Celebrating Fall.

After the concert we went to a field trip with our homeschooling group for a hay ride with pumpkin picking, apple cider and a donut after that for hungry pickers, petting zoo and maze for running around. The air was crisp, but it only added to the fun we were having. Can't imagine to have that kind of fall festivities wearing a T-shirt.

NJ Symphony Orchestra.

I have to confess that since we've had kids, I kind of slowed down on listening to music. There is always someone blabbing, talking, singing, asking questions, reading, crying... simply said, too much noise all day long! We've been listening to children's songs in the car while going for trips, and I am tired of those songs! Honestly, it's been six years, and there is no end to them since Milana is still a baby, and she will enjoy the music as well.

But last week we went for a live concert performed by NJ Symphony Orchestra. And there are no words to describe the beauty and splendor of music when you are in the concert hall and experiencing it live! I took all 3 of them with me. Milana was so great, she was actually dancing to the beat and soundlessly clapping with her little puffy hands and later decided to add some vocals to show her approval of the music. A couple of "aaaa" and "uuuu" were heard by the members of the audience nearby, but nobody seemed to mind since the concert was for kids and the hall was full of the mini people!

I kept on looking at Ivana's face to see her reaction. Her eyes were just glued to the stage, I asked her later on how she had liked it and she said that she kept on looking at the harp. Apparently, she was trying to remember the design on the instrument to try to copy it when she would come home. Her favorite part was the dancers and the fact that there was an episode from Jack Offenbach's "Can Can" that she knows and really likes.

Leona was sitting nicely for a while, but half way had lost interest and was telling me that it was a bit too loud. Too funny!

I think I should start thinking about introducing more of the classical music to the girls. Mozart and Vivaldi are my favorite. But there is so much beautiful music written by Russian composers, and I am planning to teach my girls to know not only Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker", but also Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov, and Dvorzhak as a representative form Tata's land.

Build a scarecrow party.

We had a blast today building scarecrows in the afternoon with our newly made friends. We've been postponing to do the activity for a few weeks not finding time suitable for both families, and today the forecast was not favorable as well. But we still decided to take our chances and got together to do it. The clouds looked dangerous, there were a few drops, but nothing major to spoil the fun.

My idea to make heads wasn't too brilliant, since they started to fall apart after the girls played with the scarecrows a bit. Milana did not want to cooperate and was quite cranky (except for posing with our straw creations!). The scarecrows came out hideous (no offense, Tara!), but I think we still got "As" for the effort!

Ivana, Leona, Gracie and Olivia had a great time running around, feeding the goats, sheep and chickens, collecting the feathers, driving the kids ATVs, playing with a kitten (Leona, not so much). Popcorn as a snack was a hit!

We had a fantastic day!

Salamanders are still around.

Salamanders are abundant in the area where we live. It's so easy to find them, just flip the boulder and almost certainly you'll find this cute animal. Apparently looking for salamanders was one of the favorite activities for both Ivana and Leona during the summer months.

And since it's been pretty warm these amphibians are not hibernating yet. Just last week we were by the lake and the girls found four salamanders. I couldn't stop admiring the smoothness of the skin and the beautiful coloration. They weren't too jumpy and seemed not to mind being held by curious little hands. Ivana said that she didn't know anything about salamanders.

Guess what we did... The girls each made a new book today. And it was about salamanders. We did the cover of the book by coloring and cutting out the printout of an animal. On the first page Ivana wrote salamander life cycle, from an egg to a matured adult.

"They lay eggs in the water. Then they hatch into larva. Then they develop lungs and legs and come to live on land. So when salamanders become adults they shed their skins and eat it."

On the third page Ivana drew a front leg of a salamander and wrote down that they have only 4 fingers. And there are 5 fingers on the hind legs.

Forth page we devoted to measurements. We drew two graphs, one in inches (4''-8''), and the other one in centimeters (10cm-20cm) to demonstrate the sizes of adult salamanders.

And then finally, on the last page they cut and glued little pictures of some animals that are insectivores, as we have learned a new term today.

