The Best Season of All 2013- 1st week of December

It's this time of year again!
This year we are continuing our tradition of activities-filled advent calendar.

This year even though I planned making something really stylish and unusual for a calendar, I ended up drawing a tree by popular request from kids. Under each ball there is an activity written for us to do. This year instead of mostly crafts I went for "special moments", this way none of us will be worn out by the end of the month.

Day 1: We made our traditional window display, coffee filters colored with metallic watercolors. This time we cut out gigantic snowflakes.

Day 2: We put some lights on the bush outside our window

Day 3: Baking cookies together!We made also out long time favorite chocolate cookies recipe here
Day 4: Lego Christmas trees:

Day 5: T-shirt decoration, I bought some white cotton t-shirts in Michael's (adult size too :D) and some fabric paint. We did our best painting some holiday pictures on them, kids had lots of fun and now wear these tees to bed and around the house.

Day 6: We attended Polar Express Story Time in local bookstore

Day 7: We made an attempt to create a snow jar. I was inspired by this pinhowever, kids didn't want to use any of their small animals and by the time they made up their minds it was too late to go hunt for new ones :) So D. just made a penguin out of playdough (weird color is due to the fact that all black dough was gone for some reason), a small fir was picked outside. Just add Epsom salt and here we have a snow jar (rather a candidate for "nailed it" meme I think) that kids pronounced "weird, but Christmassy"

Day 8: Snow!, so much snow outside! Kids are looking forward to rolling in it and cleaning the sidewalk. We are supposed to attend a concert today too, but I'm no sure about driving so far away, so we might not go after all 
We ended up going to see Denver Young Artists Orchestra and we had a marvelous time! Harry Potter suite was wonderful and put us in a holiday spirit.

We are reading books from Holiday List I made last year. So far kids watched "Chronicles of Narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" and Russian "Snow Queen" movie.

Happy Holiday Season to all!

Our May at a glance

We had and incredibly busy May, finishing 1st grade, sorting various troubles at home etc. Nevertheless we had fun too. Here are our activities at a glance: We made candles using kit by Shure. Nice, calming activity, although there was some struggle for who gets to hold the blow dryer to warm the wax:

We learned about Japan

We visited giraffes:

Created pinball machine for marbles (Thanks to my amazing friend for hosting this activity)

We started our Ancient Greece unit, D. is absolutely mad for myths and heroes. His passion may be best seen in his M.O.C. -Minotaurs'  labyrinth:

We read a lot, check out our May round up post for reading at my book blog.

We made another summer-y window display

We planted a container garden, our caterpillars from Insect Lore have arrived and now we are eagerly awaiting their transformation.


Looking forward for fun June!

Field trip to DAM- games to play in the art museum

Another wonderful field trip provided by our homeschooling co-op!  We visited one of the best museums in Denver in my opinion- Denver Art Museum. Our first visit was a great success, this time around a docent was leading the tour and activities were more varied. It was a great learning experience and some games kids played today we played at home before, some were new. Next time we come or even just look at art in albums, remembering today's art adventure,we will play the following games:

1) Face expressions on portraits. It's a good idea to discuss what kind of mood a person on the portrait must have been and try to guess what kind of personality the person on the portrait had.

2) Tell a story. The docent offered children an opportunity to make up a story while looking at a Japanese scroll painting. I remember making up stories while looking at paintings one of the favorite quiet games of my childhood. Another interesting way to play would be to find a picture that would continue the story- that might be easier to play if there are several pictures of the same artist or the same style.

3) Imitate a picture. Creating living pictures was a popular entertainment before the age of radio and TV. It's a good idea to try and imitate a pose on a picture.

4) Find a color. Pick a color and try to find it on a picture or all the pictures in the gallery. At home we tried to play it bingo-style using playing cards sets from different museums.

5) Live inside a picture. Pick a painting and try to imagine yourself inside it. Where would you hide? What does it feel like? This activity was a favorite of my son's today.

Railroad Museum of Colorado

This Saturday we went to the Colorado Railroad Museum, we went there once when D. was little, this time it was bigger crowd, with C. and grandparents too. What a great museum! Lots of trains from different periods, lots of information about railroads in Colorado, miniature railroad with little trains running, narrow gauge train rides. Wonderful outing.

Museum has a free day event on MAY 5, not to be missed.

the best season of all days 12,13,14 and 15

Busy days, fun with friends, awesome field trip, some crafts, learning about nature...

We talked some more about nature and made a bird feeder. We are still waiting for little guests to arrive, it's really warm outside so they aren't so hungry I guess, even a squirrel haven't visited for a few days.

