Tuesday Morning

Do you want to know the absolute best time to go to the beach... when it is completely empty -- not another person in sight for hours -- and when it is not sweaty, uncomfortably sticky-hot but lovely, perfectly comfortably warm? I'll tell you. It's Tuesday morning at 9 o'clock. We had a lovely morning! The kids played and played and I hung out on my new towel in my new bathing suit and relaxed. It was amazing to watch them. They filled their pails with water and scooped sand into them (Leah was sprinkling sand on her water and making hot chocolate -- Natalie was vigorously mixing things together to make silly putty), they ran races in the sand, they picked up sticks, they picked up trash and brought it to me, they found some abandoned sand castles and promptly sat on them (squishing them flat) and pretended that they were cars and drove all around, they took shells and decorated their "cars", they splashed in the waves, they kicked sand around, they buried their feet... it was great! I especially loved how they demolished the sand castles. Of course, the stereotype is that children use their beach pails to make castle after castle in the sand, just like a little postcard. Not my kids! Why have it be a castle when, with a little imagination, you can make it something else? I'm going to try to take them to the Bay as much as possible between now and the 4th of July because June is the only really pleasant month, when the water is warm enough to go into but the dreaded jellyfish have not yet arrived. Once the jellyfish are here, we avoid the beach completely. The kids aren't able to look out for them in the water, and you can also get stung very easily walking on stranded ones up on the sand.

My plan for today was beach in the AM, then lunch and naps, and then our farm pick-up. But I forgot that we are starting a new unit today... Insects. Now, those of you who know me know that I already wrote an Insects unit (you can find it on my website) to do with Natalie, but this time I am trying Gini Newcomb's version (A Guide for the Montessori Classroom: Summer). We are jumping right into week two instead of starting at week one. I went a week long on our Plants unit and, since her plans are organized to include ideas for the calendar holidays, I don't have much choice but to come into this unit late. I want to be on track for the Father's Day and Summer Solstice suggestions. By skipping week one we are missing the following insects: wasp, termite, ant, praying mantis, walking stick, grasshopper, cricket, dragonfly & water strider; as well as how insects build their homes, what makes an insect an insect, the parts of an insect, and how true insects eat. Whew! She covers a lot!

Week two begins with ladybugs, which is perfect for me because that's the insect I wanted to begin with. We will read Are You a Ladybug? when the kids get up from their nap and see if we find any at the farm. When we come home, her handwork suggestion is that we make Father's Day Lunch invitations to present Steve with when he comes home from work. I have 24 boxes of Strathmore Watercolor Paper notecards because they were on clearance at Michael's (10 cards and envelopes for just 50 cents!) and I bought all that they had. So we can do watercolor paintings for our invitations. Her lunch menu is Stone Soup with bread and butter, which we will make on Friday and Saturday, leading up to the big meal.


Tomorrow I'd like to put up our Ladybug Ranch (which I bought for the last insects unit but never used -- it is still new in the box) and take the kids out to buy a rosebush which we can plant underneath it. Then the unit suggests that we move on to butterflies. I have a beautiful wooden butterfly house already set up in the yard and I have some lavender seeds for us to plant underneath it. I also have the Butterfly Pavilion from our Insects unit before (we did do that part, hatching the live butterflies. It's amazing!) and I saved it because you can contact the company to buy additional Painted Lady caterpillars for just $15.00. Actually, if I had been more organized I would have done that in advance, but instead I'll just order them next time I get a donation for the website. :-) I think it'll be okay. The kids aren't likely to forget what a butterfly is between the time that we "study" them bookwise and when the larvae arrive and hatch in our home.

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