Arctic Studies continued...

In a previous post, I wrote about our Arctic studies--including both polar regions.  W completed our Arctic mural by painting the Aurora Borealis and creating a numbered guide to all the animals and plants we included.  Our Polar Regions dictionary and the ample supply of reference books on both the Arctic circle and Antarctica provided great sources of info, and we were careful to only include region-appropriate life.  Since more animals live in the Arctic, Seven and Four agreed on that region for the mural as they were both most excited about making as many animals as they could.  You need to use your imagination a bit when viewing the animals, so the guide is very helpful!

Now that we are wrapping up our Polar studies, we are investigating other places in the world we'd like to know more about.  Looks like Beanie's vote is for Greenland!  

February Adventures

February's mild weather allowed us to get out and about quite a bit, which was loads of fun, but we were wishing for snow the whole time!  By Valentine's Day, we were ready to bag winter and say hello to spring!  Here are some highlights:

Chatting with the harbor seals at the aquarium

Four's best friend at the zoo...her jaguar

Seven scootering at the park

Valentine making at home

Happy Year of the Dragon 2012

I am quite fortunate to have had several students over the years who celebrated Chinese New Year, and shared their family's traditions with our class.  It's really an interesting celebration--the dragons, the fireworks, the costumes, music, and dances.  I was really excited to break out the old Chinese New Year box for our home school celebration of Year of the Dragon.

We spent the day cleaning the house, making decorations, and preparing a Chinese New Year feast with symbolic food and everything!  We even surprised Daddy with "fireworks" (flashlights and streamers) when he got home from work.  Good fortune for the year to come!

winter weather--finally!

We LOVE winter!!!!  And we have had our hot chocolate, marshmallows, and new popcorn maker ready to go, along with several "snow day only" special activities waiting, and it's been so warm, so rainy, so NOT winter-y!  But last weekend brought us enough of the white stuff to get out and shovel and wonder at the beauty of winter.

ghung-ghung was cold and forgot her parka (a clothing item modeled after animal blubber--a little Arctic info we learned!), so she snuggled safe and snug in Four's hood:)

             We filled our beach buckets with snow and created winter wonderlands in our jammies in the  
               living room.

It was interesting to see the differences in the ways Four played with the snow vs Seven's preferences.  Four needed her own space--her own bucket for her own "guys", which included moose, fairies, a gnome, bears, zebras, and a unicorn.  She carefully made blue footprints in the snow by dipping the animals' feet in food colored water and they walked around the snow.  Even though her bucket was MUCH smaller than Seven's, it was all hers, and that was more important.

I had set up a big, wide bucket with snow, ice cubes, and water made blue with food coloring, with the intention Four & Seven would share the space, but that didn't work out.  Seven was willing to share, but Four needed space.  Seven's play really reflected him--no nonsense, "real" inhabitants, non-fiction, serious business.

This polar play, with real snow, ice, and water is just so cool!  Seven played with this for ONE HOUR straight when we came in from shoveling. Four stopped for hot chocolate & popcorn after about 30 minutes, but returned to this play several times before bed.  And yes, you will often find odd things like a couple of huge buckets of snow and ice on any random day of the week, but, this is us. :)  And we have a lot of fun!

doing the work of scientists

Let the experimenting begin!  We are conducting a series of experiments over the next few weeks and recording them all in our Polar Journals.  Today we made frost.

Step 1: crush the ice

even Snow White joined in

Step 2: wet a piece of paper, place the can of crushed ice on top, and add salt

Step 3: mix and wait

While we waited for our frost to form, we worked on an Arctic habitat mural.  We've been reading a lot about both the arctic and antarctica and the different animals that inhabit both areas.  Seven and Four agreed they wanted to make the arctic because more animals live there.  We used some materials we got at a local recycle shop, foil, cotton balls, felt, etc to create an Arctic mural.  I'll post pics of the finished piece soon!

even Beanie helped!

about 20 minutes later.....FROST!!!!!!  very cool!

icebergs, straight ahead!

