Me in Place

The kids and I joined my mother on her birthday trip to Springfield. We stopped at New Salem Village – which, if you visit at the end of February, is basically a reproduction village empty of people and open space for your kids to run around. Here they are enjoying:

Abe reads a story to SuperBoy

A volunteer who said, come here, children, get your picture taken.

A volunteer with few children relational skills, mind you.

Kids are reenacting a fight scene in front of Lincoln’s store. No, I don’t know why.

Kids ordering  lunch at what they called “the first hot dog stand ever!”

On the way to the hotel, I spotted a soda fountain at a pharmacy – and one knows never to pass up a chance to get a treat at a soda fountain! The lady working was really friendly and the soda fountain was new and actually really pretty.

Stained glass window over the fountain:

Halfway through January and the word Creative is still bouncing around my brain. One goal I had for myself was to follow through on craft and history projects with the kids in school. I know…creativity involves discipline? For me, it does.

So, when the book suggested building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon…we got out those Legos:

And when the history book (Story of the World: Book 1) suggested building a volcano to reenact the destruction of the island of Thera (from whence the story of the lost city of Atlantis comes), we got to work. I actually made it over to Michael’s and bought the plaster of paris. We actually got the plaster of paris to stick to the side of an empty water bottle (what form of a volcano is this??) and we mixed that vinegar, dishsoap and baking soda.

It really just looked like an exploding dreamsicle.

But hopefully it will stick in their memories!

She was having a particularly hard day with her school workbooks. She walked in and sat down with this on her head.

Easy idea for studying ancient history – crinkle up brown paper bags and paint your own scenes! Then leave the “cave paintings” lying around your house for a couple hundred years and see if archaeologists can figure out what your kids depicted! (In our case, a baseball game with dad, a dead fish and a giraffe from the zoo.)

We are studying ancient history this year using Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World. (It is a four volume curriculum that takes you through history chronologically.) The very first chapter introduces what history is and what archaeologists do.

I found clearance things at Borders to help with our project. They were little blocks of hardened material – kinda little tiny pebbles – which they had to chip off to discover what lies beneath. (Ooh, did you see that movie? It was creepy.)

We buried them in the sandbox and the archaeologists got to work:

Even Mr MIP got involved in his children’s edjamacation:

Chipping away at fake history:

Discoveries! Archaic spiders!

Dinos! (these grow in water – as all ancient, petrified plastic dinos do, of course)

We started school on Monday and I pulled out all the stops in the creativity department. Just kidding. Actually, I saw the Scrabble Jr Cheezits at Woodman’s and thought, “Aha! A way to get SuperBoy involved in spelling!” This being his first year of spelling workbooks, I wanted to make sure he kept his excitement for longer than thirty seconds.

The older sister found all the letters needed, and put them in a pile for him. He pulled out his workbook and spelled in Cheezits. Hopefully some of it will sink in!