Bits of Summer

Watermelon slices the size of your head

Turning your fingertips and face red.

A sunflower garden outside the kitchen window
Making lunch without clothes
Fresh made pumpkin muffins devoured before lunch

The summer flew by, as it always seems to. We just finished our first week of HOMESCHOOLING (yes, that does say homeschool). Blake is loving it, as am I and so far, things are going really well. One of our most sacred activities in our weekly rhythm is our days at the creek. His eyes lit up when he realized we still will be able to have "creek day" even though the school year has begun!

And for those of you interested enough to keep reading, we are using a Waldorf-inspired curriculum. In as few words as possible, this is an education style that teaches the child through their head, heart and hands. It is a very gentle and holistic method of teaching, meeting the child where they are developmentally as opposed to pushing them into academics too soon. We absolutely love it!

Parker

Peter and I came up to bed one evening and found Parker lying in the hall like this. He had made himself a cozy bed of blankets! We thought the one slipper sticking out was pretty amusing as well.

Diggin

A boy and his dog

Metamorphosis

This teeny, tiny caterpillar was eating up my sunflower leaves, so we decided to bring it inside and hopefully watch it metamorph into a butterfly or moth.


Exactly one day after bringing him in, he started to make his cocoon!
Notice the silk threads around him...that means it will be a moth.


It took a little over a week and one morning this came out of the cocoon!
We put him back out on the sunflower leaves so his wings could dry and he happily flew away later that morning.

Fireboy

Who needs pants

Blueberries

The best part of summer for Parker: Blueberries! He would eat a pint in one sitting. I think though, he may finally actually be tired of them.

Outdoor time

We are usually outside after dinner every evening letting out that boy energy before bedtime. Some of their favorite activities are playing baseball and racing their bikes.

Batter's Up

Our driveway and front sidewalk has a slight slope to it, so if the boys start off in the garage, they can build enough momentum to roll down the driveway, turn onto the sidewalk and make it to the corner. They LOVE doing this!

Serious baseball face

This is the infamous green tricycle. Our neighbor is letting us borrow this and once Parker got on, he rode it around the house every waking minute! After day 2 of this, he got a pretty serious leg cramp (he could never pedal on anything until this tricycle). At one point he was asking to bring it to bed with him!

Nothing like a smoothie

Building Stuff

One of Blake's favorite things to do is to build stuff. He spends the majority of his time either creating houses out of blocks, setting up the car track for Plan City, or setting up very elaborite tracks for Geo Trax. He has always been great at spatial planning and it is really exciting for me to see how much he grows as he gets older.

Potty Learning Time

Peter went out and bought Parker a new potty seat in hopes it would help him learn to use the potty. He loves to sit on it, but has yet to pee. He is sooooo close. He can be naked and not have any accidents (or just small ones), but cannot relax enough to go on the potty. The other day he made Jacob sit in the bathroom with him while he was on there for 10 minutes. Jacob was happy to keep him company :)

Random Pics

Silly boys (I don't know why it is so dark)
After spending 3 1/2 hours at the creek, we came home and the boys immediately sat on the couch to read while I started dinner. Blake was reading The Tomten and Jacob was making his own story to the illustrations of The Summer Story from the Brambly Hedge series.

Backyard Buddies

We have a few bird feeders in our backyard that draws in several birds each day. By far though, the boys favorites are the goldfinches. They usually are at the feeders when we are eating our dinner and the boys enjoy looking for them each night. We were also thrilled to see a little bunny feasting on the sunflower seeds one evening. We have been watching this bunny in our neighbors yards, but this was the first time it came into ours. It must have stayed there for about 10 minutes before hopping on.

New Pool Gear

Check out the shark goggles!