Working at their easels...

First Day of the New School Year

If you go to public school, most likely on your first day you will be sent off with a kiss and a brand new backpack.




Around here, on the first day of school...











... you get up, stay home and get bins!

Butterfly Study!

Some time ago I placed a large order for homeschooling materials from "Insect Lore" and in return I received a free classroom sized butterfly study kit. Wow! The kit included coupons for 30 Painted Lady butterfly larvae, 30 cups, food, instructions and a large butterfly pavilion. This spring we finally redeemed the coupons and embarked on an intensive butterfly life cycle study.











The 30+ larvae were delivered in a single container. The first thing the kids had to do was pack the specially provided food into the bottom of each container. They then carefully placed an individual larva into each cup and capped it.




They numbered each cup and created a corresponding excel spreadsheet where daily they logged the progress of each larva.




Once a Larvae attached itself to the lid of the cup and hardened into a chrysalis the lid could be removed from the cup and the lid with the chrysalis could be placed into the pavilion to complete its metamorphosis and hatch into a butterfly.
























We had amazing results. All but one chrysalis hatched! The beautiful orange and black butterflies emerged from their chrysalis at different times over the course of several days. We were able to observe the various stages of their emerging and pumping up their wings. Once they all hatched we feed the butterflies on sugar water and pieces of fruit. The kids really loved the close up view of the butterflies' long proboscises lapping up the juice from the fruit or searching deep into the flowers we placed in the pavilion. After all were hatched we kept the butterflies in the pavilion for about a week.

When the day came to release the butterflies they had one more surprise for us. They did not want to leave us! We thought once we unzipped the pavilion they would be anxious to fly away embracing their new freedom. Quite to the contrary, they had to be coaxed out of the pavilion and they insisted on landing on the kids. We guessed the butterflies were used to being hand feed by the kids whose hands must have smelled of the fruit juices that they they fed to the butterflies. For whatever reason, the butterflies hung around and the kids had a joyful, playful time saying goodbye to their winged friends in Teddy's garden.


Teddy has planted some special butterfly plants in the garden and a number of flowers that might provide food to a butterfly population. We haven't seen any of our Painted Ladies since the day we released them. I guess they moved on. Perhaps they have taken their place in the food chain. We will continue to watch and to feed all the butterflies in our garden...


One final note:
If anyone reading this is questioning the wisdom of introducing and releasing the butterflies from this kit into the ecosystem of our backyard, we did check this out. Yes, it is not wise to release frogs and some of the other creatures you can grow in these home lab kits. However, Painted Ladies are safe and totally appropriate to release. Most will join their place in the food chain, much to the delight of our back yard birds...

Walking The Labyrinth

Walking a Labyrinth is a form of meditation. It can be healing, spiritual, relaxing or just down right fun! Think walking (or if you are a kid perhaps you are running) a maze without walls. Teddy and Billie Rose also discovered that the Labyrinth is a trickster. Just when you think you are coming to the center, it leads you back on a journey through its outer reaches. When they were standing in the very center of this Labyrinth they discovered an echo unlike any other, reverberating off those circular stonewalls.

The Labyrinth at the Delaware Art Museum is nestled in an old stone reservoir pit. The paths are tranquilly outlined in river-stones. The location of this installation is unassuming, almost invisible. You must venture through the sculpture garden in back of the museum and come upon the reservoir pit almost unexpectedly. You may stand above the high stonewalls that encase the circular patterned walk and just enjoy the visual delight below or continue around the lower walkway to get to the entrance and walk the Labyrinth.

Oh and yes, we just learned that another homeschooling mom was instrumental in creating, designing and building this Labyrinth at the Delaware Art Museum. Homeschoolers Rock! Pun intended. :-)

More Labyrinth trivia for our family and friends; Tom worked on Labyrinth the Movie by Jim Henson oh so many moons ago. Among other things he worked on Hoggel's Hands to make them work... And yes, he did get to work on the set with David Bowie. Were we ever so young?

A Weird Creature Called a Garden Elf!

by Billie Rose

Me and my brother Teddy have two gardens. My brother Teddy owns a humming bird and a butterfly garden. I own a fairy garden! Protecting our flowers we have weird creatures! They are McDonald toys from a lot of Pixar's films. Well, not exactly all of his films. Some of the elves are not from Pixar films. These weird mysterious creatures are called Garden Elves. Da, da, da,dumm!!!!

