Vareniki.

A few warm days last week were a real treat for us! We went hiking, bicycling, took a day trip and visited a cavern, soaked up some sun and turned off the heat in the house.
This week the winter is back. The heat is back on, and the jackets had to be pulled out again. But the desire to spend more time outside is simply too strong to resist.

We still went into the woods and visited some old as well as new spots. Playing soccer really helped to keep warm and make the best of a colder day. The other really nice way to make the best out of a gloomy day is to find something free and abundant! That is right up our alley with having the gift for foraging. I mean all the days we have spent fishing, mushroom picking, wild pear tree harvesting, picking wild blackberries and raspberries...

This time we got wild chives. They are bountiful all around the hiking trails and really tasty. While the kids were helping us to pick them they were sucking on the stalks and then we had a very nice garlicky aroma in the car.
We had frozen a batch before and had used the prewashed, precut chives in soups, stews, scrambled eggs, and other dishes. And today we made homemade "vareniki" stuffed with mashed potatoes with fresh wild chives. Everybody helped and the task of hand making the vareniki for a large family was not so overwhelming after all.
It was delicious and what is even better is that we have another batch in the freezer for another day of a homemade yummy lunch.

We- the artists...

Artist: Leona, age 5, "A New Baby", paper, 12'x9', poster paints.

Artist: Ivana, age 8, "Emperor Penguins Family", paper 12'x9', poster paints.
Artist: Julia, we'll skip the age (:0), "Love is in the air", paper, 12x9, poster paints.
Artist: Joan Paley, illustrator to the book "The Emperor Lays an Egg", handpainted paper collage.

The most inspiration any artist would find is, no doubt, in the nature, in the world that surrounds us. But, the other artist's work can also be a very valuable source of another artist's inspiration.
When we were reading this book with the girls, I had a strong feeling I would like to draw some of these beautiful images with them in our art session.

Taking into consedaration that the illustrations in the book were actually not paintings, but paper collages, the lines were easy to work with. And absence of many details made this page an absolutely perfect art project idea for the young aspiring artists.

Because the emperor penguins could be thinner or fatter, we had to use the book image only as a guide and it did not matter that Leona got to use more space on her paper and Ivana made her penguins look a bit distant.

A little chick is an adorable focal point on the picture and simply melts your heart away. Don't you think?

And we have found out that working with poster paints on a water color paper produces great results in color quality and makes it easier to handle the lighter/darker shades of the same color.

The bright bellies of the birds and the outstanding purple/blueish background make me want to look at the picture more. Simply, it makes me happy!..

How we learn what we like to learn about.

I have to admit that we thrive the most when we do things spontaneously. That includes our "science lessons".
Even though I have developed my own views on what and how to teach our kids, in the beginning of the school year I was tempted to purchase a science curriculum. I had looked into Apologia, but the price had deterred me away from buying it. I decided we would just read books from the library on the topics of nature and natural events, weather, animals, astronomy, etc., and we would look up things on the web whatever the girls want to learn about.

It has been working just fine for us. Doing things in our homeschool this way we were able to cover a plethora of topics already, even including some basic chemistry and physics.
But when this morning the kids were asking what we would be learning for science, honestly, I had no clue. I guess the spring blues are showing up a bit early with wanting to be outside more and enjoy the warm days and not wanting to be planning any lessons.

"Mom, why didn't you plan a lesson for us?" they would question me.
"Oh, I have...(think quick, quick)..." As I was coming out from our office room and saw a sticker book we had bought over a month ago, I knew in an instant what we would be studying not only today day, but for a few weeks, possibly. "We'll be studying the nocturnal animals!" I proudly presented the idea to the girls and it was happily accepted by the learning crew.

To get started with the topic we went on line and looked up a few nocturnal animals that are local to our area. The sticker book was with the animals that we had never heard of (like, cavy, genet, slender loris, etc.), so we left it for another time.

Meanwhile, we read about the red fox, snow leopard, opossum, badger, firefly, hedgehog (an animal of my childhood). The photographs we found on line were phenomenal and the girls kept on ohing and ahing with one cute image after another. We read about the animal, the girls reviewed the info by answering leading questions to help them retain some info and new vocabulary. We learnt about the physical characteristics and then measured the length of the animals with and without tails, added, subtracted and found out the differences between the animals and our body lengths, worked with inches and feet as measuring units. We compiled a new vocabulary list of the terms like nocturnal, hibernate, aestivate, insectivore, carnivore, omnivore, marsupial, mammal, looked up two new animals that were related to the subjects we were studying (marten and marmot). We learnt about the animals' habitats and looked them up on the globe and reviewed our knowledge of geography.

We read some amazing facts about the animals we constantly see in our backyard. Who knew that fireflies (so cute and adorable) actually are cannibals, as they can eat each other! Or, next time when we will be holding a firefly we'll be sure to count the seconds between the flashes. Five seconds-and it's a male, two seconds-and it's a female.