Many moons ago, when I was an eager, spirited young student teacher, I created a thematic unit (a series of interconnected learning activities centered around a general topic) on the Arctic Regions.  It was my first public school teaching experience, and I loved everything about it--mostly that it made me realize how interconnected the experiences of teaching and learning are--can you teach, (I mean truly TEACH), without learning? how much richer is learning when one is also teaching?

Anyways, ironically, Seven asked me if we could do some homeschool stuff about polar animals because dear old Auntie Mel had lent him a book and he is now very interested in polar animals.  This is what I love--the learner leading the teacher.  And so, welcome to our Polar journey (nicely coinciding with winter!):

We experiemented with ice and water--what properties do they share? smell, color
What properties are different? temperature, shape, liquid/solid

The ice sculptures were so inviting, we took out our polar animals from Santa and enjoyed some dramatic play.  Through this play I could see both Four and Seven making connections between these particular animals and a habitat of ice, cold, and water--which grew deeper as the day wore on and ice melted to create an ocean.  Making such connections build a basic structure of understanding about the Arctic regions--climate, wildlife, and culture.

ice cave for the polar bear

walrus resting and sliding on an iceberg (new vocabulary)

the sundial

No exploration of the polar regions would be complete without delving into the earth's rotation of the sun, which led us to measuring time by the sun.  This was really fun and was daddy's idea:  we took an empty wrapping paper roll and taped it to the windowsill around 9:30am as the morning light was streaming into the living room.  We marked it's shadow with tape on the couch.  About 20 minutes later, Seven yelled out, "It moved!", and we marked the new shadow on the floor...and so on and so on with different lengths of intervals until about 11:30am.  We noticed how the shadow moved pretty quickly (it was about 3 minutes between the second and third tape mark!)  This was so fun, and remarkable, because so often, Seven will ask how long something is by holding his arms apart, "Is 10 minutes this long?  Is an hour this long?"  And I never know how to answer him, which is usually how I reply because I can't equate time in that way---but this did!  We actually got to see how far apart 10 minutes is!

a wonderful life

wow, it's been awhile...I can't let 2011 go without one last post, so here it is....

Rapunzel and the demon digger

We have had a WONDERFUL holiday season--and yes, it is the whole season we celebrate--really beginning in October with autumn and Halloween (our annual Halloween party and tricks & treats w/the Clarkes & Traftons), then Thanksgiving (more autumn: beeswax leaves, pressing leaves, collecting insane amounts of leaves,

dipping leaves in beeswax

dipped leaves

creature adventuring

turkey trivia, turkey day prep--recipes & such, and thankfully even this year, 'twas the night before thanksgiving at Salts' Stew day)--OK OK--I did tank this year and the bird/meal in general was less than spectacular...I'm allowed a bad one, aren't I?, plus Wampanog studies for homeschool this year--much fun!), and THEN, December....

honestly, that is a weird pic of daddy--he's much more handsome!
gingerbread A-frame dream house

Jingle our elf came to visit leaving notes & treats and special kindness missions for the three weeks leading up to Xmas eve.  We had a successful yet impromptu visit with Santa at the mall--unbelievably Seven actually sat on his lap!  We spent a lot of time on homemade gifts this year and handmade cards (55 to be exact!).  We also took our time decorating our tree, un-decorating and playing with all the ornaments, then decorating again, drank eggnog, made LOTS of cookies and ate lots of cookies, and wished for snow.  We enjoyed many candlelight dinners in honor of Winter Solsitice, and learned about latkes & the dreidal game & Hanukkah.  Christmas Eve was lovely with Grumpy & Tutu, Auntie Mel, and Uncle John--now known as Four's "sweet prince", and we had a glorious Christmas day at home, eating pancakes and staying in pajamas all day, while enjoying the amazing cardboard castle Daddy made and all the new toys...so many new toys!  We joined friends for a fantastic performance of The Snow Queen and decadent hot chocolate in Harvard Sq, and another lovely post-Xmas celeb with Nona & Pops.