So many people are wondering how come we don't use any curriculum for our home studying. And I don't see the need for one, at least for now. Real life inspirations are all around us!

A new photographer in the family.

We have another family member who is passionate about photography. It's Ivana....I started letting her use my camera and there is no way of stopping her. She got the concept of focus and the lay out. After a few tries she remembers to hold camera still and to position it to take a picture of the object without decapitating.

I guess now there will be more pictures of Mom in our family photo archives. Good news.

"Show and tell".

What can a 5 or a 6 year old bring to show to the classmates and tell about? A favorite toy, a precious stuffed animal they sleep with, a recently read book, nothing (due to forgetfulness), or how about a bug and insect collection...

That's exactly what Ivana had decided to bring. Her precious carcasses of dead bugs and insects that we had collected over the summer going for walks in the neighborhood. There was a lot of "aaaah" and "ooooh" among the kids. Ivana was on a cloud nine!

Creative dramatics.

I was so thrilled last spring about being given an opportunity to lead a creative dramatics class at the homeschooling coop. Having some experience in the past of performing on stage, I still thought I needed to do some reading on the subject. As the summer went by I was getting a bit nervous about how I was going to manage to create a great atmosphere for the kids to explore the possibilities of expressing themselves through acting and drama.

I bought a book "On Stage, theater games and activities for kids", by Lisa Bany-Winters, and was using Ivana and Leona to see what works with the kids and what not so much. And the book is great! It has a lot of ideas, actually more than enough to keep the class going strong for a year.

The games and activities in the book are getting more complex and challenging as you get to spend more time with the kids, and they get comfortable in each other's presence and are less worried to look "stupid" and be laughed at. It's learning and playing at the same time. As the part Getting Onstage gives the kids an idea about stage space and certain way of moving around. Ideas from chapters Any time Theater Games, Twisting Your Tongue and Make 'Em Laugh help me to get the group together and teach them to work in unison. And then activities from Creating Characters, Improvisation and Creative Drama work as a culmination of our club time and the time for self expression.

The very first class I already had them act out a story. I chose a Russian folk tale "An enormous turnip", or how we say it in Russian, simply "Repka". It's a funny and a pretty simple plot. A grandpa plants a seed and it grows into an enormous turnip. We brainstormed with the kids other synonyms to express the size of the turnip, and they came up with a pretty impressive list for 5 and 6 year olds ("big", of course, "very big", "extra large","extra, extra large", "huge", "colossal", "gigantic", and I introduced "gargantuan" to them) . Well... the old man could not pull the turnip alone, so he had to call an old woman for help. They were pulling together, but still it didn't come out from the ground. The old woman called a granddaughter for help. They were pulling together, and still nothing happened. The granddaughter called a black dog for help. They were pulling together....in vain. The black dog called a cat for help. Still there was no result. And finally the cat called a mouse. They all pulled together, and they pulled, and pulled, and YES... they were able to pull the turnip out!

An evening before Ivana and I made very simple costumes for our mini play. There was Mirek's fishing hat for an old man. I took my apron and a scarf to put on head for an old woman. I braided three ribbons together for granddaughter. And we made head pieces with ears for the dog, cat and mouse. There was a part of a turnip as well. I brought a radish...And the actor playing the part of an enormous turnip was sitting on a chair with a jumping rope tied around the waist holding the radish in the hands. Imagination at work! The kids had a blast playing different parts. Almost everyone got a turn to be different character.

Another fun part that I came up was to read the same story in Russian! If you could only see their bulging eyes, motionlessly listening to me acting the story in Russian. Your could here a fly buzzing by... And when I asked them, "Can you say REPKA?REPKA!REPKA!" making a lot of stress of the vibrating rrrrrrrr sound, they were giggling and trying to imitate me.