We also were tempted to write up a report on one of the animals of each girl's choice (thus doing the penmanship part) and then create a habitat out of the recyclable things we use for all our activities.
But, the weather was too gorgeous to stay inside for any longer, and we took off. With having such a rounded learning time before, we had no problem to be outside all the way till dinner time. Playing with rocks, water, going for a bike ride, and simply soak up the sun rays was a great way to spend an afternoon.
When you teach the kids and they use what they have learnt that is like the music to any teacher's ears! I got my music today, "Mom, Evanchik has excrement in his diaper!"

Skiing.

When our oldest was about 3 yo, I remember we bought her mini skis and were so anxious to teach her skiing. It didn't go too well, as she was too little and definitely not ready for that. Mirek had taught we a few years back and before the kids we used to drive for 3 hours for a skiing retreat just because it was so much cheaper.

We both love skiing. But lately we were not able to ski a lot. Mirek went once, I think, last winter with a childhood friend who came for a visit. And me... oh , well, I guess I just have to be a bit more patient. And this winter we have not gone skiing either, except for when the spring has started knocking at the door. The tickets got cheaper because the season is almost over, there is still plenty of snow on the mountain, and Ivana has been begging to go skiing now. It took her only a few years to mature and get excited about learning to ski.
So, that was her first time up on the lift going to have fun at the top of the mountain.
And since I don't like to leave the rest of the crew behind, we kind of hung out by the lift and cheered for Tata and Ivana, waited for them to come down and then headed home to cook dinner and wait for our skiers to come back from their adventure.
They came back a few hours later, exhausted, but very happy and were telling us all about their day (more like "night") of skiing fun.
Apparently, by mistake they ended up on a Black Diamond slope, and managed to get down in one piece. Ivana was doing a great job later in the evening, and was getting more and more confident. And as a addition to all the fun they had had they saw a shooting star. I got double jealous, as I had never seen one.
It was supposed to be my turn to take her again the next week, but it does not look like it. Patience, is a virtue. Till next season...ah

Last snow?

I guess it IS the last snow this winter season. We were lucky to get so much of it that we had a lot of great times playing outside. With building, the usual, the family of snow people, making an igloo right in front of the porch (we'll be looking at it till, like, what, June?), sledding, skiing, snow ball fights. I also made color sprays for the girls to do the "snow art". With having red, blue and green to spray on the white snow it was fun to color the white world around us away.

Snowman looked bloody with red all over it, so we put more snow to cover it up. And then the girls got book inspired and made those mini domes to put the candles in. During the day time it was great to see then colored, and when it got dark, it was simply adorable to see the candle light outside from the window. It felt like we kind of said farewell to winter...

Love her!

When a picture is worth a million words!..
Who cares that a few minutes later the color spots ( a butterfly to be) on the plaster plaque turned into one gray blur. I have managed to capture the moment. And got the art project as a gift for our wedding anniversary!..
Just love her :)

The Green Mountain.

It took me some time to learn to pronounce King Nebuchadnezzar's name when we were reading about the Babylonian Empire and the times of it's prosperity after the defeat of the Assyrians, before the great city of Babylon was captured by an army from Persia in 539 B.C. and became a part of the powerful Persian Empire (modern Iran).

The girls loved the story of the princess Amytis being married the Babylonian King Neduchadnezzar and how she was missing the cliffs, valleys and mountains of homeland Persia. She missed the green gardens people built on the hills at home and was very unhappy in Babylon. So the King, being much in love with her, wanted to make her happy and, thus, ordered to build the gardens in Babylon, a dry and harsh place to grow anything.

There is not too much info and details about the Ametis' garden in Babylon. The historians know only some details, and apparently, there is no image of the gardens saved on any clay tablets, only verbal descriptions of this Second Wonder of the Ancient World.
We were able to find a book in the library with some pictures, looked up some info on line, and were happy to learn that we were free to create our own gardens on the mountain to how we imagined them.

We read that there were terraces, hanging plants, various flowers, trees, shrubs, bushes, from all over the Empire. Water was brought up but the pumps, so we decided to make a water fall in our Babylonian garden. Once again, recycled pasta boxes, some paint, stickers, rocks, wax sticks, markers and hot glue, we had our own kids' made wonder with princess Ametis (made out of clay) sitting in her throne and enjoying the green beauty around her.

The piano top is becoming a place for the older girls to store their hand made projects so that the younger siblings won't be able to get them and try to play with them.

My favorite part in the project making is seeing how the girls are learning to handle the hot glue gun, freeing me a lot, as they can really make things the way they like it, to watch them play with their creations during the day, and, also, to call the grandparents on skype and ask them what that thing we were showing them was.