A is for April... and Art

I can't believe April is nearly over already. We spent a lot of time outdoors, playing in the yard, homeschooling on the porch swing, and watching the birds. For me, there was pottery (and I still have a couple of weeks left), and playing with leftover easter egg dye. I used the white crayon from the egg dye kit to draw pictures on white paper; then Mikro and I colored them in by dabbing egg dye on them with paper towel wads. Fun! I also dipped an old T shirt in the dye, and need to research how to set it... We both played with kiddie watercolors. Mikro tried oil pastels for the first time, and seemed to like them better than crayons. We did some crafts, read lots of books, and were so busy with field trips and classes with our homeschool groups that I'm thinking we need to start calling it Never-at-home-schooling. Well, except for the days when my arthritic gimpy body just refused to let me abuse it any further, and those days the porch swing was a great place to work on reading and science...

Plans & Stuff & Mikro's Vegetarian Revisionist Version of Prehistory

We're supposed to be at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for their Free First Saturday Lunar New Year event. But we bagged it, because it's cold and damp, and my arthritis is reminding me I'm not supermom, and besides, most of the stuff seems like it's over Mikro's head. The Lunar New Year thingie at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens tomorrow looks more his speed, so we'll do that instead... Tomorrow's forecast is for a 20 degree differential between high and low temperatures. How do you dress for that? Layers, I guess...

February is completely overscheduled. We have a Mikro activity every weekend, sometimes both days. And Nature class during the week, and a couple field trips I'm hoping we'll do. Mikro is begging to go back to the Bronx Zoo and AMNH, and there's a marionette production of Pippi Longstocking in Central Park that we want to see. I just heard about a cool hands on science exhibit in Staten Island which is perfect for bug obsessed boy. And I really want to go to Liberty Science Center in Jersey. I've never been there, but people rave about it...

Mikro desperately wants to ride one of those double decker NYC tourist buses and the Circle Line, but I'm hoping we can put that off till the weather is warmer.

I need to schedule a trip to AMNH with my sister-in-law and Mikro's cousins to see the H2O exhibit (which has live fish and frogs, something Mikro *loves*) and I somehow have to clear enough clutter out of here between now and mid April to get the boy a puppy for his birthday. He misses Piper and wants a little scottie dog. I'm kind of amazed he remembers her.

He's very into dinosaurs right now, but not digging the harsh realities of predation. My soft hearted little vegetarian asks "why do some creatures eat meat?" constantly. He just told me a little story about how a species of dinosaur eats poisonous plants (like monarch caterpillars with milkweed) to make themselves poisonous to predators. "A T-Rex might attack this dinosaur, but he would get very sick and he would never choose to attack another!" Alas, my son, the T in T-Rex doesn't stand for Tofu!

Off to make what Kevin calls a bowl of tea. A 22 oz. mug just isn't big enough...

Rambling On

I'm thoroughly enjoying homeschooling Mikro. He's a joy (99 percent of the time. We won't talk about the surly alien bodysnatcher who inhabits his body the other 1 percent of the time...) He's still very butterfly and insect obsessed. But now he's also into dinosaurs in a big way. We're reading a lot of little kid science, and some older kid stuff too. Mostly nature and animal related, some seasonal stuff, and some just plain fun books too (Skippyjon Jones is a current favorite.)

We've done far more running around than I ever thought my gimpy carcass could handle. Two trips to the Bronx Zoo in less than a month (once for their Holiday Lights show, once because someone begged us to go ride the Bug Carousel), the NY Botanic Gardens for the Holiday Train Show, AMNH yet again for dinosaurs and the origami tree and dinotopiaries, several plays at the Paramount Center for the Arts, and visits to the relatives for the holidays. All by public transportation. Which translates to pretty horrid pain, but I'm glad we did it, because my little boy was glowing with excitement. He had a great time.

Homeschool Nature Class started up again today. The kids learned about bones, and got to identify the parts of a deer skeleton. Mikro knew the skull, ribs, antlers, vertebrae, and a few more.