{this moment}

a friday ritual: a single moment to savor and share.

inspired by soulemama.com

{these words}

"Be who you are 

and say 

what you feel

because those 

who mind

don't matter 

and those

who matter

don't mind"

- Dr. Seuss

Charlestown!

Prudence the cannon.

Rigging galore.

On Old Ironsides.

That's a big mixer. aboard the U.S.S. Cassin Young

Cool knot on Old Ironsides! This is the oldest commissioned war ship in the world. Neat, huh?

The U.S.S Cassin Young destroyer was the biggest hit with Coleman, though. WWII buff that he is.

Design is everywhere.

There are meanings to all of the flags. We've got a cool book about this.

We spent a good part of Tuesday in Charlestown at the shipyard. The U.S.S. Constitution and the U.S.S. Cassin Young destroyer is located there. There's a fabulous museum! This visit is part of the freedom trail we'd planned to walk. I thought it would be great to start the tour here since it isn't as crowded as in town and the parking is easy. But Coleman was still sick - the whole darn vacation! - so this is both where we began and where we ended the tour. We did get a peak at the Bunker Hill Memorial from the shipyard. Well, we'll just have to do this again this summer, if we make it back to Boston. It was a beautiful, sunny and crisp New England day.

Interesting Stuff About This Stuff:

Marine Flag Meanings we've got the DK book on Ships and Sailing.
For a book club Coleman recently read Johnny Tremain, by Esther Forbes. The book is set in Boston at the start of the American Revolution.
The Constitution of the United States of America by Sam Fink, this is an illustrated book, one illustration for each line. It's lovely, I found it at a thrift store for $3. I'll bet it's at your local library.
Howard Zinn's A Young People's History of The United States: Columbus to the War on Terror

Trash Talk

We started an ongoing discussion about consumer waste a while back, brought on by The Story of Stuff.  One of my kind guides in navigating the new-to-me world of homeschooling gave me a link to another mom's blog which has a unit on plastics. We took some information from that post and watched some videos on the Pacific Garbage Patch that we found through her post. It got me thinking that this entire topic can be expanded on ten fold. That's when my mind began to short circuit. When I see all the magnificent possibilities I have an extremely difficult time compartmentalizing the pieces. Somehow I was able to manage choosing a place to begin,  making plastic in our kitchen. Which was a fun project, though the experiment I found on the web left out a lot of information about the process, for instance how long it takes to dry (a lot longer than I imagined-several days) and what's actually happening chemically. After doing the plastic experiment I found a more detailed Youtube video from Chemistry Corner. The plastic we made will decompose in about 35 to 45 YEARS. I guess it's better than never.

In a week and a half at our first Homeschool Maker's Meet we'll be making paper and paper beads from consumer waste, we've also got a couple projects planned which will use wood pallets. I've got a pallet pintrest board with a bunch of cool projects on it. I'm so excited for these Maker's Meets!

Tweet Tweet

We love birds. A new spark in interest on this subject happened at the feed store in Aptos. I was picking up some chicken feed recently and found a great laminated pocket guide to the birds of Monterey Bay. We've been pouring over this guide for a week or so. There are a lot of different birds around here. So many opportunities for learning here; habitat, behavior, observation and the vocabulary list alone is spectacular. An added bonus is we spend time outside looking for birds, in the backyard, in the forest, at the beach, the park, and any number of slough around here.
When we're outside we try to identify the birds we see. This can be particularly challenging because they move pretty darn fast and we've got a lot of work to do being still enough ourselves. My Audio School has a great series of videos on bird identification. We've just watched the first two so far, they are about ten minutes each and very informative. We're just really getting our feet wet on this subject, I'll let you know where this takes us (if it's interesting).


Some other interesting links for this subject:

All About Birds site; loving their Words About Birds page. Vocab, baby!

Birds, Cetaceans, Odes, Herps and More: natural history information about Monterey County


SIMon Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary


Monterey Bay Birding Festival: Come see 200 species of birds in one of the world's most picturesque areas of California on the Monterey Bay.
Date: September 13, 2012 - September 16, 2012
Time: Thurs. - Sat. 6:30am - 9pm, Sun. 6:30am - 12pm

{this moment}

a friday ritual: a moment to savor and share.

inspired by soulemama.com

{these words}

Be careful what you think, your thoughts become words.
Be careful what you say, your words become actions.
Be careful what you do, your actions become your character.
So always work hard on who you are becoming,
Because your character becomes your destiny.