We read "Who's Been Here" by Fran Hodgkins- a lovely book about our animal neighbors




We have a tradition- 10 days before Christmas we have little elves coming to our house, if children are especially kind to each other, they get small gifts from elves. D. made a special sock for little C. so elves can put some gifts for her. He already tried his hand in needle felting the other day when we made ornaments for the tree, this time it was his big project, he enjoyed it very much.

We read "The Twelve Days of Christmas" illustrated by Jan Brett



Yesterday was the most fun field trip with our co-op to The Little Shop of Physics in Fort Collins. D. had a great time trying all the experiments. They are having  an open house event in the end of February.

Today D. and I went for another roller skating lesson at Skate City, D. looooves these lessons.

We made a little pine cone elf to guard our tree and bookshelves. It was a bit challenging because pine cones that we found have tiny spikes on them, but it's a fun project. Inspired by this craft.

We read  Tiger's Adventures by Nick Butterworth- another favorite for my kids, especially little C. who's very much into tigers these days :)





My mom was in charge of yummies these past few days, tomorrow it's back to the oven I go, kids are begging for more cookies :)


We watched
While You Were Sleeping 

  

the best season of all- days 8 and 9

We had another lovely day yesterday- our friends invited us to a roller skating lesson for kids- it was so much fun! It was a first time for D. and now he can't wait to go back for more.

We made our traditional Cranberry Muffins (they were gone before I could take a picture :D)

We read some more winter poetry in Russian yesterday.


Today D. was in co-op all day and afterward we went and got our tree! We decorated it more sparsely this year to leave room for some more hand made ornaments that will be created. Kids are naturally very excited and this year little C. could really help with decorating.

No baking today, thanks to my friend who brought us a cheesecake :)

We read  "Little tree" by E.E. Cummings from our Christmas book.

Kids are in bed now and I'm ready for my holiday movie. Today it will be :
You've got mail

the best season of all-day 5

After lazy week end we had an incredibly busy day today. We went to the Museum of Nature and Science (yay for free days!). What a great visit it was. We had fun at Space Odyssey exhibition and a free planetarium show. I was incredibly proud of my little boy, how he answered questions from the show guide, how carefully he planned and asked his own questions. He's so into space theme now, I love it! We watched a performance of an African drums band and strolled in "dinosaur land" for a while (C.'s love for dinosaurs and dragons is another delight for me, she love sword fights and dragon tales, she's such a brave little thing).
We got home pretty late and D. made couple of holiday cards. (Simple task, yay for pinterest inspired paint chips projects). It was made entirely by him without my help.

Our evening treat today was fried  apple rounds . It's basically apple rounds (skin peeled and cored) dipped in vanilla flavored pancake batter and fried in oil. We enjoyed it dusted with confectioner's sugar, with lots of whipped cream and hot tea.

We read a non-holiday book today, which my kids enjoyed very much :
Below by Nina Crews. It's a story of a boy and his favorite action figure, and their adventure together.





We also read some winter poems in Russian together.

Listening today : 
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Ric Larsen and Lisa Cunningham

Now it's quiet in the house, I'm ready for my book and my tea. It's so cold outside, I love it!

Denver Center for the Performing Arts field trip+poster artwork

We had the most interesting field trip today, thanks again to our co-op. Just two weeks ago we saw The Lion King at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and today we got the chance to see what's going on backstage (not for this particular show) and to visit "the kitchen" of the theater so to say.  Unfortunately, my camera died on me in the very beginning of the tour, so no pictures apart from those on my phone :(  and the quality is terrible.
The tours are open to the public, more info found here.

The tour was great indeed. We learned a few curious facts about the facility which comprises several venues- each has its own purpose, one of this facts is that it is the world’s largest performance facility under one roof. We visited two stages at Bonfils theatre- one of which was The Space theatre-  theatre in-the-round (Tom Sawyer is the current prodiction) , I've never seen stages like this before and I'm most curious to see a play there. D. was very impressed with decorations for The Christmas Carol play.
We also visited Ellie Caulkins Opera House, which is lyric theatre. We saw both the stage and dressing rooms.

The most exciting part of our visit was a tour of costume and props workshops. One truly starts to appreciate how much effort goes into creating the magic of a play. All these rooms full of fabric, prop parts, the creative process of designing of stage lightning- absolutely fascinating. We had a discussion later of the whole new world of theatre professions that was open to us today.
Incredibly grateful for the visit and planning to see more shows at this wonderful place.


