I love to start our week off with a trip to our local arboretum. The boys are free to explore, touch and enjoy all the beautiful trees, flowers and animals. They move quickly from one area to another and talk constantly to themselves and each other.
The trees are beautiful. There is a large variety of trees and I love to ask the boys to look up and see if they can find the top of the tree.
This stream has become a main attraction for the boys. They love to throw small bits of leaves into the stream and then run downstream. They wait and watch for their leaves to float by a few moments later.
This morning they were really interested in what was on the bottom of the stream bed. Both of them would stick their hand (nevermind that their shirt sleeve went in too) into the water all the way to the bottom and then bring me their handfuls of sediment and shells.
It is no wonder they were so interested, so was I. Of course, this stream is artificial and the shells were just placed there when they made the stream but, the boys don’t know that. They are just exploring and learning as much as they can.
We walked, played hide and seek, climbed some trees and chased a butterfly for a while trying to get a picture (we didn’t get one).
After lunch and when C was taking a nap L and I wrote (drew) in our journals. I saw this incredible idea in a guest post at No Time For Flashcards and I knew instantly I would incorporate journal writing into our daily routine. I just bought L his own journal for Easter. I can’t wait for him to have his own journal, he always asks me how I got mine. Most every day I find 15 to 20 minutes for the two of us (usually when C is napping) to sit down and write/draw something we saw or experienced that morning.
At first L just draws what is in his head…usually trash cans. But, after 10 minutes of us drawing and talking I start to ask him to think in his head about something special he saw this morning and try to draw it. Now, I am in no way an artist. I am uncomfortable drawing anything that others are going to see but I love this idea and I have a lot of fun drawing and thinking about our morning outing.
Here are our entries. L decided I needed a volcano in the middle of my drawing. There are so many teaching opportunities with this activity including learning to write the date. He learned how to write the number 2 today.
He drew himself under a palm tree. What a beautiful start to our week.
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