Here to There

“From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.” -Dr. Suess

We’ve been here and there, near and far lately, with trips to Dinosaur National Monument, trips to the park around the corner, lost of museum play, a birthday and another trip to the beach in California coming right up.

Gavin finished his summer reading challenge and picked out a book. He was very pleased. Lilah’s read three times the number of books, at least, but is still working on writing down ten.

We camped near Dinosaur National Monument at Steinaker reservoir with friends and

Gavin started his very own fire

we roasted marshmallows over Gavin’s fire

we swam in the lake

walked right up to amazing petroglyphs

we started boondoggle keychains

the kids prepared kebabs for dinner

there were dinosaur bones up close at the quarry and

both kids earned their Dinosaur Monument junior ranger badges after learning about dinosaurs and then swearing in with a park ranger.

I’ve been working on a long overdue project at home: a big mandala on our wall. I painted a background for it, a large blue circle with drips underneath, 4 or 5 years ago but never got around to working on the mandala. It’s been more fun with kids help anyway! (They would have been too young to help much at all when I made the background.) It’s still not finished but here’s some of the progress. I drew it by hand and then painted it with help here and there from the kids. It feels so good to be doing it finally and I’m really enjoying the process and the progress!

Lilah painted another on her own.

We did some more geocaching with friends and found three caches in about an hour.

It was really exciting, the mapping, the hunting, the eventual victorious finding and the recording of our names in the cache log.

There were games, like Mine Shift.

Computer coding games for kids have been popular at our house lately. Chris has been looking into more options for them to keep exploring. This one involves code writing to make designs which they print out and admire.

Lemon cucumbers and cherry tomatoes are ripe in the garden.

From there to here, from here to there, beautiful learning is everywhere.

unschooling

summery week

We went up to play at Red Butte Garden.

After really enjoying some picture books we checked out of the library with a raven character who says, “Nevermore”, I read Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven to the kids. Here’s the first stanza with the raven quoted:

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

They enjoyed it, though I’m sure there was a lot of they didn’t grasp. I don’t worry about that very much as long as I think (or find out) that they can enjoy things on some level, if there is vocabulary or concepts too advanced for them, all the better to be exposed now. I’m sure they can catch things I can’t because my brain is too busy with the fancy vocabulary and tricky abstract concepts. It was fun for them to know that the character in the picture books came from that poem.

Gavin and I played Ticket To Ride and he won, after deciding to change strategies toward the end of the game. He even built the longest route!

We baked double chocolate muffins.

Lilah painted over her glue resist design. And added salt.

They read Fox In Sox together.

Lilah worked on walking backward on the beam (among many other things) at her gymnastics class.

At the park, they climbed trees. This is happening all the time recently and it’s new. I’m not sure why they never had much interest before but they sure do now and I’m so glad.

We tried out our new sun umbrella (necessary for all those summer play times at parks with no shade) and the kids staked it down.

The kids vacuumed the car.

We visited a recycling center and took a tour and brought some recycling items with us. I learned a lot about how hard it is for many things to be recycled. The take away was compost, don’t use plastic bags, and don’t use styrofoam. We’re already fairly aware of materials we use and trying to use less and recycle/re-use more but we can improve here and there.

We went geocaching, with friends this time and had fun but didn’t find the cache. We thought we found it once and were very excited but it wasn’t the cache.

I’m going to have to go back myself and look again if the kids don’t want to. Maybe I will scout out some caches ahead of time to bring the kids and our friends to so we have better luck, at least until we know what we’re doing more. A GPS unit other than my phone might help too.

A friend came over and they made up stories with lego characters and made designs with pop beads.

We took a weekend trip to Bear Lake.

Chris and the kids haven’t been before and it’s been years since I was there. It was beautiful and fun, though the water was pretty cold beyond the sand bar it was very warm on the shallow sand bar protected side. There were lots of tiny snail shells and clam shells, pelicans and killdeer, other waterbirds I couldn’t name.

Maybe we’ll make another trip there later in the season. As Chris said, it’s not nearly as satisfying as the ocean, but it’s pretty enjoyable anyway. We talked a lot about how lakes and oceans are different, especially tides and waves and animals, because the kids were really fascinated on the way there trying to picture Bear Lake when they have most beach experience in California.

We have a trip to the ocean planned later in the year though. I can’t stand the idea of not visiting the ocean at least once and the kids apparently feel the same as they’ve already begun asking over and over to go.

unschooling

locations & destinations

We went geocaching for the first time!

It was a learning process, and a fun one. We downloaded an app on my phone that allowed us to look for caches nearby and then we headed up to the Capital grounds where we used the compass and map on my phone to move toward the cache until we were in the area. Then we had to use our eyes to find its hiding spot. We found two caches and tried but didn’t find a third. I think I need to do more research before heading out and we need to choose carefully. We’re hoping to do this with another family over the summer.

We played on the playground with friends before heading back here for more play, goodbyes and then soccer for Gavin and Broken Age playing for Lilah.

Broken Age is an amazing narrative computer game where you solve puzzles of various kinds and difficulties. Gavin has been playing it with his dad when Lilah does gymnastics and recently Lilah requested to play too so we’ve started another game, she and I.

Gavin had soccer games and practice.

They played Small World.

We visited the Wild West playground which is a really fun set up with local places of significance represented in a unique playground. When they got hot and tired we had a picnic lunch in the shade and I read a few pages of Castle in the Air before they ran off to play some more.

We happened upon an article about the old Wasatch Warm Springs Bath House history, which is now abandoned and in our local park so we read about it and looked at some old photos.

The kids built various things out of K’Nex. It’s fun to watch the complexity of their creations grow along with their building and planning skills.

We spread mulch over our vegetable garden. We need a bit more but it’s a good start. We haven’t tried mulch before this so it will be interesting to see how it does. I think I spotted a pumpkin sprout and possibly a dumpling squash as well this morning. Lilah was thrilled that there was a pink strawberry on one of the plants. Today it was ripe enough to pick and eat! It’s such fun to watch the changes and help nurture the plants along and then enjoy the harvesting and feasting.

We puzzled.

We read more of Castle in the Air. It’s a delight.

We met with other unschoolers at a new to us park in Ogden called Ogden High Adventure park. It was full of ropes play, spinning things and other challenging equipment, plus there’s a river flowing right behind it. What a fun park! I’m going to play more on it next time too!

Lilah counted up the money she’s earned (with my help) from doing chores and then when we went to Target, she bought herself a Lego Hero Factory set.

We visited the aquarium. It had been quite a while so that was fun. Gavin particularly likes the river otters and Lilah enjoyed seeing the caiman alligators. I always like the cuttlefish and octopus especially. The penguins were all nesting and we watched them carefully picking up small stones and carrying them to their nests and arranging them while their partners lay on the top of the rock nests.

We met up in the canyon with other unschoolers for “Forest School”, which was a bunch of families meeting in a forest meadow and exploring and we scouted a creek and found bones and climbed rocks and hauled a rusty car hood over to make a bridge.

And in between all of this, reading and story making and researching and experimenting and hula hooping and painting and giggling and cuddling and cleaning and negotiating. It’s been good.

Yes is a World

Tag Archives: geocaching

Here to There

summery week

locations & destinations