I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun this activity was and how easy it was to find all sorts of shapes just on our cul-de-sac. I even brought along my husband’s fancy camera so I could shoot a few with her and really enjoyed shooting completely different subjects than I normally do.

We took quite a few of the shots during our 15 minute walk. It would have been a MUCH longer walk if we hadn’t needed to get back quickly to eat lunch! Kate didn’t want to come back!

Kate took the first nine (she’s a great budding photographer – ever the artist!).
I’ve added a few of mine at the end that I thought were fun, too. (If you click on any one of them, you can see the full size image.)
Enjoy!

Will you be a “Shape Shooter”, too? What shapes can you and your little ones find on your walk?? Leave a comment below to tell us…

So I decided to share it with you all here. Enjoy!

Art begs you to notice it.

Why? Because art is God’s way of saying hello.
So pay attention to poetry.
Pay attention to music.
Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays.
Don’t let all this go unnoticed.

Your world is shouting out to you,
revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself.
Listen carefully.
Love art, the way art loves Life.

~Neale Donald Walsch

“In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf…”

For Mother’s Day we have a tradition of planting in our garden in the back yard. The kids help pick out what we want to plant while we’re at the nursery, then enjoy digging holes in the garden to plant their favorites.

Since Kate and I are studying butterflies for her lapbook (and since we both like butterflies a lot), we decided to plant some milkweed to attract Monarchs. Monarch butterflies like to not only sip the nectar from the flowers of these plants, but they also like to lay their eggs on the leaves. The baby caterpillars then eat the leaves as they grow, turn into chrysalises, and then eventually finish the life cycle to become an adult Monarch butterfly.

Within only an hour of planting our milkweed in the back yard, we spotted a Monarch butterfly flitting around the plants over and over for a good 10-15 minutes. Little did we know that it was a she and she was actually laying her eggs! Just a few days after planting is when we noticed the eggs on the undersides of the leaves and then a couple of days later we were already noticing TINY green caterpillars starting to gnaw holes in the leaves.

Today, only one week after planting, we saw a much larger yellow/white striped caterpillar on the underside of one of the leaves.

Needless to say, we are all very excited to get the opportunity to watch the life cycle of a butterfly in our own backyard!! And I just had to share it with you all! I’ll keep you posted as our caterpillars grow larger and turn into chrysalises. We can hardly wait!

I’ve been making an effort to listen in on my kids more during their independent play times recently.  I’ve been truly amazed to hear them interact with each other in all sorts of pretend roles.  They’re pirates, or puppies, or a family (and sometimes gender doesn’t dictate who’s the mommy or daddy, too!).  I have to say that I’ve loved ‘eavesdropping’ on their creative play.  It’s truly amazing to me what kids will do and think of and act out if just given a little time and space.  And while I know that I’m a much different mom than some, I kind of like that my kids can play really well without me – even at such young ages.  But, I’m also noticing that when I do interact in that time (and even get a little silly myself), I somehow wind up scoring HUGE points in their emotional banks.  So, I’m trying to learn how to do both well.

I know that one of the reasons that Charlotte Mason argues for so much outdoor time is specifically for this purpose.  To allow kids to just be kids.  To come up with their own games, played by their own rules (which can then, of course, be bent and broken on their own terms, too), and on their own time table.  And I love when we’re able to put aside the busyness of most days and allow for this time of decompression and expansion.  And now, as if we needed them to say so, the experts are backing us up on what we all already knew.  (Click here to read the article ”Experts: Lack of playtime is hurting children”.)

Kids need to play.

Playtime=Learning time.

Not enough play results in depression, lethargy, and lack of creativity (just to name a few).

And if you didn’t believe it already, here’s one of my favorite sections from the article…

Vivian Paley, a former kindergarten teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and now an author and consultant, argues that the most vital form of play for young children involves fantasy and role-playing with their peers.

