We reconnected with our life at home today.
Zombie Dice.
Escape!
Music videos and singing along.
Fantasy soccer team adjustments.
Legos.
Computer games.
Returning library books after choosing some to renew.
A trip to the Leonardo for drawing (cats, of course) and
building using real tools and hardware and
circuit making and
airplane testing and color play.
Gavin reading Japanese fairy tales to Lilah at bedtime.
So good.
We visited the Treehouse Museum. There was flag designing, castle play, illuminated manuscript making, a sword in the stone, and much more.
We went to the library, enjoyed reading in their inviting kids lounges and brought an armload of books home, most of which were read that very day!
We found a new playground and tried it out thoroughly.
Lilah and I baked Toffee Cinnamon Bars and then we watched Song of the Sea, a new favorite movie.
They’ve played My Little Pony Life, Puerto Rico, Magic the Gathering, Carcassonne, and Candy Land together in the mornings.
We got out some instruments and played music. Lilah made a rug on a square loom with stretchy loops for her dollhouse.
Lilah and I practiced for her upcoming gymnastics meet. She’s working on her beam routine at the moment.
Gavin and I biked to a playground while Lilah and Chris walked. Gavin’s really enjoying biking and Lilah’s so close to being able to go on her own but it hurts so much to run in the crouch that it takes to support her that I haven’t gotten around to doing it with her recently. I think that might be my least favorite part of parenting; running in a crouch while holding a bike with a nervous kid on it. Incredible pain. Still very much worth it though.
We took a very short walk up on Bonneville Shoreline Trail to play Ingress, stopped at a playground on the way there and then picked up a friend afterward and came home to play elaborate storylines filled with queens, invisibility cloaks, potions and special royal bathrooms.
We did some cooking and talked about how to add fractions like 3/4 and 1/8. We drew pictures to figure it out on the whiteboard.
They did some building with Gavin’s physics set.
Chris and the kids went to Spiral Scouts and tried playing different instruments. Gavin’s favorite was the ukelele and Lilah’s was the didgeridoo.
There was roller skating down the hall, crashing (kids were fortunately not hurt enough to stop skating back and forth) and sometime soon we’ll get to work together to patch up a small hole in the wall. There’s a lengthly list of home repairs and maintenance that needs doing… at some point soon I should knock a few things off with the kids help.
We finished Little House in the Big Woods and immediately began Little House on the Prairie. They are very much enjoying those stories.
We took a trip up the canyon and visited Hidden Falls.
Here they are looking at the waterfall.
The kids loved it and afterward when I asked them if they wanted to climb further and find the top of the fall they said yes so we hiked up further and discovered the stream and the pines and the top of the fall.
It had snowed and so the kids ate quite a bit of “fresh snow” on the way. We saw squirrels and old dead trees tattooed underneath the bark with squiggly lines from beetles and butterflies, orange, white, yellow.
On the logs, the kids noticed there were different sized squiggles and wondered if they start small and grow or if they were different beetles. We talked about climbing safely in steep places and how to cross streams on log bridges. It was beautiful! On the way down we spotted a “cave” made by a huge boulder perching on top of several other boulders and decided to check that out.
Here’s the view from inside.
They each wrote a letter to Grandma & Grandpa. It was stressful for Gavin but the results were good. His handwriting and spelling are both much improved but how he feels about writing hasn’t changed.
And, after much asking and wishing for weeks, we made it to the skating rink. When we arrived they had a mist over the rink and were flashing strobe lights with the main lights off which made Lilah a bit nervous. But she ended up enjoying it and then they turned the lights back on and the music back down and we had a wonderful time. They can do tricks like turning around that I can’t now. Here they are dancing and doing tricks in the center of the rink.
Up to Red Butte Garden.
Lilah took along a pen and notepad and drew some observations and fascinations.
Exploring. Enjoying.
Off to Kingsbury Hall to take in American Tall Tales by the youth theatre group. It was a fun performance and we sat on the second level for the first time, which the kids were excited about. My favorite part was that they included part of Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett, a tall tale we’ve read many times in Steven Kellogg’s book, where a little girl is more powerful than all her brothers and sets off to find challenges in the wild.
