New Pots, and Clay Creations by Amie

Last session Amie also took classes with my fabulous pottery teacher, Lisa Dolliver. These are some of the pieces she made: The unicorn is a piggy bank. At the moment it has a clay blue heart sitting in its slot. Aren’t they lovely? That, by the way, is a Go board: DH and Amie are …

Exploring Pain: Amie’s Variation of the Wildcraft Board Game

Last week I splurged on Wildcraft, a cooperative board game for kids (and adults) developed by HerbMentor, one of my favorite places for herbal instruction. The idea of the game is to make it up the mountain to the huckleberry patch, gather huckleberries, and make it back down again to grandma’s house before nightfall. And not …

Reading and Writing Checks Already, Arithmatic, and the Metaphyics of Time

What with all the gardening around here it’s been a while since I wrote about Amie’s non-gardening doings and goings. Here are some newer developments. We’re working on her letters. She recognizes all the upper and lower case and can sound out and read three-letter words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4RYw1LUqv8 But writing them is something else altogether, especially …

Two Games: the Sucker (Energy Saving) Game and Max

Our co-houser was very interested in pruning the house of “suckers” – appliances and battery chargers and the like that suck electricity even though they’re not in use. He was pulling them all over the place – especially the microwave, which is mostly my fault. He got so into it he devised a game: Each …

Cooperative Boardgames: Max

One of our Christmas gifts was this game, Max, made by a small family-owned company called Family Pastimes that makes only cooperative games (they even print and make their own boards and boxes). We must help get the little Creatures safely home before Max, the Tomcat, catches them. In an exciting way, children learn logic, …

Winter Wednesday: Snow

The theme of last Winter Wednesday was snow and well, no shortage of snow around here: a whole lot fell last night and more is on the way. I requested the book, Discover Nature in Winter, from the interlibrary loan, but it hasn’t arrived yet. But Barb mentioned the following experiment: melt and filter different …

Observational Drawing: 4 Pandas

I has just reread Lori’s Observational Drawing Lesson on the Camp Creek Blog when I looked up and spotted the perfect occasion for such drawing: Amie sitting at the table, waiting for her grandparents to appear on the troubled webcam, paper and pencil, and a panda bear mask she made in school. Okay, I thought, …

Birdwatching and Playing in the Snow

Dark-Eyed junco and American Goldfinches Who knew birdwatching in winter would be more fun than in summer! We’re experiencing our third snowstorm in five days – or is it the second one come round again? The scene outside is magical, but to me there is also an aspect of danger. I see the trees laden …

New Drawings: Tigger, Pooh and Christopher Robin

Here’s what Amie drew today. She is obviously feeling much better, as testified by this springy Tigger. He’s jumping, see, and holding a black balloon, and there’s a tree behind him. She drew this at her little table while no one was watching. Winnie-the-Pooh has become Amie’s favorite. We read a story from the original …