We decided to try and stage a small play at home one day, and for starters D. has created a poster for his upcoming play. It is based on a Russian folk tale Kolobok (English text can be found here).

Science Sunday- The Star named Sun + field trip

As much as I love doing science with kiddos, I must confess it is not my usual favorite subject to plan  (being a liberal arts major all my life (and being told by "kind" teachers that science is not my thing all my life)). However this year I'm thoroughly enjoying it. September and October were dedicated to animals in general, and Colorado animals in particular. The November and December are going to be all about Space.
We had a great start learning about the Sun and having most amazing field trip to the Fiske Planetarium and Sommers-Bausch Observatory in Boulder.
The trip was organized by our amazing co-op -we saw the show about Sun's influence on the Earth at the Planetarium and got an incredibly interesting observatory tour. It was a lot of information for us to process afterwards, but D. was absolutely charmed by being given a chance to look at the sun and two stars (all that is visible in the daylight) through the huge telescopes.

looking for Venus

I had no idea that there is such a great place not so far away from us and now I believe we will visit both planetarium and the observatory  quite often. The observatory has open house events which allow general public to do some stargazing every Friday during semester.

Before going to the planetarium we read about our Sun and talked about its importance to all that is alive.

Our reading material this week included our favorite encyclopedia- Universe from DK publishing ( as I have written before the latest editions come with handy posters that look great on our wall)

This book is always fun for little ones :

Another source of information is a book that we found on NASA webpage (some info is still beyond D.'s comprehension, but he got a good idea of what sun does)
Super Star meets the plucky planet storybook

The teacher's guide on NASA webpage is most helpful as well:
NASA'a teacher resources about Earth and Sun connection .pdf

The Sun images gallery is this way .
Great video about Sun:

The answer to the question how big is the sun and earth was provided by this image and video:

Our craft was quite simple- D. simply cut out a shape of sun and colored it with oil pastels- now it warms up our art display

Another great thing? Why, the Sun songs of course :)

 

Week in review

Another week has gone by. It seemed to be a long one.
We finished cleaning up after a small renovation project in our home.
Monday: Went to the Museum of Nature and Science - they have fantastic Dinosaur expo now -complete with enormous T.rex skeleton and very realistic moving dino-robots and of course D. enjoyed Space section immensely.

Man on Mars in Space Odyssey expo

Also on Monday - Trick-or-treating  (C.'s first time too:)).

Clay class on Tuesday.
Preparing for D.'s first science fair (through our home option school) next week on Wednesday.
And the final highlight was a special treat yesterday- we saw  amazing "The Lion King" show in the Denver Center for the performing arts. Me and my husband saw this musical 7 years ago and wanted to see it again ever since. For D. it was first major theater experience. The show was absolutely spectacular- music, costumes, performance-there are no words to describe the beauty and excitement.

It was not a budget trip for us, but it was worth every penny.The show is targeted for kids 6 years and up (due to some scary special effects as it is stated in the brochure). C. stayed home with grandpa, which made me feel guilty at first, but later we all agreed it was a wise decision. I think for smaller kids it would be hard to sit through 3 hours of performance (it was hard even for D. and he was pretty tired after the show. The RTD train ride to the city was another special trip for D.- he hadn't been on public transportation since we left San Francisco (he wasn't even two then).
Today was a whole day in our co-op- what an amazing science teacher they have there! We are all very tired and ready to relax a bit during week-end.
Speaking of relaxation, lately I was surprised to find that even home schooled kids sometimes need help unwinding. As I've written before this year, 1st grade, is much harder for us, maybe because we are trying to continue with our pursuits in raising bi-lingual child, maybe because I also need to review my approach to organizing our days. Be as it may, D. is often really tired and wound up. I found this website that have some great advice on how to help a child to relax, I thought I'd share it here in case somebody needs it too.  Tree feet exercise and Turtle Walk were most helpful these past few days.

Meyer Ranch Park

There's nothing better than exploring, even better if it happens not far from home. This time we headed to the Conifer area. My parents and I discovered this picturesque park there in the fall, but DH didn't have the pleasure to see it yet and I really wanted to hike all the way up the mountain. The weather was absolutely lovely, how grateful I am for this day now when it's chilly and rains!

We were greeted by spring flowers!

Aspens

 

 

Beautifully mossy tree stump

The sap was oozing from the trees, we just had to touch it and we had to have sticky and (pleasantly) smelly fingers

Magic forest, reminds me of Lord of the Rings, 1st movie for some reason

Finally at the top!

Some trees are only just starting to wake up

Wonderful day it was, looking forward to new adventures !