A haircut for Gavin. “When it’s long it bothers me during soccer.”
Over to the Leonardo museum with friends, playing with electricity, motion, giant blocks, goo, and a green screen.
Biking to the park.
We pulled out our pvc pipes that we used once upon a time to build a Magic Treehouse fort for Gavin’s birthday party years ago. They’ve been asking about fort building and this was perfect for some building fun.
Enjoying a fort.
Visiting the cat sculpture park.
On a hike we’ve never tried before.
Enjoying each other.
To the botanical center.
Magic playing.
Digging rows and planting carrots. Finding the first roly poly of the year.
Playground with friends.
In between we cuddled and cried and snuggled and built and played Pandemic and practiced gymnastics and finished Island of the Blue Dolphins and began Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and listened to Harry Potter and picked flowers and played with modeling clay and ate huge sticks of celery like bunnies.
Things are good.
We haven’t been on our favorite hike up Storm Mountain since last fall but it’s been so nice that we ventured up today!
We also played with Lego elves sets, started reading Island Of The Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell and Lilah made me feel so special and loved by making me a necklace with pages that read: Mama, I love you to the moon and back, I love you infinity and beyond, etc. Am I lucky or what?
After lunch we headed up the canyon. It took us an hour or so more than it could have to leave the house so I was feeling grumpy by the time we left but when we got up there and breathed in the piney air and felt the sun on our skin I felt great. The kids were very excited to get to the stream where they love to climb, but it’s a steep path up.
We made it with a few short stops and they spent the next quarter of an hour throwing rocks into the water and watching them splash. After that we had a snack on a sunny boulder, discovered a rock that drew colored lines on other rocks, collected sparkly rocks and arranged them on the boulder, we continued up, climbing, splashing, leaping, balancing. We even tried putting some snow balls into the icy stream and watching them float down over waterfalls.
It was so wonderful to be there and watch both kids reveling in the challenges and explorations of the mountains!
We read some Dr. Seuss books.
Lilah and I shoveled snow. It was very exciting since it’s been months since we needed to.
She requested that I make Energy Bites for a snack – a cookie dough like snack made with coconut, peanut butter, flax seed meal, oats, a bit of honey and chocolate chips, so I mixed a few up.
We had a friend over. They dressed up fancy and built with Legos and had a fashion show and jumped on the bean bag.
Gavin organized his squishy body parts organs.
At the park we found a large tumbleweed and explored that for a bit. It has prickly parts but is fun to roll.
Lilah hula hooped with two hoops.
We talked about genes after I made a joke about how Lilah has red hair since I only ate carrots when I was pregnant with her and then Gavin asked, “But really, why does Lilah have red hair?”
The kids talked about things they are proud of themselves for: kindness, smartness, playfulness.
Gavin and I played Roads, Rivers and Rails.
We enjoyed our sprouting cucumbers. No Thai Basil or Blue Kale visible yet.
We ventured out to the Jordan river parkway, saw some ducks, a submerged shopping cart and visited two playgrounds. There was quite a bit of soccer ball passing and kicking along the way too.
We finished The Wizard Of Oz and read The Sneetches and Other Stories. Our current favorite is the story of the pale green pants with nobody inside ’em. Lilah has just latched onto my ongoing joke about nobody so she was particularly enjoying it.
me: Who’s in the bathroom?
L: Nobody.
me: Nobody’s in the bathroom?
L: Yeah.
me: What’s Nobody doing in the bathroom?
L: No. NOBODY’S in the bathroom.
me: I know, but what’re they doing in there?
L: There is not anybody in the bathroom!
me: Well, if Anybody’s not in there, where is Anybody?
L: There is NO person in the bathroom!
me: Well, you just said Nobody’s in there.
..
We worked on the bird puzzle some more.
We dressed up with friends and danced together.
They played Rivers, Roads & Rails.
I’m slowly learning a few things about our unschooling life and how I fit into it. I’ve learned that all that time I thought I’d just have in the day without needing to drop-off or pick-up isn’t there. If I want/need time to do my own projects I need to schedule it. Otherwise it won’t be there.