 

“They’re inventing abstract thinking, before the world tells them what to think,” Paley said in her speech to the conference. “It gets them thinking, ‘I am intended to have my own ideas.”’ [last sentence emphasized by me.  This sentence hit me square between the eyes!]

So what are your thoughts?  How do you encourage this kind of play in your kids?  What are some creative ideas of how to incorporate more of this into our already busy daily routines?

Kate and I decided to celebrate Thanksgiving by thinking of things we are grateful for all month long.  And to write these things down, we’re posting them on our “Thanksgiving Tree” on our pantry door.

We took a few pieces of newspaper and taped them together on the back, then drew a large tree trunk and some branches with crayons.  Then we drew some different kinds of leaves on another piece of newspaper, cut them out as stencils, and traced and cut many more out of yellow, orange, and red construction paper.

We’ve chosen to write one thing we are thankful for per leaf and also to sign our names to each leaf so we know who wrote which thing.  I tried to let Kate choose as much of the craft as possible so that she would have ownership in it all.  She was so excited to tape her first leaf to the tree and couldn’t wait to have brother and sister home so they could ‘write’ one, too.

So far, we have about a dozen leaves on our tree ranging from being thankful for ‘our family’ all the way to being thankful for ‘my Groovy Doll’.  :)  She’s loving adding to it and I love that it’s perpetuating an attitude of gratefulness during this Thanksgiving season.

So, what Thanksgiving traditions do you and your family celebrate?

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we’re left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most.

“A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six“, a reprint of a curriculum outline from a Charlotte Mason school in the 1890′s. (from Summer 93 Parents Review pub by Karen Andreola)

1. To recite, beautifully, 6 easy poems and hymns
2. to recite, perfectly and beautifully, a parable and a psalm
3. to add and subtract numbers up to 10, with dominoes or counters
4. to read–what and how much, will depend on what we are told of the child
5. to copy in print-hand from a book
6. to know the points of the compass with relation to their own home, where the sun rises and sets, and the way the wind blows
7. to describe the boundries of their own home
8. to describe any lake, river, pond, island etc. within easy reach
9. to tell quite accurately (however shortly) 3 stories from Bible history, 3 from early English, and 3 from early Roman history (my note here, we may want to substitute early American for early English!)
10. to be able to describe 3 walks and 3 views
11. to mount in a scrap book a dozen common wildflowers, with leaves (one every week); to name these, describe them in their own words, and say where they found them.
12. to do the same with leaves and flowers of 6 forest trees
13. to know 6 birds by song, colour and shape
14. to send in certain Kindergarten or other handiwork, as directed 
15. to tell three stories about their own “pets”–rabbit, dog or cat.
16. to name 20 common objects in French, and say a dozen little sentences
17. to sing one hymn, one French song, and one English song
18. to keep a caterpillar and tell the life-story of a butterfly from his own observations.

Charlotte Mason was an educator in England in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She had a very unique and specific approach to education that many folks are catching onto again. I’m forever grateful to Ambleside Online for introducing me to this fabulous woman and her educational philosophy. The moment that I read the below 20 principles that she outlined, I knew I was done looking for the ‘right’ curriculum. There are so many things in this list that just resonated with me – not just as a teacher or a mom, but as a spiritual being. She had such incredible insight, and it’s all still true a century later!

