I’ve been really fascinated by the Colorado sky this summer.  It is so big and expansive that you can see so much variety.  From where we live we can watch the clouds congregate on the mountains and make their way toward the plains, and in the evening light they are quite a site to behold.  There are so many times I’m driving around on errands wishing I had my camera to document the towering layers, but I never have it.  I can stand on my back porch, though.  Here are some of the heavenly sites from right outside my window.

These high clouds are altocumulus.  There are 3 basic types of clouds.  Cirrus clouds are high and wispy, cumulus clouds are the mid sky cotton balls, and stratus clouds cover the sky low and like a blanket.  It gets a bit complicated for me from there because from those 3 divisions they’re categorized into 10 basic kinds of clouds because most clouds are some kind of combination of the 3 basics.

These are cumulostratus– kind of cottony, kind of blankety.

Our very favorite library book on clouds has been Tomie dePaola’s Cloud Book.  You just can’t help but love Tomie’s illustrations and humor along with real, sound information.  The Man who Named the Clouds is about Luke Howard, the man who first devised the way to categorize and name clouds.  It starts with his childhood and shows how following your passion and studying hard can really affect the world.  I also need to get myself my own copy of The Cloud Book by Richard Hamblyn.  It’s a nature guide for naming clouds full of lovely photos and explanations of why clouds are called what they are.

Have you been looking up lately?

Here are the kids at work at their new favorite pastime– making stop animation videos.  Last Sunday Barry downloaded a trial version of boinx iStopMotion onto the old lap top, gave the kids a few instructions, and they’ve been at it all week.  They started with paper cut outs, then moved on to animating their toys.  I can’t even tell you how amazing it is to watch their creations.  I am so surprised by how fun and creative their little movies are– all without any adult help or input.  Today Barry sat down with them and used iMovie to add sound to one of Brenna’s favorites.  Here it is, I hope it makes you think my kids are as cool as I think they are!

Around the new year I saw this tutorial for making a calendar using paint chips.  I thought it would fill my need for a cute new calendar, but I thought it needed a partner. 

I got the calendar done the last week of January, had to rearrange it for February, then March.  That’s when I got the clock finished– sometime during this crazy month of March which is nearly over.  I’ve got to squeak this post in before the month is out.  I did take pictures of the whole clock making process, but I think I’ll leave that for another post.

These projects came about as part of our rearranging and trying to get our family room and learning spaces organized and beautiful and useful for how are family lives and learns.

We’re definitely getting there.

We’ve had small tables with little chairs for years and years, but this is a new addition.  Since getting a new dining table (which I will show you soon) we’ve been able to move our old beat up table in here for the bigger kids to use, work, and create out of reach of little grabbing climbers.  And, I’ve finally got a  place to keep library books separate from all of our books.  One or two inevitably got shelved with all of our books and racked up fines before I could find them.  Hopefully keeping them accessible in a different room will save us a little headache, and money.

Here’s a bigger view of the kids’ creating, learning, and mess making area.  Now that everything has a place, clutter is much easier to control and clean up goes pretty fast.  We actually get it to look (almost) like this on a daily basis!  (If you click on the picture you can see all the notes I put on it in flickr.)

We used the built in shelved alcove on the left of the fireplace for school binders, math toys, science supplies, with the wooden blocks down low for Hunter and Ian to play with.  To the right we’ve made it our “office” with the computer, printer, small filing cabinet, and camera stuff.

(I just have to add that I hate the mauve paint above the fireplace and in our kitchen, but we are renters and the landlords don’t want us to change paint colors.  Apparently, they’re in love with the mauve.)

I took an idea from Wildflowers and Marbles learning spaces and rigged a map hanging system.  I taped my world map and US map together and just use some 3m hooks and binder clips to hang them over the fake fireplace.  This is SO much better than rolling out maps on the floor!!  I wish I had thought of this years ago.  It gets used constantly as we read and play.  If we ever do want to use the fireplace we can just roll it up and put in it a closet for a little bit.