I thought of unschooling much like most parents do the summer break every year, as unlimited in time and resources and possibilities. In some ways that’s true, but it doesn’t feel that way in the midst of it. There are still so many ideas and projects that never get finished or in many cases, started. Most importantly, I’ve learned that’s okay. It’s okay to not do it all. To begin and leave it. To say, “Not today.”
We’re getting better at this.
Enjoying the park and the sun. Spinning is such fun.
Harry Potter – listening to the books in the car, making it their own with their legos, trains, etc., watching part of the 6th movie.
Spanish game playing.
Puzzling.
Train track building.
Watching several TedEd videos. Learned about Hatshepsut (a female Egyptian pharoah), simple levers and bats.
Visiting the Museum of Natural Curiosity, exploring the maze, pushing building posts into the ground, spinning.
Dressing up and acting in winter scenes. You can see what they are doing in the room and then how they are projected onto the film clip on the screen. They also spent a lot of time making stop motion animation films with astronauts and octopi. The animation room is a favorite.
More Spanish game playing. Enjoying the quests and practicing numbers from twenties through one hundred, simple conversational phrases.
Admiring the city at night from the sky bridge downtown.
Spiral Scouts, learning songs and playing games.
Rainbow loom creating; trying a new design, getting frustrated, persevering.
Trying out some chinese jump ropes.
Writing a letter. (It was an excruciating proposition, but after empathizing and cuddling, the process and result were alright. I’ll take it.)
Planting seeds inside and making labels. “How do you spell cucumber?”
Roller skating.
Reading Dr. Seuss in an impromptu read-a-thon. (It was snowing huge flakes and I mentioned oobleck. A few minutes later, Lilah had located Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Then Gavin pulled out a few other Dr. Suess books.)
Hula hooping.
Working on cards for Grandpa.
There was Rat-a-Tat-Cat playing.
We listened to Harry Potter in the car.
We did some more building.
The kids spent some time enacting scenes with Hero Factory characters. “Oh, you defeated the Dark Lord. You’re doing really well!”
There were oatmeal fraction discussions. “If we use 1/4 cup of oats and 2/4 cup of water how much oatmeal do we have?” “What’s another way of saying 2/4? I’ll draw a picture of 2/4 of a circle on the whiteboard.” “One half!”
We used tea pot (our first ever!) for a green tea party. We were all excited to try out our tea pot and the kids enjoyed trying green tea and peppermint tea and talking about all kinds of tea.
There was a game of Monty Python Fluxx. Then we watched Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.
We visited the Hill Air Force Base museum.
The kids enjoyed looking at the planes but ultimately both decided they didn’t really enjoy the museum. It wasn’t terribly kid friendly. I’m actually quite excited about this as I think it’s a great opportunity to try something new and then decide, oh, that’s not really my favorite.
Now we know. There were a few planes painted with teeth which entertained Lilah and Gavin really enjoyed looking at a huge plane engine which was displayed with the ability to watch the gears turn inside.
Unbeknownst to me, Lilah had brought her stuffed animal with her from the car (where I usually ask that they stay) and we lost it in a network of huge warehouses two separate times. Luckily we found it both times but it was frustrating and both of us need to make sure the animals stay in the car before we head out on an adventure.
The kids helped vacuum the house (it’s on our list of chores they can choose to do and get paid for) by choice. We took the glass over to the recycling center in the park and then collected sticks and bark to build a fairy house as a birthday present for a friend.
The kids each painted a cork as a fairy and then we hot-glued some ribbon as wings on the back.
Then we started building the house, clipping sticks to the right size and hot-gluing those in a log-cabin style for the fairy house, finishing with an open bark door and bark roof and pinecone chimney.
We stopped for a bit to watch as firemen arrived to put out a small fire nearby. We got to see the ladder on the truck in use as well as their long hoses.
Lilah had a friend we haven’t connected with since the spring over. It was so good for them to have time to play! They explored the house, and then got out the marble blocks. It’s always fun for me to see what different combinations of kids gravitate toward.
At the same time Gavin had playtime with his friend,and now pen pal, at their house. He tells me they built a temple with legos, jumped on the trampolines, and ate noodles.
