what we're loving...

... right now.

I have decided that I need to qualify all statements like that with something like "right now" or "at this moment"... because, quite frankly, things change.

This is a recent find from the library...

How High Can a Dinosaur Count?: ...and Other Math Mysteries

I'm trying to incorporate more "living math" into Clara's day so I picked up some random books at the library last week. This one has been a huge hit. There's a little word problem for each picture and several bonus questions listed in the back. She loves working with this book.

Alex just started this book last week...

Practice Island by Michael Clay Thompson

We had finally finished up Grammar Island, so when we started Sentence Island, we started this book as well. Who would have thought that Alex would enjoy "four level analysis" of sentences? We do these together and work through them aloud as he writes. I really thought he would balk at doing this book when it came time, but it has really surprised me!

And then there's this book...

Life of Fred Fractions

We're still loving this book... although I will admit that Alex ummm... strongly dislikes the "bridge" portions. He loves the rest of the book though and has really gotten a lot out of it. Because of the humor and continuing story line, he can't wait to keep working his way through the book. I'm excited to see that there are enough books in the series to keep us busy for years.

location #5

Okay... since one of my New Year's resolutions is to be a better blogger, I decided that perhaps I ought to finish up this series of posts which I started... oh... what... two and a half months ago? :-)

This was our final location of the day....

The Tribune Tower

This is definitely one of those buildings that I totally took for granted. Sure, it's a cool looking building and yes, I've been past it a million times (in fact, I once had a temp assignment in the building next door years and years ago) BUT I had never actually looked at the building.

If I had, I surely would have noticed the numerous stones set into the building...
The one above is from a Revolutionary Battlefield in New Jersey.

And the one below (also from NJ) from where Washington landed after crossing the Delaware...

Then there's this brick from Holland from the house the Pilgrims used as a church before making their voyage...
Also, if you look really hard...
... you'll notice that the carvings aren't typical carvings.... there are dogs with glasses, alligators, monkeys and who knows what all else. These all have meanings and thankfully a lot of them are outlined in the book we bought at the gift shop.

The whole building is like a huge game of I Spy...
You'll be amazed at what you will find there.

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!

masks and spiders and wool... oh my!

On Tuesday the kids continued their mask project by covering their plaster casts with paper mache.


That was supposed to be their whole project for that day... however, they can be speedy little things when they want to be and they had come up with another project they wanted to try... basket spiders.

Their wonderful teacher went looking through her supplies and found black reeds and weavers.

Then the project began...



And then she got out some wool that they could use to decorate their spiders... and a bit of silliness broke out...


Here's Clara's undecorated spider...
And Alex decorating his...
Clara named hers "sweater legs" and it is really cute... she's almost done with it so I'll have to take a photo of the finished product.

After the spiders were finished... it was time to get silly with the duct tape...

I'm not sure any of this was really a good idea...
... but they did it to themselves... and they survived! :-)