April showers (two more weeks in this unschooling life)

The last two weeks have been mostly overcast, rainy, and chilly. We kept a fire going in the woodstove and enjoyed a lot of indoor activities, as well as spending some time embracing the spring's fickle weather.

magnetic mosaic tiles

mosaic stickers for Ayla

crocheting colorful wool granny squares for an afghan

On an afternoon when the sun peeked out, I took Carly out for a walk down in the valley. I spotted mint, nettles, ferns and skunk cabbage.

During one of Camille's play rehearsals (for Macbeth with the homeschool co-op), Sylvia, Ayla, and I enjoyed some (relatively) dry time for exploring outdoors.

On the way home, an eagle flew directly in front of our car with a small rodent in its beak and a crow chasing it. We pulled over to watch them and the cows in the field watched us curiously.

Cranium Zooreka

Are those blue skies? To the park!

 

picking some of the season's first dandies for her Papa

We brought out some large sheets of paper, oil pastels, and watercolors and made ocean creatures inspired by the book, Art Lab for Kids; 52 Creative Adventures in Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Paper and Mixed Media, (and all of the Blue Planet episodes that we've been watching lately).

Sylvia made a spotted shark inspired by this photo from the Ocean Conservancy blog.

Ayla made a colorful reef fish inspired by this photo.

We made a lot of origami creations (Camille mostly, though the rest of us got in on it, too).

I even got a chance to go out to a concert with friends for an evening. I danced for about 2 1/2 hours straight. Woohoo!

What other rainy day activities have we been up to?  Rainbow loom bracelets, homemade onion rings, making striped beeswax candles colored with broken crayon bits, several episodes of Blue Planet, Cosmos, and Once Upon a Time on Netflix and Hulu, Pennywhistle Hero (and the corresponding interactive US history game), Spanish on duolingo, games on jumpStart, reading aloud (Sylvia, too!), singing, band and saxophone lessons, ballet classes, .

Not waiting for April (or her showers) to end, we went for a rainy day walk on the last day of the month looking for some of the elusive spring ephemerals at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.

 We also found many patches of ramps,

and enjoyed some simple, nourishing potato soup with ramps and nettles. Everyone of my girls declared it delicious!

  more colorful fish!

Oooh, these posts get long when I don't post as regularly, but I'm just going with the inspiration to blog when I have it and letting it go when I don't. So, pardon the epically long posts these days, but I'm not quite done yet ... :).

Ayla likes to create big shapes out of wooden craft sticks and recently started asking how to spell everyone's names.

 tomato seedlings

 We smashed open geodes with hammers to see the beauty inside. It was hard to get good pictures, but the crystals inside were beautiful and delicate.

Looking back, it has been good kind of couple of weeks in this unschooling life, but still and all, I am ready for some Sunshine! If April showers bring May flowers, this month should be in full Rainbow Bloom!