1. Children are born persons.
2. They are not born either good or bad, but with possibilities for good and for evil.
3. The principles of authority on the one hand, and of obedience on the other, are natural, necessary and fundamental; but––
4. These principles are limited by the respect due to the personality of children, which must not be encroached upon whether by the direct use of fear or love, suggestion or influence, or by undue play upon any one natural desire.
5. Therefore, we are limited to three educational instruments––the atmosphere of environment, the discipline of habit, and the presentation of living ideas. The P.N.E.U. Motto is: “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.”
6. When we say that “education is an atmosphere,” we do not mean that a child should be isolated in what may be called a ‘child-environment’ especially adapted and prepared, but that we should take into account the educational value of his natural home atmosphere, both as regards persons and things, and should let him live freely among his proper conditions. It stultifies a child to bring down his world to the child’s’ level.
7. By “education is a discipline,” we mean the discipline of habits, formed definitely and thoughtfully, whether habits of mind or body. Physiologists tell us of the adaptation of brain structures to habitual lines of thought, i.e., to our habits.
8. In saying that “education is a life,” the need of intellectual and moral as well as of physical sustenance is implied. The mind feeds on ideas, and therefore children should have a generous curriculum.
9. We hold that the child’s mind is no mere sac to hold ideas; but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a spiritual organism, with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet, with which it is prepared to deal; and which it can digest and assimilate as the body does foodstuffs.
10. Such a doctrine as e.g. the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education (the preparation of knowledge in enticing morsels duly ordered) upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching with little knowledge; and the teacher’s axiom is, “what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.”
11. But we, believing that the normal child has powers of mind which fit him to deal with all knowledge proper to him, give him a full and generous curriculum; taking care only that all knowledge offered him is vital, that is, that facts are not presented without their informing ideas. Out of this conception comes our principle that,––
12. “Education is the Science of Relations”; that is, that a child has natural relations with a vast number of things and thoughts: so we train him upon physical exercises, nature lore, handicrafts, science and art, and upon many living books, for we know that our business is not to teach him all about anything, but to help him to make valid as many as may be of––
    “Those first-born affinities that fit our new existence to existing things.”
13. In devising a SYLLABUS for a normal child, of whatever social class, three points must be considered:
    • He requires much knowledge, for the mind needs sufficient food as much as does the body.
    • The knowledge should be various, for sameness in mental diet does not create appetite (i.e., curiosity).
    • Knowledge should be communicated in well-chosen language, because his attention responds naturally to what is conveyed in literary form.
14. As knowledge is not assimilated until it is reproduced, children should ‘tell back’ after a single reading or hearing: or should write on some part of what they have read.
15. A single reading is insisted on, because children have naturally great power of attention; but this force is dissipated by the re-reading of passages, and also, by questioning, summarising, and the like. Acting upon these and some other points in the behaviour of mind, we find that the educability of children is enormously greater than has hitherto been supposed, and is but little dependent on such circumstances as heredity and environment. Nor is the accuracy of this statement limited to clever children or to children of the educated classes: thousands of children in Elementary Schools respond freely to this method, which is based on the behaviour of mind.
16. There are two guides to moral and intellectual self-management to offer to children, which we may call ‘the way of the ‘will’ and ‘the way of the reason.’
17. The way of the will: Children should be taught,
    • to distinguish between ‘I want’ and ‘I will.’
    • That the way to will effectively is to turn our thoughts from that which we desire but do not will.
    • That the best way to turn our thoughts is to think of or do some quite different thing, entertaining or interesting.
    • That after a little rest in this way, the will returns to its work with new vigour.

    (This adjunct of the will is familiar to us as diversion, whose office it is to ease us for a time from will effort, that we may ‘will’ again with added power. The use of suggestion as an aid to the will is to be deprecated, as tending to stultify and stereotype character. It would seem that spontaneity is a condition of development, and that human nature needs the discipline of failure as well as of success.)

18. The way of reason: We teach children, too, not to ‘lean (too confidently) to their own understanding’; because the function of reason is to give logical demonstration
    • of mathematical truth,
    • of an initial idea, accepted by the will.

    In the former case, reason is, practically, an infallible guide, but in the latter, it is not always a safe one; for, whether that idea be right or wrong, reason will confirm it by irrefragable proofs.

19. Therefore, children should be taught, as they become mature enough to understand such teaching, that the chief responsibility which rests on them as persons is the acceptance or rejection of ideas. To help them in this choice we give them principles of conduct, and a wide range of the knowledge fitted to them. These principles should save children from some of the loose thinking and heedless action which cause most of us to live at a lower level than we need.
20. We allow no separation to grow up between the intellectual and ‘spiritual’ life of children, but teach them that the Divine Spirit has constant access to their spirits, and is their Continual Helper in all the interests, duties and joys of life.