Alternatives

I've been fascinated by alternative shelters for decades. When I was in high school I came across the book Getting a Roof Over Your Head: affordable housing alternatives in my Uncle Jim's vast collection of books. Kindly Uncle Jim gave me this mind-altering treasure that very day. It is one of the few books remaining in my shrinking collection. This book opened my mind to the possibility of doing things differently. Not just in building a home. Also taking an alternate path to journey through life. Building a home in this way (different than most) takes commitment and an alternative outlook on life and how it is lived. Our society is often so overpowering that one can loose site of her own values. Wants translate into needs in our culture. We plant this seed in our children early and cultivate it in our homes. I am no stranger to this way of thinking, I've lived it off and on. I grew up in suburban America in the seventies, after all. These days I'm safely off that band wagon. Presently on foot (or in that darn van) trudging my own interesting path.

I memorized the homes in that treasured book when I was a girl. The stories behind the homes. The people who dreamed them up and made them happen, often with their own hands. It's a skill making your dreams reality. It takes perseverance, drive and believing in yourself. Often you have to step outside of the expected in order to accomplish great things. And when things are not going as you planned or hoped, you have to push your way through it or be flexible and patient and quiet enough to discover what is needed in that moment. Our choice to homeschool is a little like building an alternative shelter. Some days I wonder how so many families manage this homeschool world. I have found it isolating and lonely at time. I crave the community I imagined yet have not made enough of an effort to join the community, not seen an easy way into it. I think I can, I think I can...

Check out this alternative shelter:

Eliphante in Arizona

Eliphante

Creative Writing & Metalwork

 This past week, while I was busy doing the final touches on the auction projects I gave Coleman the opportunity to lead himself through several school days. He spent many hours reading - his favorite subject. He also decided to make some quill pens with our chickens feathers (selected from the ones lying about the yard). Inspired by the book he's reading, Eregon, he also began illustrating dragons. It was a creative week for both of us. He also made a beautiful copper pendant while practicing his metalsmithing skills - my favorite subject to teach. In his Wednesday nature class he began working on making a knife with carbon using tradition blacksmithing methods.

 

Surprise Bellydancer

Thursday nights Coleman has karate and Max and I read at the coffee shop downstairs. It's a special night for Max and I, he gets a sweet drink and I get one on one with my little guy. This week we had the most delightful surprise! There was magnificent music accompanied by belly dancers.

Yuma Art Symposium Getaway!

I thought it was interesting that they need to post this on the front door of the gallery. Arizona.

At the end of February I made my way to the Yuma Art Symposium. I've been wanting to go there since I learned of its existence almost three years ago from my friend and teacher Dawn. Firstly I would like to mention that taking a night class at Cabrillo College changed my connection to the place I call home. I started making roots here when I started taking classes there. I made friends who I really believe will be lifelong friends...back to Yuma: I found a way to get myself to Yuma this year for the symposium. A cheap flight, and free car rental and hotel (via Chris' air miles), and a student scholarship for the conference. It's the first trip I've taken without the boys. It was both exhausting and exhilarating.

Sandy Luehrson table totem

I was excited and a little nervous to go. No, not because I was leaving the boys behind. Because there is a pin exchange on the arrival day. Everyone makes pins - lots of them - and brings them to trade for other people's pins. Your pins can be rejected if it they suck. Mine didn't suck, but they were not up to par for my own expectations. There were so many amazing pins there, and some that sucked. The most amazing thing about the long weekend (other than the evening solitude) was how warm people were and how easy I found people to talk with. Some pretty fantastic artists and craftspeople.  I was also able to read and finished not one, but two books! (Weird how I have to leave the house to be able to finish a book in a reasonable amount of time.)

Every year there is a pin auction to raise funds to keep the cost of attending the symposium affordable for artists and students. Dawn has been running it for years and I was able, along with a slew of others, to help her with the auction. We all got to see the pins as they arrived and met the artists who made them. The whole experience is worth repeating again and again!

The pin auction just before the crowd arrived.

On the way home we stopped at an interesting store, this is a view from inside.

Dawn with one of the five or so dogs who live at the store.

A portion of the wall of the interesting store. Neat bell.

The storefront.

Clay Totem: Auction Project Completed!

 The auction has come and gone and the totem was completed just in the nick of time (as is my MO)! It has a new home and is living happily there, I might add. It stands a whopping six and a half feet tall.

From top to bottom:
Otter; Playful, friendly, dynamic, joy, helpfulness and sharing
Sun; Protector of the Earth during day
Seal; Love, active imagination, creativity
Owl; Clairvoyance, insight, messenger
Frog; Sensitivity, medicine, hidden beauty, peace, adaptability
Moon; Protector of the Earth at night
Dove; Communication, spirit messenger, peace, gentleness, love
Hummingbird; Messenger, timelessness, healing and warrior
Bumble Bee; Organizer, productivity, wisdom
Bear; Industrious, healing, power, self-preservation, courage
Loon; Serenity, good orator


The children chose the positive qualities they identified with first and then found out what their animal was. The meaning of the animals comes from Native American tradition. The children observed and talked about Northwest Native American art before they began this project.