Just had to stick this last photo in.  I love 5 year old hand writing.  I’ll probably keep these label sticks forever.

I am on a mission to rearrange, declutter, and inspirify (you know, to make inspiring) my school area. My muse is this blog I stumbled upon this week, and more specifically this post that gives the in depth tour of her family’s learning space.  Oh, it is so great– full of beautiful and meaningful toys, tools, books, supplies so beautifully presented with much thought into the needs of each individual child.  As organizationally challenged as I am, I am taking baby steps on this mission of mine.  I decided to start in the area I feel like I do a pretty good job at providing supplies and creative motivation for my kids.  To the art area I went to inventory supplies, sort, purge etc. etc. etc.  As I was doing this I realized that the vast majority of the crayons we have came with me from my childhood home, to college, and now here.  That’s 12 years old, give or take.  They were broken and dry– so I did a little Googling and found a bazillion tutorials for melting and recycling crayons.  (Was that introduction long winded enough?)

So, little hands helped me peel away all the old wrappers and sort them into warm and cool jars.  I did most of the peeling, Ian did most of the sorting.  They peered over my shoulder while I researched and saw crayons made in car shaped candy molds.  The crayon users were very adamant that we make car shaped crayons because how fun would that be to drive your car and color at the same time?  I made a trip to the craft store to find them and all I could find were pretzel molds.  They were shaped like cars though, so I brought them home.

The car molds worked– kind of.  I should have thought through the implications of the part of the mold made for the pretzel stick to be inserted into the candy before I started pouring hot wax into them…

Most of it just went onto the counter.  Then I had the brilliant idea to fill the pretzel places in with hot glue– um.  Not a good idea with a baby underfoot or on your hip.  With all the distractions that 5 kids around hot glue can cause I picked up the tray and put my thumb right in a big pool of hot glue.  Needless to say, at that point I was done trying to figure out the whole pre-melting crayons to pour in molds with big escape routes for hot wax.

So, onto the much simpler method of filling up mini muffin tins with crayons, melting them in the oven, letting them cool, then popping them out.

It was a much better way to go about this whole project while having all 5 kids involved in some way or another.

They turned out okay.  The heating and cooling does funny things to the wax and pigments, so they don’t color as well, but they’re fun.  I can say I’ve done it.

And now I have an excuse to buy new crayons and display them all pretty and inspiring like:)

My 7 year old likes to rank things.  He likes to know what’s best, what’s worst, who’s best, who’s worst.  He constantly asking about our favorites.  So, when he asked what my favorite things are about Christmas I immediately turned the question back on him.  I thought, without a doubt, in that split second that I was waiting for his answer, it would be presents.  He surprised me, though.His favorite thing about Christmastime is the music.That made my heart smile.Every morning, after breakfast is eaten and cleaned up, after everyone (or at least the majority of us) is clothed, we gather around the piano and sing.  I love to sing.  My kids love to sing.  It brings a happy tone to each day– which is especially needed after a morning of nagging to get the dishwasher unloaded.  Usually we pick a song from the Primary Children’s Songbook (if you click through to the song book you can click on songs to hear them).  Now that it’s Christmas we get to branch out a bit.  This is our favorite:

Tomie dePaola’s Book of Chrsitmas Carols.   We found it at a library sale when we lived in Ohio and it has become a much loved favorite.  It has all the standards, Angels we have Heard on High, Away in a Manger, Joy to the World, Silent Night, but it also has some that are less familiar like Oh, How a Rose ‘Ere Blooming, and The Friendly Beasts.  It’s all these song coupled with the illustrations that make it so special.

We can never sing just one song.  I think the shortest morning singing session we’ve had this month has been 20 minutes.  Everyone has to pick a song, then remembers that they really wanted to sing another.  We Three Kings is on regular rotation.

