clay kit at Michael's.

After not picking up a camera that much, Alexa has gone back to taking pictures again. She only wants to use my new camera, though, which makes me a bit nervous. I love how she likes to be a photographer, but the camera was so expensive! She likes to open pages of her favorite books and take pictures of the pictures.

Jared still loves to line up his figures, something he does for hours every day.One day he brought in a branch from outside, laid it on its side and pretended his soldiers were marching through the jungle.

Some days I wish the kids would go outside more. Sometimes days go by when they aren't interested at all in going outside. They still love to mix up concoctions, which they call their science experiments.

They HAVE liked going outside at night, though, especially since the fireflies have come out.

We've been taking a lot of family bike rides after dinner and then coming home to catch fireflies. The kids see how many they can catch and put in their bug holder, and then release them before we go inside. The past few months have been a bit stressful for me, but lately I've just been amazed at how much better I feel when I just make myself relax,sit and just be with the kids. I've built up so many great memories in the past few weeks from just the simplest times together. I love travelling with the kids, but these memories are just as special.

Art, Art, Art

While the kids haven't been as into regular painting and drawing these past few months, they've been doing different types of art. Our next door neighbor gave them a 3-D chalk drawing kit from Crayola (really, cool!), so they drew all over the driveway.

They also decided to take up an art form they haven't done since they were two - painting with shaving cream on the bathtub walls.

Alexa loves to watch old home DVDs, so she was inspired one Saturday morning after watching a DVD where they painted with shaving cream tinted with food coloring. The last time they did this they were in diapers!

Desert Activities

We're going to be gone for three weeks on a trip to Nevada and California. In fact, I've scheduled this post to be published while we're on that vacation. We're going to Las Vegas with my husband's work, and while we're there, we'll rent a car, drive 5 hours to San Diego where we've rented a house for two weeks. I'm so excited.

To get us excited about our trip, I check out the book Crafts For Kids Who Are Wild About Deserts.  We many some really fun memories from picking our favorite craft ideas from the book. The picture at the top of the post was a really simple camel craft using an envelope and brown construction paper for the legs, neck and face.  

We also made a diamondback rattlesnake from old egg cartons and brown, white and black paint. It took a while to make, but the kids liked the movable rattle on the back made from another egg carton.

Steve doesn't usually get to be involved as much with our projects since he's gone most of the day, but one evening Jared said he really wanted Steve to do a "desert craft" with him.  They chose to make a paper holder coyote. This is a really, really simple craft to make, too. You just need an empty cereal box, brown construction paper and a black marker.

This little skunk's main attraction is the movable "stink" near his tail.  Too cute! 

We also read a lot about the desert in Australia and the dreamstimes paintings the aboriginal people did on cave walls.  Alexa loved surfing the web for sites displaying dreamstimes artwork and read a bit about the stories that went along with the paintings. We started our own dreamstime painting, but the kids quickly petered out. I really enjoyed making mine, so I've included it here for you all to check out, too.

There were a lot of other desert crafts and activities we did and will do like cooking cactus leaves, making a coral snake bracelet and making petroglyphs.  You can read about them in Deserts: An Activity Guide for Ages 6-9.

Pretend Play & Crazy Faces

Lots and lots of figure playing in this house....

...and pirate dress-up...

...and Spiderman...

...and just Jared.

Steve was off the week after Christmas so we watched a new Star War movie for six days in a row. Jared had never seen them before, and,  let's just say he's now in love with all things Star Wars.

Jared methodically made playdough spaghetti out of all the red and blue playdough and arranged them into rows.

We can't go a day in the house without playing hide-and-seek. I don't know if it's an age 4 thing or what. Here's a picture of one of their more clever hiding spots, with the doors closed of course.

WonderWorks

We hadn't been to WonderWorks in Oak Park since the spring, so I was glad when my friend suggested meeting up there for a playdate.

WonderWorks in the smallest children's museum we frequent, but it's nice because when the kids run off to different sections I don't have to worry as much - I'm only a few steps away. They played with my friend's son (2 years old) for a while in the dress-up  area until Alexa said she wanted to do some art.

Jared headed straight for the scissors and cutting (one of his favorite things) while Alexa grabbed a paint brush and went to work. She gets into these painting moods where she'll want to paint like crazy every day, and then it seems like she forgets about it for awhile. And every time she comes back to it, she tries something new.

It's just so interesting to me to watch how people process information subconsciously and how very important it is to step away from things for awhile. And not just in areas like reading or math, but even painting or playing a musical instrument. It's amazing how when kids are given the freedom to respect the rhythms of their own learning the amazing progress that occurs. It's such a shame the school system does not respect this type of learning that is so essential. Oh, they say they understand that important cognitive function of the brain, but yet they insist all kids MUST do some math, writing, and reading every day for there to be progress. AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH.