The other time we acted out "Ten Little Monkeys" nursery rhyme. First we made masks from paper plates. I brought a blanket to use as a bed, a telephone to call a doctor, Ivana's scrubs and a stethoscope for a doctor. There was a lot of jumping and falling and bumping. The "little monkeys" got carried away and I had to remind them not to bump their heads for real, just a bit.
"Show and tell" was a huge success! And next time we are making sock puppets and doing voices. And I am getting a bit too ambitious, as I am seriously thinking of putting a small stage production for the Christmas Show in December.

There is simply not enough hours in a day to do everything I want to do!

Before and after.

Starting to prepare the apples.
Apple muffins. Don't you almost feel the aroma?
A lot of dehydrated apples, and not so many apple leather rolls.

Second grade apples.

Do you ever feel sorry for all those over ripen, juicy fruits laying on the ground and rotting slowly away? Those ones being stepped on by the excited bunch of people who are looking to pick the "perfect fruits" right from the trees? I do...feel sorry... since I don't like to waste.

The other day we went to the apple farm and bought 20lb of second grade apples (for only $10). It didn't matter to me that the kinds of apples were all mixed up, and that they had some imperfections and odd (just not perfectly round or oval) shapes. They were still fruits to be used and we got busy.

The plan was to make apple sauce, to bake cakes and pies, and also to use them for our first time dehydrating experiment. And eating them as well.

The baking part went very well, as we have plenty of experience in this. We have managed to bake 3 apple pies, Tata's absolutely favorite, and he was gobbling half of the pie for breakfast, and begging us to leave the other half for after dinner for him. That was no problem, as the girls took after me for love of chocolate desserts. We also baked apple muffins, and they were delicious.

A lot of cutting and peeling to make apple sauce. Here I made a small mistake by adding a bit too much water. It came out too liquorish, with a consistency something between the apple cider and very thin apple sauce. I had to come up with an idea on what to do, couldn't bear the thought of dumping the whole pot of sweet cinnamon goodness into the toilet.

And then the childhood memories hit me... We used to make fruit sheets (or fruit leathers) from the plum butter, and then I decided to give it a shot with my apple mush. I drained the excess juice, and here we got some cider to drink, and then I spread out the apple mush on the baking sheet, not thicker than a 1/4 inch. At 225F for almost two hours (ye, I know, a lot of energy used up), and then we had a final product. It came out great! It' is such a fantastic and interesting snack! You take it out from the baking sheet, and at this point it became thin and pliable, and cut the sheet with scissors into strips, and then roll them up into tubes. The fruit sheets can be stored in the refrigerator for a long time, and make great light weight snack if you go for a long hike.

As to the dehydrating experiment... I chose not to peel the apples, and decided to dry a lot of them, since I was already doing it. 10 hours of humming noise in the kitchen, and me peeking into the dehydrator to check it out. I was so impatient and curious! Later I found out you're not supposed to interrupt the drying process. Finally, they were done...

Ivana, using her 6 yo logic, had expressed her concern of the cakes and other things we were going to make from the apples to be "second grade" as well. Well, she still insisted they were...

Read more on drying food here http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/~vista/html_pubs/DRYING/dryfood.html#basics

Rainy day, doing crafts.

Today it finally felt like the fall has come! For more than a month without a rain (I know for sure, since Ivana and Leona are keeping the weather calendar), with the temperatures some days as high as in July, with the trees changing the colors reluctantly, it seemed that autumn would never come.
And today it just poured! A pajama and bake cookies kind of day! We were busy cutting, coloring and gluing, listening to the rain music above our heads, and watching the leaves coming down...

Out of our kids' mouths.

I want to remember how funny kids can be, so I decided to write Ivana's and Leona's "smarties" down.

I was so excited to have the newly bought placing mats on the table for dinner. You know, the human body, the map of the world, the flags of all countries, the USA map, so we can combine the pleasure of eating with the beauty of learning without pressure. So, we sat down to have our meal, and I was asking Ivana all the questions, tell me this and tell me that... She looked up at me with her calm green eyes, and said,"But Mom, I don't want to talk, I want to eat! I am really hungry!"