These are Charlotte Mason’s own words. The Original Home Schooling Series by Charlotte Mason is provided here for public use. It can be read in her original words or a paraphrased version.

So, instead of living with the masses of piles everywhere, I started looking for ideas of what to do with it all to help contain it and keep it from taking over my entire house.  I came across several great suggestions like these:

• Put the artwork into a plastic box that fits under your child’s bed.  You can always add more to the box as it starts to build up again.  And, you can usually talk your child into culling through the pile that’s been in the box for a while in order to get more of the new stuff in.
• Get a clean pizza box to store artwork (even some 3D artwork will fit in these).  You can even have a box per child per calendar year stored away in a closet somewhere.
• Take digital pics of the faves and then recycle it all.  (Talk about NO clutter!!)
• Hang them in your playroom or child’s room from a clothes line/string.
• Then, there’s the ever-present refrigerator door.  (Can you find the door or handle behind all those brilliant crayon masterpieces?)

While these are all great solutions and work for some people, the problem I had with most of these was that the artwork was stored away somewhere that no one could see them on a daily basis.  Or, if they were on display, there was just TOO much volume of work to keep up with it all on ONE refrigerator door.

So, we decided to do something different.  I ran across an article about making a collage of your child’s artwork on a canvas and hanging it in their room.  And while the task of putting things on a canvas seemed a little daunting to me, I liked the general idea of being able to put MANY pieces of artwork together into one larger piece of art.

For Christmas, we bought Kate a simple, wood frame from IKEA.  We got the poster-sized frame so that we would have plenty of room to display LOTS of artwork.  And the great thing about this frame, besides how CHEAP it was, is that it uses plexiglass for the front instead of real glass.  SO nice for a little kid’s room where strange things happen to things that can break.

We took that frame, painted it her favorite color, pink, and then added several decorations to it to make it truly hers.  She loved getting to personalize it any way that she wanted to with little foam butterflies and wooden letters painted to match her room.  And I loved that the whole project, including frame, wooden letters, paint, and foam cut-outs cost less than $10.

Then we took her PILES of artwork and started culling through them all to determine which pieces we absolutely HAD to keep and which we could cut out just a special piece of, and which ones were truly recyclable.  (This process, by the way took at least an hour!  She comes from a long line of pack-rats, so it was inevitable that it would take forever.)

Once we had the ‘special’ pieces ready, we started to place them on the poster sized paper that was included in the frame.  We took special care to cut things out with fun edged scissors, label the things that needed it, and arranging them just right so that nothing was covered up that was really important.  Then, we glued it all down.  (Quick tip: using liquid glue tends to make the paper wrinkle and even make marker bleed, so we wound up changing to a glue stick half way through the project.)  When everything is glued in place, I have Kate take a marker and sign her name and date to the bottom of the collage.  I think this will be a fun way to not only keep her artwork from this age, but also get to see a piece of her handwriting, too.

Then, all that’s left to is pop it into the frame (might wait for the glue to dry first, though) and hang it where it can be admired by all.  We have Kate’s hung in her bedroom so that everyone visiting her can see all her special pictures.  It’s been a great way to personalize her room even more and she loves being able to show off all her artwork to her friends and grandparents.

UPDATE:  It’s been a few months since we did the original collage and there have been plenty more ‘special’ pieces of artwork generated in that time frame.  So, we bought a piece of posterboard, cut it to size and went about creating a new collage of the current artwork.  Once it was done and ready to pop in the frame, we just set the new collage on top of the old one in the frame, sandwiching the old collage between the new one and the backing of the frame, and voila!  a new collage for her wall with all her current artwork.

Makes me wonder what other gorgeous pictures she could get by purposefully blurring the image…

I’m not sure if Charlotte Mason would consider photography a ‘handicraft’, but I’m thinking that in this day and age it’s most definitely an art form!  And one that I want to encourage in my artist-of-a-daughter, too.