After eating a quick lunch together, my friend and her kids left for home, and Jared, Alexa and I hung out in the music/puppet section for the next hour and a half. The kids love, love, love to make of songs, dress-up and make up stories. I'm really, really going to miss this age someday.

Exploring, Creating, Being

What's more fun than opening up boxes of Christmas presents from Amazon? Drawing all over the boxes, of course.

Alexa's ballet teacher gave her and Jared coloring pages of Frosty and Rudolph. We taped these to the picture window in the living room. Actually, in real time it's Jan 7th and they're still taped up there.

Mmmmm. Nothing like a good icicle to eat.

Jared said, "Look, Mommy. I sculpted a dragon head."

I just had to include these last three pictures. How long with they want to dress up in silly costumes and tie tupperware on their heads?

New Dreams for a Home Education Mom

I'm going to be sprinkling pictures of my kids throughout this post, but really this post is about me. I don't really talk about myself on this blog because I've envisioned it mainly as a place to share what the kids' learning lives look like and to share resources and ideas with other families who choose to opt out of the institution of school.

With all my heart I believe in the necessity of interest-led learning for both children and adults. I believe that giving my children the freedom to discover the destiny that God has for them by themselves, with gentle help along the way from me and Steve, will allow them to be self-directed, love learning and develop an amazing focus and attention on what really matters.

The hard part comes when I think about all the time, energy, and commitment that I will need to invest in the next decades plus to come. I think I've become a little discouraged because lately I've been thinking about my own unfulfilled dreams. Then, through listening to some great podcasts, I've come to realize that I need to be working on my dreams, too, and not just helping my children reach theirs. If they can't see a role model of someone working hard to reach goals and dreams, how will they know how to do it themselves?

Thankfully, I'm blessed with a great mother and mother-in-law who take the kids once in a while so I can get errands done or go to appointments. A few weeks ago I decided to finally let them take the kids for a whole day so I could just work on ME! This is something I've NEVER done.

So, the kids went off with my parents in the morning and, as you can see, had a fun-filled time visiting the mall, working on computer games and drawing.  Then they switched of to the other grandparents for the afternoon. And I spent hours writing, and writing, and writing. I spilled all of the dreams, goals, and ideas I have out of my brain into a journal and did some major planning for the year ahead. I even finally started up a new blog, which I've thought about for awhile, called Cash Contests for Creative Moms. Check it out if you'd like! I love this blog, but I did not intend for it to be a money maker.

So, this year, along with wonderful hopes and dreams for fun adventures with the kids, I also have some things I want to work on for me - writing projects, photography projects, service ideas, blog work, and planning for an ultimate year around the world trip.

How do you balance your dreams for your kids with your dreams for yourself?

Thanksgiving Activities

Whenever there's a holiday, we like to do things connected to the holiday whether it's reading books, watching movies or doing some type of art or science activity. It really gets us in the mood and excited about it. Last year we watched the Disney Squanto: A Warrior's Tale for the first time. This year we watched it again, and it will probably turn into a yearly tradition.

I was looking online at some sites, tying to get some ideas of fun activities we could do together, and I ran across this site. I'm so sorry, but I forgot what the site was called, but I took a picture of one of the main pages. Alexa was sitting on my lap browsing with me, and she was absolutely glued to this site for about an hour. They had actual documents from some of the Pilgrims, had a cool section on facts and myths surrounding the Pilgrims, and a lot of info about the Wampanoag tribe.

Last year I had bought a huge bag of walnuts, wanting to do this craft/science experiment with the kids, and we never got around to it. The kids were so, so, so psyched to do this project this year.  It was all about making our own mini Mayflowers.  We cracked walnut shells in half, stuck some playdough to the bottom of the shell, and stuck in a toothpick with a bit of wax paper attached into the playdough. Then we dyed a container of water blue and tried to see which shells floated and which sunk.

I don't have pictures of this, but we also made Thanksgiving scrolls, which I'll write about more in a few days.

We also make turkey cookies by tracing our hands in paper and outlining the paper against cookie dough. It was a fun project, but it took WAY, WAY longer than I'd thought. The kids ran out of steam with it long before the cookies were done, so I did much of it by myself. But the next morning, Steve and the kids decorated the cookies with dyed icing and raisins, so they got into the spirit of it again.

We listened to some Thanksgiving songs from a kids CD and read a few picture books about the Pilgrims from the library.

What fun Thanksgiving activities have you done this year?