Lionden Landing

Our third stop on the Tour de France took us back to Paris and the Opera House.  There we learned tha t it was one of Edgar Degas' favorite places.  A lot of aspects of the Paris Opera House inspired his works from the rehearsals in the classrooms to the final productions on the stage.   For our tour this time we came in the afternoon rather than the morning and had a different docent than we have ever had before.   We are very grateful for the wonderful docents we have during our regular morning visits.  This docent talked to the children as if they were 2 rather mostly 5 and 6.   But even with a less than stellar docent the program is wonderful.  The book for this tour stop was  Bijou, Bonbon & Beau: The Kittens Who Danced for Degas.   The book is a perfect mix of fiction and history.  Degas while a significant character in the book is not the main character but it shows his sketching process as well as his love fo...

This week during our French adventure, we left Paris and headed over to Monet's Garden.  There are two docents who run the early group but this summer Froggy seems to be blue and with the same docent.  This week though we started with the painting rather than the story. As an added bonus, children got to how some other patrons use the museum.  This artist was creating a reproduction of another Monet painting right next to their presentation.  It was a wonderful distraction.  The main painting on our tour stop today was The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil.  The docent led the children in an exercise on truly observing in a very Charlotte Mason style in my opinion. All the children then got to share what they saw in the painting. She also introduced them to Claude Monet himself and gave a brief biography. Then it was storytime.  The book this week was an obvious pairing in The Magical Garden of Claude Monet.  I had checked this book out of t...

This year, quite possibly Froggy's last at Stories in Art, takes the children on a virtual tour through France. We took Froggy's friend E with us.  It was his very first time visiting the museum let alone participating in the program.  It was fun to see Froggy play tour guide and walk him through the program.  Much of the time when these two are together, he is the leader choosing and guiding the activities.   The first stop on the virtual tour, was Paris and Renoir.  Froggy's group got to view the painting first.  The painting in the spotlight is Pont Neuf, Paris .  We learned that Edmond, Renoir's brother, appears twice in the painting with his same straw hat and cane.  Edmond helped Renoir with the painting by engaging passersby in conversation so that they would pause for longer and make a better subject. After viewing the painting, we enjoyed The Cows Are Going To Paris.  In this story, the cows get tired of thei...

Shavuot comes right on the heels of Shabbat this week.  While I am doing the extra cooking and preparing for the three days of  festivities (Shabbat, YomTov, YomTov) that this entails, Froggy has been preparing as well. Lots of the things we are doing this year are repeats but Froggy does not remember doing them so obviously she can still learn from them.  She has been reading some fun Shavuot stories. The best of the bunch are  A Mountain of Blintzes and Who Knows Ten.  The latter is new to us this year and probably a bit young for Froggy but good specifically because it is new.  We are also did lots of crafting.  I don't do enough crafting with Froggy and the holidays give it a purpose.  She loves the crafting and it is hands on learning that she does not even consider learning.We made a mini play Torah for Froggy.  She did all the work herself.  After the holiday we will make a cover for it (assuming I can figure out how) ...

I love our learning club.  We just started our Spring Semester with some major revamps. We have added 3 new families. The Big Kid Group (first grade and up)  has shifted its focus from history to science. I will alternate teaching this with one other mom.  This group does science first and then art. The Kindergarten group has split off completely now and has their own teachers.  Since I have no kids in this group and do not teach it at all, I really have very little idea what they do. All I know is that i helps immensely in teaching the big kids since the range of abilities is much smaller. The tag alongs are now an official preschool group.  There are 4 currently and it may be going up to 6.  We do a stART activity each week.  I had the privilege of teaching this group for its inaugural session.  I picked The Mitten  as our primary story in honor of our first real snow of the year.  The version I found was much nicer than the one I...

We packed up our Autumn decorations this week.  Froggy asked Froggy - "what we were going to replace them with". Ima - Our Hanukkah and Winter decorations.  Froggy - "And what will go in place of our Turkey?  Snowmen? Ima - "We don't have any snowmen" Froggy ' " So we can make them"  And so we did. The original plan for their creation was styrofoam balls.  However when Froggy started selecting the balls the snowman became too big to be reasonable.  We finally decided on polymer clay.   Froggy did most of the creation herself with just the slightest bit of guidance from me.   We made a cute family, Ima, Abba, and child.  The child turned out bigger than anticipated but still cute.   To end our day,  we enjoyed some snowman cookies and read Making A Friend a truly sweet story about a young girl making friends with a snowman.

We spent the last week doing tons of fun Thanksgiving activities.  I had hoped to post them as we did them but lost track of time.  First we made pilgrim paperdolls to act out the story or just play with. Froggy colored the clothes in some very interesting colors.  I love that she if finally trying to write words on her own.   Next we turned our Halloween pumpkin into a Thanksgiving turkey.  It was a whole family project.  The directions suggest gluing the feathers onto the pumpkin but we wanted something more durable so we put them on craft sticks and stuck them into the pumpkin.  That was Abba's job.  He sharpened the sticks so they would go in.    We also made Turkey Crispies to enjoy with our story time.  Froggy actually wanted to help make them this time.  We used a hand cookie cutter to shape them and a cinammon jelly bean for the face.  They are not half as cute as Little Wonder Days.  But the family st...

Today Froggy got her passport for her Summer Art Adventure in the Netherlands , a country Froggy knew nothing about prior to today. The flight over (aka trip to the museum) took only 45 minutes and was amazingly easy.  We arrived at the travel bureau (aka Information Desk), received our passports and began exploring.  The passport was chock full of information about the country as a whole and our tour in specific.  Unlike last year we are not visiting specific destinations but touring the country looking at general features.   Today we looked at windmills and the general landscape.    Before the tour guide arrived, Froggy and I got acquainted with our destination on our own.  We visited several sites (paintings) from our tour book (passport).  Our first stop was Lady and Gentleman on Horseback by Aelbert Cuyp.  It was not a destination on our tour but caught Froggy's eye and interest.  We came back to several times as I expla...

As part of our Shavuot preparations, we read the Megillah Ruth in Froggy's Child's Bible 2: Lessons From the Prophets and Writings.  For a first introduction to Shavuot, understanding that it celebrates HaShem giving the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai is sufficient.  Last year we made cardboard cutouts with the Alef-Bet for 1-10 on them as well as 10 commandment cookies.  But as children get older they need to experience the fullness of the holiday.  Since Megillah Ruth is always read on Shavuot and only then I wanted Froggy to know her it as well.  Ruth may not be vital to Shavuot as Esther is to Purim but it is still important.   Thanks to Adventures in Mamaland, I had a great craft to bring Ruth to life    I printed out two copies on cardstock as she suggested. And then Froggy colored it. Then I cut out one set and she cut out the other.   Next came gluing, Froggy's favorite part.    And Ruth standing ta...