This morning I decided to it was time to make our morning music time a bit more interactive.  I broke out the pipe chimes

and the bells.

There was much dinging and donging.  We did get through several songs without too much silliness.  Ian was actually really good at watching for me to point to his color usually dinged right in time.  It’s alway fun and festive to have the bells out.  Well, it’s fun as long as I pretend no one is fighting over who gets the light blue bell and I keep the yelling of  ”Do not bang your bells together!” to a minimum.  It seems that the best and most worthwhile things take the most effort.  It certainly would have been easier to just leave the bells on the shelf in the basement.

But, it’s their favorite part of Christmas!

There will be much more dinging and donging over here during the next few weeks.

To top off this musical day, Brenna had her Christmas piano recital and did a fabulous job.  She has become quite the performer– singing solos in church, singing with the Colorado Mormon Chorale’s children’s choir, and tonight playing Greensleeves beautifully from memory.

I think the music is my favorite thing about Christmas too.

Our homeschool group took a trip up to an organic farm in Platteville CO to get a taste of what it is really like to harvest your own veggies. (Most of these pics were taken by Brenna.)

We rode in the trailer behind that tractor up there.  They took us from field to field where we stooped down in search of potatoes, cabbages, beets, turnips, artichokes, carrots, onions, corn, pumpkins, celery, squash…

It was hot, sweaty work, but we came home with quite a load!

And Hunter had another cozy day of hours spent in a Sweet Pod. (The pattern writing is coming along nicely, just have to finish some illustrations and I’ll be ready for some testers!)

There was also some crazy fun things for the kids to play on back at the home base.

The weather has been beautiful, but too hot to just play outside without something cool and refreshing, so we declared this week Creek School.

We’ve journeyed down to the open space with buckets and intentions to stay all day.

Logan had the camera for a while.  There were lots of pictures of feet

because shoes were too big of a hassle.

I think my very favorite thing I heard was, “Mom, let me introduce you to Grandpa Tweezers.”

Grandpa Tweezers!  Well, can you think of any better name for a crayfish?  Grandpa Tweezers is the embodiment of everything whiskery and pinchy.  I guess there was a Great Grandpa Tweezers, but he was way to fast and tweezery.

But someone’s littered socks did a lot of finger protecting.

Hence the bucket full of grandchildren.

Hope you have a great long weekend and squeeze every last drop out of what is left of summer!

Sorry, dear readers.  Summer has sucked my brain away and I just have not been able to wrap it around actually writing a post instead of just thinking of one.  We have been busy with vacation recovery, growing teeth and fluffy hair on the baby, swimming lessons, a Primary activity that required a life size drawing of Goliath, the diaper saga, and some sewing and crafting thrown in too.  You know, the normal stuff– the kind of stuff that makes actually sitting in front of the computer a rarity, especially sitting down to do something productive on the computer.  So today, I’m starting with the most recent stuff and will work in some highlights from my absence in the next few days.

Now, look what we found on our family room floor:

It was Friday night after the afore mentioned Primary activity.  We were unloading the car, we were in and out of the house, all the neighborhood kids (and some of our own) were in and out of the house, the dog was in and out of the house, you get the picture.  There was a lot of choas, and then it was time to send other people’s children home to sleep in their own beds and Jonah found something on the floor.  There was a lot of things being said like, “It’s not mine, it’s Holly’s.” “No, it’s Megan’s.” “What is it?”  Barry decided to intervene and help sort things out when he discovered that “it” was a turtle shell sealed up as tight as could be– with a turtle inside.  Ellie (our dog) dug it up in the back yard and dropped in inside amid all the hubbub.  Now, how random and fun is that?  We kept it for a day and learned all sorts of things.  She is on Ornate Box turtle and we know she’s a she because she has brown eyes (males have bright red or orange eyes) and a flat tummy.  We’d get her out of the aquarium to roam around the house,

and then we let her go– in a place Ellie won’t dig her up again.

