Port Discovery & Lessons

School has started fairly smoothly, though Pearl expressed a preference for playing all day instead, like we did over Christmas.  On Tuesday this week we tried to combine school with some serious play by going to Port Discovery in Baltimore. 

It has a huge, three story jungle gym in the center, and the three floors have a variety of themed play rooms: diner (with child-level counters & stoves), a toddler play land, an art studio, an Egyptian dig site, and a Greek culture & myth display, which we had prepared for by rereading many myths. Pandora and Aphrodite are her favorites.

We hadn't thought about it ahead of time, but Port Discovery led to sensory overload for Ruby. Just after we got there, about three buses of school kids arrived, and the noise shot up.  Ruby enjoyed copying her sisters in the grocery store play area, but she slowly got stiller and stiller, and grabbed her washy tight. We headed out into the sunlight for a lunch break, and when we returned from touring the harbor the schoolkids left and she acclimated to the environment just fine. 

We had been keeping Ruby out of the 5-10 year old super jungle gym, but we relented, and it turns out she did just fine. The first time she came down the two story slide, she was giddy with joy. 

They tell me that slide and the bagels for lunch were their favorite.  Sapphire was able to compare it to the Hands on House in Lancaster, and said she preferred that smaller one.

We fit in a unit on Greek myths and culture before that trip. Otherwise, we are studying colonial living (Diane promises to have us over to learn how to feather or [de-feather?] a chicken). We are reading the Kaya American Girl books, which the older two both enjoy.

Our musical study has, perhaps, gone in a dangerous direction. I put in the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat soundtrack. Now Pearl won't stop singing the four lines she knows. I had to decide if I wanted to hear at least a whole song or just those four lines over...and over....and then Sapphire picked up about three of the lines, so it was decided. We watched the movie. Now they can sing bits of many of the songs. Maybe it is better this way.

Here's Pearl and her friend. They were *so* excited about the matching outfits.

For math Pearl is reviewing + and - facts, which are now called fact triangles. She likes to practice addition into the thousands as long as we stay away from subtraction.  I guess we'll get there eventually.  I found we also have to review fractions and other basics. There are so many things we have to review each day!

Finally, before I took down the Christmas decorations, I snapped a photo of our Jesse Tree. This was the first year we tried one, and it developed out of research I had done for the Christmas book.  We made our own decorations, hanging one on our tree each lunch or dinner.  Sapphire's favorite part was singing "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which we did each time. Ruby always insisted on holding the sheet music for it. Toddlers love rituals. 


A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
    the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
    the Spirit of counsel and of might,
    the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
 and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. --Isaiah 11:1-3

"red and yellow and green and brown and scarlet and black and ochre and peach and ruby and olive and violet and fawn..."