Happy First Day of No School!

 To celebrate, we started off with Mass, then a playground hop.

This great new super hero themed playground opened last month, and this was the first chance we had to try it.

It was, well, super!

We met some home schooling friends there, so we had some company.  Extra fun!!

Klenda really liked the rings!


One odd thing about this playground is it's super secret location.  Google maps directed me to a local school (irony alert!), and told me to walk in a particular direction.

We parked at the school and walked over the river and through the woods, and found the playground...and a large parking lot.


I was able to work out a good set of directions for next time anyway!

We ended up staying there most of the morning, but we squeezed in a  side trip to the Alien Playground on the way back, so we are counting it as a playground hop!

We invited our friends back for lunch, games, and ice cream making, so it was a highly successful First Day of No School!

Playground Hop!

I love Maryland this time of year! Yes, the summers are too hot, and the winters are not cold enough, but springs and falls are long stretches of comfortable weather.

On Tuesdays, the oldest four Zoomlians are taking a 2 1/2 hour history class, so it's all Choclo and Oob time!

I will be doing lots of focused educational stuff on some of those days, but, for our first time out, I decided to do a playground hop (like a pub crawl, but more fun!). 

7 and 5 are really golden ages for playgrounds.  We dropped off the older kids and spent the time going from playground to playground... playing!

Sometimes it's as easy as that. 

Happy First Day of No School

 The school kids headed off this week, so we grabbed some friends and did a playground hop!

We managed three large playgrounds: Indian Creek, Watkins Park, and Buddy Attick.

 The one I was most excited about was the new Wizard of Oz themed playground at Watkins, but evidently everyone else had the same idea!


I don't think I've ever seen such a crowded playground!

We only stayed long enough to look around, and we agreed we would love to come back later. 

But we had a great time at Indian Creek and Buddy Attick, so it was a great start to our non school year!

Happy First Day of No School!

 We had a lovely playground hop - six playgrounds, which I think is a new record for us!

One playground we had not visited in over a year and we were quite surprised to find that the old tennis court had been turned into a new skate park!

 What a fun day - it was so nice to relax and play together.


We also made it to the library, a favorite spot. 


 Leena asked a librarian where she could find more books about optical illusions, and the librarian was surprised that she had homework already!
 
Leena, of course, just likes optical illusions, but I guess they don't often see a kid researching their own interests.


Speaking of which, one part of the skate park was very steep, and it had turned into a caterpillar trap.  We rescued four large and interesting caterpillars, of which we took home three to try to raise in our butterfly pavilion.

 Anyone know this fella?


We ended our day at the "alien" playground near the library.

We call it that because it looks like it was designed by and for space aliens.

Very fun!

Random Spring Things

 I finally downloaded photos from my phone and found all sorts of happy pictures.

Here's Choclo with the tulips he planted in his garden!

And here's Klenda when the Kwanzan Cherry blossoms were falling.  The whole family had a flower fight, flinging petals at each other and shaking the blossoms off the branches like pink snow.  I braided some of the flowers into Klenda's hair.


Some random playground fun from our playground hop last month.  We like to see how many playgrounds we can get to in one shot.

That's Zorg and Choclo climbing on the dome with Leena running by.  And Klenda, again!

We've been doing a lot of sculpey, and I make my own (super cheap!) playdough, but I found a pack of 24 colors of Play-Doh at Target, and I just couldn't resist it.

There's something magical about having that many colors at once!  Here, Oob is making an assortment of food with it.

Wordless Wednesday: Playground Hop

Happy Birthday, Oob!

 Can you believe that Oob is 7?

Really-o, truly-o!

We celebrated in style with an all day playground hop, dinner with Grammy and Pop at a Chinese restaurant, and an angel food cake with chocolate raspberry whipped cream! Yum!

And presents!

One favorite was this Lego Ninjago helicopter from Mxyl and Klenda.  I think part of the present was getting help putting it together...

Seven Great Things About Oob

1.He tells silly jokes!

2. He wakes up a little before 6 most mornings and comes in to snuggle a bit with Mom and Dad.

3. He can put together fantastic towers and block structures, then knock them down with birds!

3. He has an uncanny ability to do math in his head.

4. He loves to read, and can read pretty much anything he wants to.  Who knows?  Maybe he's reading this right now!

4. He likes to pray a decade of the Rosary for someone, whenever he hears they are having a hard time.

5. He likes to write sweet and funny letters to me, and to the rest of his family.

5. He has a Secret Identity, but I won't tell what it is.

6. He likes to help anyone that needs help!

6. He likes to text Mumpy before he goes to bed most nights.

7. He loves to look at things under the microscope!

Happy Birthday Ooby!!


Update by Mxyl:

I've also been doing a few artistic things in celebration.  Here's my photo, "Seven," which I personally think expresses a lot about the age:

And here's my work on the Ninjago helicopter using After Effects--a bit cheap-looking, but it's one of my first tries with a physical green screen:

Number Playground

With the weather cooling off, we are back to using the blackboard. 30' X 10' and walkable, what's not to like?


Here it is set up as a multi purpose number playground. You may need to click on the picture to see it. If you leap from star to star, you could learn your 7 times tables and catch a departing rocket. If you prefer lily pads, you can hop to your 6 times tables. 5s are on the coins (you have to jump with 2 feet). And 4s are in l'escargot, a French version of hopscotch (hopped on 1 foot, sil vous plait!).

On the side (and hard to see), we have the indispensable number line. Great for adding, subtracting, literal skip counting, and figuring out factors and primes. On a beautiful day, I often think we could home school with nothing but sidewalk chalk, the driveway and a library card!