Restoration Place

Thanksgving Blessings to You!

We'll soon be off for house church tonight and and sharing a Thanksgiving meal with those dear ones, and then giving thanks and feasting tomorrow with just our immediate family.

I might be away from here for a few days for the break, but I wanted to wish you all a very blessed and joyful Thanksgiving. See you soon!

Irvine Nature Center ~ Visit

We finally made it to the Irvine Nature Center in Owings Mills.We've been wanting to visit since they moved into their brand new facility several months ago.

The building and grounds are beautiful:

The hands-on learning centers in the museum are focused on nature in a Piedmont region, but also about environmental awareness in general:

 

 

 

Our favorite spot was the Kids Korner, where nearly everything is touchable...bones, snake skins, rocks, shells, and other treasures:

 

The pull-out drawers held lots of surprises, such as these delicate nests and eggs:

Outside the center we explored the nature trails through the woods, an aviary, and a woodland blind for viewing wildlife:

The resident Broad-Winged Hawk--very hard to see because of the layered enclosure. We really wanted a photo of the Barred Owl, but he or she was huddled into a dark corner:

The woodland blind, looking out to many bird feeders. We would love to have one of these in our own woods!

 

I didn't take any photos of the nature center's store, but it was fabulous. It's probably a good thing it's so far away, otherwise I'd be shopping in there way too often!

The only thing we didn't like about the Irvine Nature Center was its distance from us. It took us about 50 minutes to get there, and that's too far for frequent visits. The center does offer educational programs for both schools and home educators, so we might try one of those some time. 

Clouds Mini Unit

 

 

We've been doing a lot of cloud watching and identifying lately. When we made the simple mirror nephoscope we intended to continue our cloud study. But we moved on to to other interests, instead.

We picked the cloud study back up again and for the last two weeks or so, we've been obsessed with clouds. Katie, especially. She brings her cloud indentification sheet everywhere we go and and calls out the names of the clouds she sees. She's been our official go-to person for daily cloud information.

A couple of the children's favorite activities were making a cloud in a jar and recreating artists' clouds.

The cloud in a jar was fascinating. The supplies are a gallon glass jar (the bigger the jar, the more dramatic the results), matches, black paper, tape, food coloring (to color the water), large plastic baggie (to be filled with ice):

Fill the jar 1/3 full of hot water and put a few drops of food coloring in. Tape black paper to the back half of the jar. This helps to see the cloud better:

  

Fill the large plastic baggie with ice:

Light a match, and hold it inside the jar above the water level for a few seconds to heat the air and create smoke particles. Drop the match into the water and immediately place the bag of ice across the top of the jar:

 

The cloud forms, and it's thrilling!

 

 

 

They also enjoyed a Clouds in Art project which I merged with Lapaz Home Learning's Cloud Kit (scroll down in the post to see the cloud kit) (Thanks, Theresa!). 

We set up different shades of blue (and some white) card stock and cotton balls:

 

Next, we printed and cut out the small Clouds in Art paintings:

 

The children each took several "paintings" and tried to recreate the artists' clouds:

 

Some other great resources we used were those shared by Melissa at In the Sparrow's Nest. Melissa's Cloud Unit Study is very thorough--in fact, we're not done exploring her ideas. The strawberries dipped in chocolate will be next! (Thanks again, Melissa!)

We might do the Clouds in Art Mini Unit Study Notebooking Page Set offered by Amanda at Hearts and Trees. We ordered and enjoyed her Winter 2007 kit.

By the way, our cloud study wasn't generated by our science curriculum--it's one of our many rabbit trails and we plan to follow it as far as we want.

Waffles for Breakfast

We've rediscovered waffles. Honestly, the children have been asking me for waffles for weeks and I've begged off. Most mornings we have a cooked breakfast; breakfast cereal is reserved as a just-before-bedtime snack around here.

So why not waffles? It's because I hate cleaning the waffle machine, so I usually wipe it off quickly after making waffles and shove it away, and then when I retrieve it to make waffles the next time, it doesn't look very clean. A-hem. And I don't feel like cleaning it to make a batch. So I don't make the waffles.

Begging won out this morning and I cleaned the waffle maker. We topped the waffles with butter, maple syrup, whipped cream, and a dusting of nutmeg. This is winter morning eating. They were eaten with orange juice and Sugar Cookie Sleigh ride tea.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups flour (I use a combination of white unbleached and something else--spelt, wheat, or a whole-grain mixture)

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 eggs, separated (use only the yolks)

1 1/2 cups whole milk

5 tablespoons melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla (or cinnamon or whatever flavoring)

Toss-ins as desired such as chocolate chips, bananas, chopped nuts

Mix the liquids and dry ingredients in separate bowls, then combine. Ladle into into well-oiled waffle iron sections.

The recipe is a modified version of one I found in the Southern food section at About.com.

November Sky

This is November....as seen from the front yard:

I've finally let go of needing all those beautiful autumn colors and am enjoying the dark, bare branches and the gray sky.