We saw a cute tiny dog the other day. It was one of those breeds that you can easily squeeze into your pocket. And it looked almost unreal, it was the size of Leonka's favorite toy dog that she sleeps with. When Leona saw the dog, she was so surprised and excited, that she expressed it with words, "Mommy, this dog is even cuter than Milana!"

Yesterday, I was cooking lunch downstairs and was listening to Ivana and Leona talking to each other, while playing "doctor and patient". There was a lot of "blabbing" going on, and then I overheard Leona saying, "Ivanka, let's pretend I don't have a broken neck anymore! OK?"

Leona was playing with Milana and gave her some dried grass to hold. Mirek was nearby and told her, "Fee, don't give it to Milna." As Mirek talks Czech to the girls, and his language is a little blunt sometimes, Leonka simply replied, "To neni govno, Tati!" (an important translation remark, "govno"-shit). It's like looking in the mirror!

Milana is rather large for her age, she is a "big chunk of a baby", as people sometimes call her. "Big cheeks" nickname has stuck to her long time ago. Now she has been crawling, going all over the house, getting under the chairs and table, picking up stuff and putting everything in the mouth. I was looking at her yesterday while she was in her moving mood and could not believe how fast they grow. I said, "I can't believe this peanut, and she is on her fours already, travelling the world!" Mirek, always having something funny to say, replies, "She is not a peanut, she is a cashew, or a Brazil Nut!" I think Milana has a new nickname now!

To finish up the post, I came across a great saying:
"The most wasted day of all is that during we have not laughed". -Sebastian R. N. Chamfort.

By the way, when we went peach picking the signs everywhere were just screaming into your face, "Please, do dot eat the produce before it's paid for". Can you guess what Mirek is doing?

A trip to the past.

Today we went back in time!

We visited Millbrook Village, part of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreational Area, a re-created community of the 1800s where aspects of pioneer life are exhibited and demonstrated by skilled and dedicated volunteers throughout the village. Although most of the buildings in the village are replications, Millbrook has a real past.

And today we were able to see a lot of crafts, trades and everyday tasks of the 1800s performed for us by the volunteers at this great historical event. Kids and adults alike were dressed in clothes of the colonial America. And we saw wood carving, slate making, manual apple pressing to make fresh cider, candle making, wool spinning, dyeing the yarn, apple butter cooking, furniture making and also saw a lot of old machinery still in working condition.

Ivana's participation in "Spelling Bee" in the Millbrook school #82 was a success. Later in a day she got to play the games, and then both of the girls went wild in the pile of freshly fallen leaves with Mirek adding to the fun.

The weather was perfect, even a bit too hot for the month of October. So were coming home drained and exhausted, both me and Mirek ready for a nap. Yer, right!

Studying flying squirrels.

This morning Mirek brought the cutest tiny creature I've seen. No, it was not a puppy, a kitten or a chipmunk... It was a flying squirrel! It got trapped in the box and couldn't get out.
With the start of a day like that we were in for a wonderful day of learning about this amazing animal that is so rare to see in the wild since they are nocturnal and rather shy.

We looked it it sitting quietly in the box, probably very sleepy since it was morning. Or maybe it was just scared since we tried to let it go to the ground and it took us a while. But once it felt the freedom and the open space, it hopped up to the tree. It was the squirrel's turn to examine us with the beautiful huge eyes that could do wonders at night to help this animal catch insects, spiders and spot birds' eggs!

So, we went online with the girls and did a research on flying squirrels. We learnt a lot of interesting facts about them, looked at a myriad of photographs and drawings, watched mini videos of the squirrels in flight, saw the little ones and came up with an idea to make a book about these adorable animals.

Ivana and Leona didn't even have time to change from their pajamas and I didn't want to be "a party pooper" and didn't insist on following our usual routine. The whole morning they were busy working on their books, writing the facts and illustrating the story. Leona did the cover all by herself with my help spelling the words out for her, and I wrote the story inside the book holding her hand in mine, then she drew a picture and finished the book with the maze that we had printed earlier from the web helping the squirrel find the nut. She was done pretty fast, but was very pleased with the result.