The girls dressed up as villains, made a haunted house, played dead, drew on the whiteboard, made a slide with the bean bag and gymnastics mat. And giggled A LOT.
After both play dates had ended, we finished the roof of the fairy house, cuddled, read The Wizard of Oz and the Ranger’s Apprentice and then bed.
Today there was Wild Kratts (a television show about animals) watching for both kids first thing.
After breakfast they played with their Hero Factory pieces, building characters and then making stories together.
Lilah worked on writing a letter to a friend and coloring a picture for her.
Gavin and I went on a walk and played Ingress. Gavin felt really excited to be out and about, just the two of us. I need to make that happen more frequently.
They had an disagreement over something and Lilah went into the bedroom feeling bad. I followed her in and cuddled with her and then I asked her if she’d like to read to me. She said yes and Gavin wandered in soon so she read a library book, an Elephant and Piggie story, to us.
Lilah and I picked up a friend and they painted and played while Gavin and I had a game of Tokaido.
Then all three played with play dough. Lilah has very much been taking advantage of having easier access to the art supplies already, even just one day after setting it up. Woohoo! They had a restaurant where they took my and Chris’ orders and then made the food and brought it over to us. The coffee was a little purple and a bit solid (wink), but it was lovely.
Before bed I read another chapter of Wizard of Oz (Lilah’s choice) and Chris read another chapter of Sorcerer of the North in the Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan (Gavin’s choice) to the kids.
The kids played My Little Pony Life.
Lilah read a whole stack of Elephant and Piggie books under an umbrella. Because it’s cozy, I think.
We made designs out of pipe cleaners and then mixed up some borax solution to grow crystals on our ornaments.
The borax crystals are especially enjoyable because they grow in mere hours and are ready to take out the same day or at latest the next day.
The kids often ask about how healing happens so I found this video and shared it with them.
We picked up a friend and the kids played all afternoon with playmobil castles and people and animals.
On our way out to the car today, Lilah kissed our tree. She said, “I love you, Whomping Willow.” It’s Harry Potter all the time, around here. And it’s such fun!
There was a hike up by Jeremy Ranch, muddy and snowy and beautiful.
Gavin and I played No Stress Chess. The kids played alone as well.
Lilah and I made some oatmeal chocolate cranberry cookies, changing our old vegan but not gluten free to vegan and gluten free. Yummy!
We watched the first bit of the 6th Harry Potter movie, as well as listening to the 4th book on our drives around town.
In the evening Chris took the kids to scouts for their service project meeting and I stayed home. Alone. It was good. I’d been feeling itchy to have some time with my own thoughts.
When they got back we read some more Wizard of Oz in bed.
There was letter writing and card making. The kids enjoyed using some new stationery with owls on it.
Many games of Carcassonne were played, some with new rules negotiated.
We visited the natural history museum to see a new Extreme Mammals exhibit. There were some fun things to look at but mostly it was information to read. We saw what baleen look like, which was great because we were just talking about that a week or two back. We saw an animal with lower teeth that looked and functioned like a shovel.
Gavin took a special interest this visit in reading all of the signposts leading into the museum, each one focusing on one era… jurassic, triassic, etc. We decided that the furthest ones from the museum are longer ago and then the closer ones are less long ago until the one right outside the entrance is the current time, Holocene, if I remember correctly.
Lilah drew this. It’s she and I as mermaids. She is wearing a purple sweater dress.
The kids played Heroica with my sister for an hour or so and then they took the dog for a short walk.
Lilah worked on some perler bead making.
Gavin helped Dad pump up his bike tires. Then he biked while Lilah and I walked to the park where there was swinging
and climbing
and biking on the hills
and spotting some tiny fish in the creek that has trash in it and isn’t taken care of well at all. But there are fish living and growing! We saw at least ten the size of Lilah’s fingers, darting over and through the shadows.
The kids taught me how to play “Chinese War”, a variation on the card game War, that my cousins taught them over the holidays. Gavin got very frustrated when he was losing and decided to stop playing. I’m not sure how to help him deal better (faster? more easily?) with the frustrations of games that don’t go the way you wanted them to.
Lilah and I went to gymnastics class while Gavin played Civilization with his dad.