Handprint and Footprint Turkey Craft

We made these Handprint and Footprint Turkeys while Nana was visiting so she could take turkeys to Brad and Aunt Kristin (hi!). I was looking for a turkey craft that my 6-and-4-year-olds could enjoy, but that went beyond a simple one-handprint turkey.

The craft comes from Enchanted Learning which I highly recommend you join for the mere $20 per year it requires. You'll get printer-friendly and ad-free pages, and I bet you'll use it several times a week, like I do, if you're a home educator or have young children in your home.

Jacob, young engineer that he is, even made his with movable feathers (" 'cause that's how they are in real life, Mom!"

 

Winter Luminaries

Now that it feels like we're leaving autumn behind, we were inspired to make winter luminaries which can be used indoors or out.

Glass jars (they came with lids, which we set aside), lots of glitter in blue, white, and silver, glitter glue, snowflake and star stickers, star garlands, tissue paper, and Mod Podge:

We cleared the mantel of mini pumpkins, placed the lit luminaries above a crackling fire, sipped hot chocolate and watched Anne of Green Gables...a small taste of the winter to come:

Benjamin's Knight Quilt

My dear mother has come for a short visit and she brought Ben's birthday present: a beautiful knight-themed quilt. Mom (Nana to the children) had told Ben a few months ago that she was going to make him a quilt for his birthday and asked him what he would like to have on it. "Knights!" he said.

The other side has a shield:

Ben is so excited about his special quilt!

American Visionary Art Museum ~ Visit

We visited the American Visionary Art Museum yesterday. The museum has been designated by Congress as America's museum for self-taught art, so I had been expecting a unique experience. I've been eager to explore the museum ever since we relocated to the greater Baltimore area, so off we went on a rainy afternoon to find out about it.

Most of the art my children enjoyed was on the museum building itself or located on its grounds. The mirror mosaics were stunning!

The sculpture courtyard was a lot of fun:

 

The 8-foot-high Cosmic Space Egg--a favorite!

Bird and nest:

 

Walking through the museum entrance hallway...isn't it beautiful?

 

 

Taking photos beyond the entrance inside the museum isn't permitted, so I can't show you what we saw.

The best of the art is fun and funky--like the 10-foot long model of the Lusitania made from 193,000 matchsticks; the rest of it was too raw, dark, and provocative for my young, sensitive children. Some of the images were even disturbing and frightening and before passing by them I had to have my children look away.

It would have been very helpful to have warnings of graphic content posted so I could have had a chance to turn around and go back the way we had come, rather than trying to quickly hustle my children past something I myself didn't care to see.

Unfortunately, we were only able to visit two galleries before I decided we had had enough. A peek into some of the other galleries made very clear to me that we didn't need to experience the rest of the museum.

We even decided to skip the museum store, though we love museum stores, and my children had been looking forward to it. I glanced in and saw too much that my children just didn't need to experience.

I'm disappointed that our first experience with visionary art seems so...tainted.

Here's my suggestion to the American Visionary Art Museum: post warnings about art that may be unsuitable for children, set aside an exhibit hall with child-friendly visionary art, well away from the disturbing adult-oriented art. Revamp the museum store so the provocative items are separate from the family-friendly fare.

Until then, we'll stay outside in the courtyard and sculpture gardens.

Outdoors Survival Skills ~ Introductory Workshop

We recently attended a wilderness survival skills workshop at the Anita C. Leight Estuary Center. The focus was to learn a few skills and create a mini survival kit: a baby food jar with emergency supplies.

The instructor began by telling us what we needed to do if we found ourselves lost in the woods, and asked us to think of all the items that could be useful to us in order to survive.

She provided us with foil and we talked about how it could help us survive. We tried to make a cup which could hold water:

The cups held water for a few moments--long enough to get a quick sip:

We discussed various emergency supplies which would be needed to survive temporarily in the woods, then gathered around a table and in assembly-line fashion filled our jars with duct tape, safety pins, string, foil, band-aid, cotton ball, and a few other essentials:

The completed mini survival kits:

Our instructor explained that other items could be useful, too, such as matches, painkiller tablets or aspirin, or a plastic trash bag folded up very small, and that we could customize our kit at home.

Next, we explored the woods outside the nature center to find suitable places to create a temporary shelter. Groups of trees and places with dense shrubs or vines are good because a plastic bag can be tied to the trunks or draped on the bushes to serve as shelter and protection from wind and rain:

Since the workshop, Jacob has immersed himself into learning more about wilderness survival. He constructed survival bags with shoulder straps out of duct tape:

 

He made a picture list of the items he thought he should put in his bags:

Some items still need to be purchased (like a very small compass and a small thermal blanket) but for the most part, they're ready to be taken on an adventure and to practice our skills.

He wants to learn how to start a fire with flint or a bow drill, construct a temporary shelter in the woods, and make some animal traps. There's so much to learn about wilderness survival!

Here are some sites we've explored about wilderness survival: Tom Brown Tracker School, Wildwood Survival, and A Kid's Wilderness Survival Primer. Some of the books we're reading can be seen in "Jacob's Reading" on the right-hand sidebar.

We're also going to take a closer look at Night Owl's Creations' Wilderness Survival Unit Study.