Favorite books

Kids received a box of middle grade books from their cousin - her favorite books from childhood. Sydney started Harriet the Spy and is loving it. What are your favorite childhood books?

pizza night

Farmer Boy goes to school

Farmer Boy is finished and it's time to go back to school. We'll miss homeschooling, but homeschooling doesn't end just because the kids go back to school. There is lots more fun ahead. Stay tuned. We'll keep posting every Monday-Friday!

Navaho dawn

Yellow boy creeping in on blue boy. Dawn in Monument Valley. We retold the Navaho tale of sunrise that Sydney and Jasper's grandfather Alexander Eliot learned from the Navaho when he lived with them in the late 1930's.

Jasper researching his Shelter Project, a Navaho hogan. In third grade he builds a model of a traditional home of his choosing.

On the road to Zion National Park

More tales of the sun and moon on the road to dreamland.

Here's Hopi

On to the lands of the Hopi. Luckily stumbled on the Women's Society Corn Dance in the village of Shungopavi on Second Mesa. 80 costumed women dancing, chanting, thanking the harvest, in the town center. Only two other tourist couples watching.

Photos for the blog, hello? No, sorry, the Hopi are abundantly welcoming and all they ask is that you take no photos.

But the sunset, while driving towards what became a tremendous storm, had no photo restrictions.

Later, in pitch dark, the road was closed for a while due to mud and flood and fear of a flash flood. Finally cleared, with big bulldozers pushing mud, we made it to Monument Valley just over the border in Utah, which was dry in more senses than one.

Far from home schooling

We left LA Tuesday morning at 7AM and were hiking down from the South Rim by 3:30pm.

What we saw at the Grand Canyon: 5 mountain goats, blue jay, squirrels, chipmunk, bats and lizard

What we heard on the trail: German, Dutch, Italian, French, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Irish, Australian and Canadian.

What we learned: Every step you take down the path takes you 1000 years back in time. By the time you get down to the very bottom, you're six hundred million years in the past.

wood working

Sydney is continuing with the woodworking project she has been working on in school. She's carving a wooden spoon with a rasp. Woodworking begins in the 5th grade in Waldorf schools. Here is a link to a lovely site called Teaching Handwork.

Field Trip

We took a road trip to Torrey Pines Gliderport on Sunday to see some hang gliders and paragliders diving off the cliffs. There were also a couple of guys practicing Falconry.

Today's lesson: Learned about air pressure, how it causes wind and how it creates lift for hang gliders above a cliff.

Pinky the opossum

There was an opossum that spent the day with us, or on the fence across the street from us, unmoving for hours until the kids went off to bed.

Jasper was inspired to draw a picture of him and write this story.

Tuesday morning they were trimming a tree that an opossum lived in and the opossum got scared of the tree trimmer. He jumped down onto a chain link fence. He stayed there all morning, all afternoon and finally walked away at 9:00PM.

And we named the opossum Pinky.

Have a great weekend. We'll see you on Monday morning!

School Room

Dinner

Roasted zucchini soup and fresh bread

Ancient Civilizations

Jefferson gave them a lesson on ancient civilization including a lesson on early cave painting. Check out this cool link on the caves of Lascaux

Sydney was inspired to work on this portrait of King Tut.

Jasper drew the tiles on the Walls of Babylon.