They might be cute, they might be scary. They could even lose their heads while they are working. But, they do work well, keeping the flowers calm. They go near a flower and then stand around all day. They even stay up in the nighttime because they are McDonald toys.

Our most famous garden elf, Teddy does not have any of them, is Mike Wazowski! We have three big ones and two small ones. They are the most famous because they are the first garden elves we every used and they always look the best on the job.

I also have one more garden. Its a small garden. It's a garden I always make different every year. It's called my pot garden because it is always put in a pot. It has one of the Mike Wazowskis too! This is a picture of the garden elf who guards this garden. The end

"The Dramatic Move Outside" by Billie Rose

One day the rabbits were downstairs eating and drinking. I was doing my home work and suddenly mom and dad were thinking about moving the rabbits outside. I was a little scared about this idea. Especially the part about making a fence. I asked daddy, "Is the fence going to be six times as big?" Daddy said, "It is going to be two times as big as the normal fence downstairs."


Me and my brother Teddy were playing outside. Then we saw daddy working on the rabbit cage. I asked, "Dad, what are you doing?" Daddy said, "Making a lock for the rabbits." Me and Teddy started questioning. Teddy said, "We'll need a lock right there on the door." Dad said, "The foxes can't be that smart."




"Where are the rabbits?" I questioned while mom and dad were bringing the rabbits' cage up the stairs. Dad said, "They are downstairs in a cat carrier."






They were moved out and upstairs. When put in their cage they started hopping around everywhere. I thought they were trying to organize things.
They have spent two nights outside already and no foxes have bothered them. We keep the light on every night. Our friend Ben says foxes are scared of light. Now they have a special hiding place that daddy built onto the back of their cage so definitely no foxes can bother them and they have a safe place to hide and sleep in the night.


I think my rabbits are happy outside in the day but scared at night. I am a little scared for them during the night time too.



The end.

Papermaking Workshop at the DCCA

Art works with Handmade Papers:
A workshop at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary art

This workshop at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary arts was one of the highlights of our year! The kids had the opportunity to create beautiful art works from paper they made themselves during this six week workshop under the direction of Artist in Residence, Yukie Kobayashi.



Teddy, Billie Rose and 11 other homeschooling students learned ancient papermaking techniques from Tibet, Korea, Africa and other regions of North and South Asia as well as a more contemporary western style of handmade papermaking.







The students created sheets of handmade papers using papyrus pulp as well as pulp and fibers from Asian Mulberry bushes.


They pounded raw materials into the proper consistency, mixed with formation agents and then poured their mixtures onto screens and into paper forms. They were asked to visualize ancient people, using simple tools and materials, pounding pulp on rocks, and allowing rainfall to texture and sculpt the final products.


One of their favorite projects involved Japanese style paper marbling as well as other ways of staining paper using bamboo brushes or dipping paper into dye and dripping pigment or dyed pulp onto the paper. The results were very gratifying. The marbling kits they used are available at Dick Blicks. These kits also happened to be included in our curriculum materials from Oak Meadow. It was wonderful for me to have seen this process in action, when we tackle the paper marbling project at home we will feel like old pros!


















Each student kept a journal throughout the course of the workshop in books they were given that were bound in beautiful sheets of handmade paper made by Yukie.

Yukie relinquished her opportunity to have her own work displayed at the DCCA in order to allow the kids in the workshop to exhibit their work in her place. Yukie was very creative about coming up with ways for the students to show off their works on paper. For the final exhibit the handcrafted papers were transformed into objects of art and utility or framed. The work was incorporated into floating frames and paperweights. The most dramatic of the final pieces were lamps shaded by sculptural sheets of paper, made in a Tibetan style of paper making. The thick paper sheets were bent around glass lamps transforming them into three dimensional glowing works of art.




















In the end the experience and the work was quite spiritual and really reflected the best of what involvement in the arts can be. We are very grateful to Yukie for giving so much of herself and her art and her craft to us all. And we are very grateful to Holly Bennet, education director at the DCCA for offering us homeschoolers this wonderful opportunity.