Monthly Archives: April 2019

unschooling

Snow Canyon

We camped in Snow Canyon this past week. It showed us an array of Southern Utah spring weather while we were there from chilly and rainy to windy to warm and sunny and finally, hot and sunny!

We did a bunch of hiking as well as some just sitting and enjoying.

We saw many lizards, bats who came out at dusk and flitted around looking for insects, a canyon tree frog, a tiny scorpion who’d been sheltering underneath our tent and who we found as we were packing up, tadpoles in pools, tent caterpillars roving around their netted homes in bushes and trees, mountain bighorn sheep, deer and we heard an owl our last night there.

 

The rock formations there are beautiful, large and sloping and white, coral, pink, red sandstone. There is some black volcanic rock there from an old volcano as well. It is a fun place to explore and near so many other great places too, like Zion and Coral Pink Sand Dunes. We played in the sand dunes for a bit one evening and enjoyed the orange sand.

There are petroglyphs nearby from Anasazi people who lived in the area long ago. They’ve found many artifacts and remnants of houses and other ancient spaces made by the Anasazi there too though the one we passed by wasn’t much to look at since it was an underground space and has been buried by years of sand and weather.

We admired many wildflowers and blooming shrubs and trees, beautiful in the rain with tiny jeweled drops perched on their leaves and petals and in the sun, glowing.

 

Now we are home and enjoying spring in our yard, opening our windows, picking flowers, reveling in the sunshine.

 

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unschooling

lately

We’ve been baking

and making

and hanging out with friends.

We’ve seen lots of baby farm animals

and planted some vegetables inside.

We’ve been working on new fuzzy ear and tail sets to wear with friends during cat and wolf “real life” play. (The kids often choose to create scenarios where they explore games or settings or characters in story telling and acting and they call this “real life MineCraft”, “real life Lord of the Rings” etc.)

We’ve gone to see some performances at local theatres.

The kids have been building a medieval MineCraft world to use with their friends.

We’ve been reading

and taking a new kite out for a flight.

We’ve been visiting grandparents

and going to the library.

We’ve been going to a an art installation gallery with family.

It’s been good.

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unschooling

ghost town

It’s felt a bit springy here and I had a hankering for adventures so we left to discover a ghost town we’d never visited before: Silver City. It was a mining town, as are most ghost towns in these states around us.

It’s closer to home than many others and there are no intact buildings but so many fascinating walls and foundations left! The smelter is huge! There were several areas with pools of water and one underground room that we could just peer into that had water about 4 feet deep.

We found crucible bits (used for melting glass and metal in) and lots of bricks, core samples, and other odds and ends.

We found a new friend. It’s some kind of horned lizard but I’m not sure which variety. It was quite willing to let us stroke it’s back and hold it and even had to be nudged to leave my palm after we were finished admiring it.

Afterward we drove up the canyon a bit to see if there was more to explore and it looked quite promising so we will be back soon.

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unschooling

A whole lot of Holi

We celebrated the Indian holiday Holi with friends in the middle of the week at a park and then again this weekend at the Hindu temple nearby with thousands of people. Both were so much fun!

In preparation for the day with friends we tried making our own color powder and while it was interesting is was so time consuming I don’t know that we’ll try it again. It took hours to dry and then it wasn’t as colorful as we had hoped. Traditionally during Holi, a spring holiday, you throw colored powder at friends and family until everyone is very brightly colored. When you throw color at someone, it is seen as an act of love and blessing. It also symbolizes a victory of good over evil. The kids loved running around and getting messy and coloring each other.

Before the color throwing, the kids roamed the park, climbing trees and fighting with foam swords Gavin brought.

Gavin also got out his Magic The Gathering board game and happily played that with his friends for an hour or so.

There were a couple of huge hawks building nest right above us and we watched them fly overhead and bring sticks back to finish off their huge nest.

We also tried some Indian dessert recipes at home and made laddoo with chickpea flour, grain halwa with oat flour and carrot halwa. They were all quite delicious!

At the big temple, they had yummy Indian food to eat and music and dancing and a huge color throw on the hour each hour where so many people throw simultaneously that it creates a rainbow cloud for a few seconds. We try to go every year because we enjoy it so much. Lilah was thrilled that her favorite dessert, the halwa, was mango flavored this year!

 

We went home rainbow-colored and happy, twice.

 

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