Showing posts with label educating mama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label educating mama. Show all posts

Friday, March 19, 2010

Crazy Busy Week

Monday: Into the city for a play. Lots of fun on the playground with our homeschooled friends from HSNY afterwards.



Then home for bird watching and a nature hike at the local wetlands.






Tuesday: Science Class in Queens; math at the library. (See separate post below.)

Wednesday: Mom has a seminar with the NYS DEC on Project WET: aquatic education, at the Van Cortlandt Museum House in Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx. Mikro gets to play at the Adventure Playground in Central Park with Dad until mom's done.



Thursday:

A.M.: Homeschool Nature Class at the Croton Nature Center.

The kids learn about heat and cold, and do experiments on the insulating and buoyancy effects of fat or blubber. They also determine that light colors absorb less heat, and darker colors more, by leaving ice cubes out on top of variously colored natural materials, and seeing how fast they melt on different colored backgrounds. Then they hiked down to the beach and learned about water temperature, and hiked in the woods looking for insect signs of spring, and found a very cool yellow and black pill bug. I humg out at the bird feeders, trying to get photos of some of the spring returnees as well as the year round residents.






PM: Afterwards, it's time to hit the playground with our TCHS friends for the first time this spring. It was an incredibly beautiful day! It was very hard to pry Mikro out of the park 2.5 hours later, in order to barely catch our NYC-bound train and meet up with our friends from HSNY for a performance of 46 Circus Acts in 45 Minutes at the New Victory Theater. Mikro loved the show!



Friday: Today, we're home, and will do some history, hang out in the yard, and play with the neighbor kids. Tomorrow we have a program at the library, and then we're free till Monday...

I am exhausted!

Percy Jackson at the Met

Kev gifted me with registration to Gods, Monsters, Myths: Exploring Greek and Roman Art Through the Eyes of Percy Jackson, a Teacher Program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The program started off with coffee and a surprise visit from Rick Riordan, who was going to be speaking later in the day at a public program. He is a former teacher, and so wanted to pop in and say "hi" to the teachers.



Next we had a tour of the Greek and Roman galleries with a museum educator who talked about ways to present the art to children. They gave us a zip drive of resources, which I haven't even had a chance to plug in yet! Then we had lunch and picked up tickets to Rick Riordan's talk, which was wonderful, and featured a reading from his new Egyptian series, the Kane Chronicles.



After that, it was time to stand in a truely insane line for the book signing. Mr. Riordan was incredibly nice, and talked to every person on that line, especially the kids. He stayed well past the scheduled time to be sure that no one was turned away. Mikro was very happy with his signed copy of The Lightning Thief. (I guess this means I actually get to keep my battered old, unsigned copy!)