On the way home we passed a UPS store and Lilah asked me if we order things from UPS. I said no, and explained how people and companies pay UPS (or USPS or…) to pick up and then deliver their packages for them.
We started a project making hearts out of paper. It involves stapling and cutting with a paper cutter so the kids practiced their safe and effective stapling and paper cutting. We made a huge heart but don’t think it could stay up that way so we might just string them as a garland.
I read a chapter of The Wizard of Oz to them. We talked about what cowardly means, since we just met the Cowardly Lion.
There was coolmathgames.com play together.
They played several more hands of Chinese War, often getting really frustrated but continuing or playing again later. It’s hard for me to decide whether and when to step in and say, “This is causing too much frustration” and whether and when to let them keep hitting the same wall and trying again. Sometimes they deal with it alright and sometimes they get mad, yell, throw things, refuse to do anything for twenty minutes, Gavin more than Lilah as his expectations are often higher. More and more I think I need to say aloud what I notice happening, maybe say what I would feel or choose if I were in the same position and then let them work it out. Solving problems for others doesn’t work for kids any better than for adults.
The perler beads came out again. A ninja star was designed by Gavin and a lace circle by Lilah.
We went to Lindsay Garden park and the kids spun on the merry go round for a long while while I used the swings.
Then we went on a short walk through the cemetery. There is supposed to be a nesting owl who comes every year about this time but I have no idea which tree they call home. Maybe sometime we’ll happen on an owl nest.
After lunch we watched a bit of the 5th Harry Potter movie. We’re listening to the 3rd audio book when we’re driving around.
Then it was time for Lilah and I to pick up her friend from school.
All three kids played with K’nex, Legos and pop beads together, making up an epic tale involving ninjas, queens and magic ala Harry Potter. There was scepter building, underwater place building, cat drawing, cafe visiting and everything else they could toss in.
In the morning the K’nex were used with the pop beads to create this home for the pop bead characters they are designing and playing with.
We took a drive out to Promontory, Utah to visit the Golden Spike National Historic Site.
It was a long drive and so we were happy to get out and balance on the rails, inspect the replicas of the old locomotives, check out the large collection of tumbleweeds hiding behind the railing at the visitors center and admire various old tumbling down buildings (more me than the kids).
The actual gold spike was not at the site, it’s at Stanford University, but they had a replica there. So Gavin learned that word pretty solidly and has been using it since, at least twice that I’ve heard.
There was a crew working on restoring the locomotives, one coal burning, one wood burning. They were welding and scrubbing. The guide kept referring to Gavin as a girl and he never chose to correct him, so I followed his lead. Afterward I told him that he’s always free to point out he’s a boy if he wants to in these situations (happens shockingly frequently!) or ask me to if that’s more comfortable. He answered that he didn’t really care, which surprised and impressed me. The last time he was not happy about it at all. So we left it at that. It didn’t really matter enough to make a fuss over. If he’s comfortable, that’s what matters to me! A cat visited us while we were admiring the paint on the trains. She’s in charge of the mice, the guide told us. It seemed to me she was also an expert in visitor relations. She came right over to us and Lilah knew she’d like some petting. And she did.
We learned that the trains had to stop every 15 or 100 miles, depending on what they burn to produce steam. We learned that hooking the trains to the other cars was a very very risky career with injuries and deaths likely. Here’s Lilah trying her hand at using the link.
Afterward, on our way home Lilah spotted a playground and shouted, “Mama, PLAYGROUND!”, in a sort of desperate plea/command. So we circled around and tried out another merry-go-round and teeter totter, climbing bubble, and finally the play structure. That seems to be how the kids rank the various options – older and probably more dangerous first, then new and plastic and (possibly) safer.
I’m glad to know a merry go round is still something that can occupy hours and endless combinations of movement and experimentation. I remember it the same way from my own childhood. There aren’t very many left in our city – only one that I know of but in smaller towns like where we stopped today there are probably many more older playthings left.
I’m working hard to get us outside every day and take advantage of the spring time weather we are having in the beginning of February. It’s gorgeous right now, even while it’s obviously a sign of climate change.
