locations 3 & 4

Once we crossed Michigan Avenue... we headed for this Chicago landmark...

Cloud Gate aka "the bean"

We never get tired of going to the bean... to see the city reflected in it is just amazing...

(can you spot us in the photo above?)

After that we started across the bridge to the brand new...

Modern Wing at the Art Institute

I took just one additional photo here...
... the troops were rebelling as it was getting dangerously close to lunch time.

However, our last location made them forget all about lunch (at least for a little while).

Location #2

Here is the photo from the original post...


Did you guess that he was at the Chicago Cultural Center?

Well... that was where we were. We trekked across the loop to get there. Can you believe that I have never, in all of my years of living here, been inside the Cultural Center? We walk past it all of the time, but have never been inside.

I really wish we would have had more time.... especially now when I realize that we didn't actually see the Tiffany glass dome we went there to see... sigh.
What we actually saw was the GAR (Grand Army of the Republic) Dome.

Oh well... we'll just have to go back!

Here are the kids in the GAR Memorial Hall...
The next stop was just a quick trip across Michigan Avenue!

Location #1

So, remember a month ago when I wrote the post "Where in Chicago is Alex?"... yeah... I had forgotten about it too. But perhaps that was partially due to the fact that I had a little contest for people to guess the locations and nobody played along... sigh. :-)

Since I've been slacking with taking new photos, I have decided to share some more of the photos we took that day and reveal their locations.

Location #1....

The James R. Thompson Center

Many years ago I used to work near this building. There's a food court on the lower level and I used to go there for lunch with coworkers. I can honestly say that I never really looked at the building before the day the kids and I went for Alex's poetry class.

We sat in the main area and just took it all in...
curves and angles...
... all of the glass and reflective surfaces.

One of Alex's favorite things was the elevators.... he loved that you could see all (most?) of the mechanics of them and was fascinated by watching it all work.

Alex wrote down several adjectives to describe the building and then we were off to find location #2.

here's something...

... that the kids have really been enjoying lately....

riddles!

A couple of years ago at Christmas, my sister-in-law ordered Clara a bunch of coloring books from Mindware. This book (Handful of Riddles, Geoscapes) came with her order. She gave it to Clara and I tucked it away with our school stuff. I wasn't sure what to do with it.

Now I've figured it out! :-)

Since we have defined downstairs as our school area now, I dragged out our old white board and put it in the hall. About once a week I put up a new riddle... the frequency depends on how busy we are and how long it takes the kids to figure out the riddle. I used to draw the little picture they show in the book with each riddle but it made some of them too easy. After that, I started drawing a big question mark. And most recently, I've just been leaving the bottom half of the board blank and the kids have been filling in that area with an illustration of the answer once they've figured out the riddle. This last option has been their favorite.

I wanted to order some more riddle books because they've been enjoying this activity so much. However, when I went on the Mindware site, I couldn't find any more Handful of Riddles books nor even the one that I already have. If anyone has any suggestions for good riddle books, I would love to hear them!