Ivana was a bit more scrupulous and took her time in finishing the project. That's what she wrote:
1. The term "flying" is misleading. They should be called "gliding" squirrels.
2. They eat slugs, berries, birds' eggs, nuts,acorns, spiders, fruits and seeds.
3. They are nocturnal mammals and owls prey on them.
4. Their life span is 5 years.
6. The babies are called pups.

On the next page she decided to draw the stages of the pups' growth, and then the adult flying squirrel with it's internal organs. She also finished with the maze.

We really enjoying our working and reading together. And now Ivana has suggested to do a book about the black bears, since we saw two just yesterday right by the lake where we go basically every day. So, who needs to go to the Zoo? Should I get a pepper spray next time we encounter the bear? Or do we hide behind the stroller and "play dead"? Hmmm....

Till next May!

We are ready to put our hummingbird feeder away for the winter. It's been so wonderful to be able to watch these amazing little creatures come to our door and feed on the nectar from the feeder. I had to remember to change the treats every day though, otherwise it turned into wine by the end of a hot summer day. And that taste, the tiny guests did not appreciate!

I got a "Birds of Pennsylvania" field guide, by Stan Tekiela. And that is such a helpful and informative, not overwhelming at all, but rather focused and easy guide to use with the girls! Full page photos are stunning, and the sections of the guide are color coordinated according to the coloration of the birds' feathers.

According to Stan's notes: The smallest bird in the state. Can hover, fly up and down, and is the only bird to fly backward. Does not sing, but will chatter or buzz to communicate. The wings create a humming noise, flapping 50-60 times each second or faster during chasing flights. The heart pumps an incredible 1,260 beats per minute, and it breathers 250 times per minute. (You try that!) Weighing just 2-3 grams, it takes about five average-sized hummingbirds to equal the weight of one chickadee. Constructs its nest with plant material and spider webs, gluing pieces of lichen on the outside for camouflage. Attracted to tubular red flowers.

In addition to that, I also have learned that it's a well observed fact that some of them manage to migrate to the warmer climates by hiding in the feathers of bigger birds, like swans and geese. So little, and so smart!

I was so thrilled to manage to take a quick photo of the hummingbird through the door screen. Otherwise, they are just too fast to even take a good glimpse at. All you could hear sometimes was a buzzing noise and a shadow flying away!

Hiking in the fall.

I've been on a look out for great and not so challenging trails to go hiking with the girls since we moved to the area. So by now, I have already quite an idea of the beautiful region we happen to live at the moment.
We are right on the border with The Delaware National Recreational Area, and that is great! Because without long and exhausting car rides to just go for a stroll in the woods, we have everything literally at our finger tips!
The weather has been awesome lately. We are really enjoying the gorgeous days of the Indian summer. The lack of rain, though, makes the trees lose the foliage very quickly, and the colors are not that vibrant. Maple trees, that can turn red, orange, or yellow in the same forest depending on the year and the weather conditions, are not that abundant in the Poconos. And the white oaks are simply turning brown.
What makes our region so unique for those excited about experiencing the annual breathtaking display of colorful forests ? For one, the great diversity of trees and shrubs growing here, as many species as in all of Europe, so they say. But, what's more important, the season of autumn arrives here much more suddenly than in Europe. It seems that almost overnight the balmy, warm weather of summer gives way to the cool, crisp, clear weather of autumn. The fall colors depend very much on this weather, and when the seasons merge into each other much more gradually, the colorful phenomenon is just not as striking.
This weekend we went for a hike. And it was great! Ivana and Leona did such a great job going up the hill with the help of the walking sticks Mirek had made for them. And then there was a bonus! A fantastic experience of being on top of the world and looking down at the Delaware River and the mountain ridge.
We had a mini picnic, the girls were climbing the trees with Mirek, I was taking the pictures, and Milana was such a good baby!
There will be more hikes to come this fall, that's for sure!