Now if that isn’t cool enough for one weekend, check this out:

We watched a baby gecko hatch!  My brother sent us some eggs thinking they probably weren’t any good, but we could try to see if they’d hatch.  Monday morning we woke to a trail of little rocks across the kitchen counter and an empty egg.  I hadn’t snapped the lid on the container all the way and the hatchling escaped.  (I’m still feeling totally sick about that and praying that it will turn up tonight.)  Later that night, though, Barry noticed a little head popping out of the other egg,

and then the whole thing!  Oh the wonders of nature.  We are thrilled with our new addition.  Oh, I hope we can somehow find the other one.  I have no idea where or how to look for it with it being so tiny and nocturnal. I just feel so bad that it got away…

So, there you have it.  We like little cold blooded animals at our house and are so excited that some decided to come and hang out with us this week.  How’s that for homeschool science?

The first Summer Mom School discussion podcast is posted over at  the Summer Mom School blog for those of you interested.  It was great to meet and chat with Carol and Kate.  How Children Learn was a book I loved revisiting.

Jonah has been wanting to make an invention for quite some time.  After rummaging through the garage and basement he knew just what he wanted to make.

The kids rigged up a pulley off the deck down to the lawn, complete with a bell to ring when things were ready to come down.  Then one day the whole contraption mysteriously disappeared.  I figured they were just ready for something new, but then I noticed a big scrape on Brenna’s shoulder blade.  “What happened there?” I asked.

“Um,” she said sheepishly, “I was standing in the pulley bucket and pulling myself up with the rope.  Then I got so high I didn’t know what to do.  I was  totally stuck.  I held on for a long time, then the bucket tipped backward and I still held on, but finally my arms gave out so I went crashing down on the rocks.”

“Oh, so is that why you guys took the pulley down?”

“Yeah, it was just too tempting!”

I guess it was a first hand experiment in  gravity and that sometimes self control entails getting the temptation totally out of sight.

 So, I think our computer is back for good.  Yay!  I’ve had a project in the works for several weeks.  I’m a little late in getting it going, but better late than never!  Here’s an e-mail I just sent out: 

Hi friends!

I’ve been working on a project.  For my Ohio friends– do you remember the book group I started where we read books about educating our kids with a few literature classics mixed in?  I’ve been desperately missing those discussions and need some ideas and reminders so I came up with a plan.

Anyway, I’d like to get people together to read homeschooling books this summer and then we’ll discuss them via conference call.  Here’s the schedule I came up with:

June 27– How Children Learn by John Holt
July  11– Leadership Education: the Phases of Learning by Oliver and Rachel DeMille
August 1– The Well Trained Mind by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer
August 22– Teach Like Your Hair is on Fire by Rafe Esquith
September 12– The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto

The calls will take place at 8 AM Western, 9 AM Central, 10 AM Eastern.  We’ll try to keep them to an hour.  The beauty of the discussions being via conference call is that I can chat with some far away friends and do some discussions while I’m on vacation!

Here’s how to participate:

Send me an email at jessica (at) seedpodbooksandart (dot) com with the subject “Summer Mom-School Sign Up” and tell me in the body of the e-mail which books/ dates you would like to participate in.  You don’t have to commit to all of them, just those (or the one) that you really would like to read.  Then I’ll send you an e-mail with the conference call phone number and access code.

Barry has also set up a blog at www.summermomschool.org where we can write about and discuss the books.  I’m also going to post pod-casts of our discussion calls so that we can add some inspiration and thoughtful discourse to cyberspace and maybe help other parents out there.

I know summers are crazy– but when you get a second go through the book list, read book reviews on Amazon, check your library’s availability, and give it some thought.  Then write me be back if you want to join in.

You all are so inspiring!!

Love,
Jessica

(And thanks to my friend Jessica for the cool logo thing.  She should be playing along and I’m super excited!)