First Lesson Blocks

This is much belated--we're well into our second set of main lesson blocks right now.  It is very hard to find time to blog, especially with the slowest, least-cooperative computer in history.  Uploading photos should be a five minute job at most, but can take an hour or more depending on how many times the computer decides to freeze up (and then has to be restarted) in the process.

One of our traditions is that on the day the public school kids go back to school, we celebrate "Not Back to School Day" and go do something fun.  This year we decided to visit Doctor Doolittle's Roadside Cafe, which is an odd sort of mom-and-pop place alongside one of the roads near our town.  There's a burger joint and ice cream shack, assorted railroad cars, dinosaur statues, and a pretty primitive--but fun--miniature golf setup in the back.

 

Miniature golf was fun, and we were literally the only ones there.  Sariah could run ahead at her own pace (she's rarely patient enough to wait for the rest of us) and do the course several times before Dallin and I finished the first time.  Preston could wander about and look for stray balls to his heart's content.

It was also one of the very few hot and muggy days we've had since moving here, as evidenced by Preston's sweaty head.

Three hot and tired kids waiting for ice cream at the end of the day.

Every day we try to take the dog for a walk as part of our morning routine.  We take the exact same route every time (the others have too many other dogs along them) and it almost never gets tiring.  Each of the kids has chosen his or her "own" tree along the way.  There are orbweaver spiders with their gorgeous webs to spot, caterpillars to observe (we watch their progress at eating down the particular plants they inhabit), and wild grape vines to swing upon.

 We started the year gentle and easy for Sariah with two weeks of form drawing, alot of it review from last year.  We have the perfect driveway for walking forms!  Especially because I don't have to worry about the neighbors thinking we're bizarre out there walking and running along chalk figures.  There are no neighbors close enough to see!

She got stars down this time!

She even drew extra stars for Preston to color.

I also had her paint the numbers to practice getting the form of them secure.  She's forgotten alot from last year and has to remember not to paint or write them backwards.

For fun we did some beeswax modeling.  I'm determined to do it weekly all throughout the year.  I've been feeling the need for frequency and consistency with all the artistic skills' practice.

I am also determined that we WILL knit this year, regularly.

Dallin's first block was geometry.  He adored this block last spring, but with the new school year, we upped the ante quite a bit, using technical instruments such as the compass, protracter, etc.  I also had him sometimes doing two drawings a day.  I think he still likes the results but was ready for a break from geometric drawing by the time this block was done.

We were practicing measuring angles of a triangle.  I gave him two angles, and he had to draw them with the protractor.  Then he had to figure out the third angle and complete the triangle.  It was fun as we had to add paper after paper to complete what ended up being a very narrow and long triangle.

We explored spirals quite a bit, mostly the equiangular type, but then also the Archimedean Spiral, which we see every day in the beautiful webs of the Orb Weaver Spider.

Here are a few of Dallin's drawings.

We took one field trip to Altoona to see the Railroader's Museum and Horseshoe Curve.  Horseshoe Curve is a curve of track that is literally shaped like a horseshoe.  It was the first of it's kind in the United State, maybe in the world?  It allowed train passage through the mountains (yes, there are mountains here!) that cut travel by a number of days.  Sixty trains a day still pass around the curve, and we got to see several of them after riding a tram to the top of the hill.

The view from the top of the curve.

Our little train-lover was in heaven!  It would have been even better if the day had not been so hot and humid.  It is rarely hot, so why is it that anytime we want to do something out of doors, we end up sweating?