Exhausting, busy, but so nice...so very, very nice, which brings me to what I really want to write about.  Since my last hot, sticky, uncomfortable day as a teacher last July, things have felt...weird.  This is something I have been dreaming of (at least in some form) for a long, long, long time--a change.  A change that specifically would allow me more time to focus on my family.  And when it was suddenly there, I freaked out.  I mean seriously, how do you handle having a dream actually come true?  actually getting everything you want?  It's unsettling.  Really, it is.

Let me be clear, we are broke and "struggling financially" is putting this mildly.  We live in the city, in a too small condo with no yard and a leaky roof (but wonderful neighbors).  Our car was broken into & vandalized over Thanksgiving weekend--so I guess there are also some not so wonderful neighbors.  My husband teaches art in the public schools--tell me, is there anything society values less in schools than the arts?  the answer is NO, so his job is stressful and frustrating more than rewarding, and he works  with a very URBAN population--teacher translation: kids who need the most and get the least.  And I am navigating my way as an adjunct professor, which believe me I love--but that doesn't mean it's easy--it's hard!!!!!  So things aren't what I'd call perfect by far.  BUT....I said it was a dream come true, and dreams aren't always perfect, right?  It's the perspective.

I spend more time each week with my children than anyone else.  I am witnessing their social, emotional& academic growth first hand, every day.  I make my own schedule for the most part.  I am knitting like a machine, painting, writing (oops, OK not so much in the blog lately, but I did make the submission deadline for an article), planning learning experiences for my own kiddos and actually have the time & energy to do them, (hello, once a week apple picking in September!), and I'm visiting with friends so much more than I've felt able to for several years.  I am delighted to grocery shop on Friday mornings (with the kids even!), and fold laundry after lunch.  I am cooking healthy, varied, good meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I'm being more thoughtful about when I spend money and what I spend it on--even where I spend it.  I'm walking the dog more--although I could be better about that.  My husband and I have several joint projects in the works.  Our family time includes games, playing, creature adventuring, and yes, movies.

My favorite holiday movie is Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life--all time favorite movie, and yes, it is also perhaps the sappiest, but I love it.  I love George & Mary Bailey, Zu-zu's petals, Clarence the angel, and the "wonderful old Building & Loan".  This was the first year we all watched as a family, and I had done some prep work--talking about the story of George Bailey and what would happen in the movie.  We got all set up with xmas lights, hot cocoa, and popcorn, and I interjected here and there with explanations or clarficiations for Four & Seven, who BTW sat through the entire movie--which is a freaking long time!  This year, watching it was really different for me--I practically wept through the entire thing--happy & sad, which drove Seven crazy, but I just kept saying, "I can't help it! I love this movie!"  It was kind of the same for The Muppets' Christmas Carol too.  So I started to think about why I was so emotional, and I think it has something to do with my new situation, which now, 5 months later is not so new.

I feel a bit more settled into this new life...finding a rhythm that works for all of us and accommodates the things we HAVE to do, and I feel like it's OK to be happy.  I have so much to be happy about, but maybe it's that old Catholic guilt telling me: "you should be fearful, you should be worried, you are not good enough".  It's hard to block those negatives out, and I think you have to make a choice every day to do it...whoa, am I getting too analytical/shrink-ish?  I just feel like the message of those movies, those truly good stories, is resonating with me deeply this year, and that is: success is how YOU define it.  We are not experiencing financial success right now, and may not for quite some time, but putting money aside, and defining success as happiness, I am swimming in it.  My husband is the most amazing person I ever met, before meeting Four & Seven, who are, respectively, my sun and my moon.  A sweet, curious, mischievous, imaginative, wonderful little fairy princess and a brave, creative, inquisitive, unconventional, kind, remarkable naturalist, are the two people my world revolves around.   And it really feels like a wonderful life.


Here is to 2012, which I hope will bring more joyful time as a family, some peace (week at Spartina), adventures, growth, and maybe, just maybe a new home--bringing us that much closer to perfection!

Happy New Year and warm wishes to all!