greenfield academy

Spontaneous Education

What happens when you give boys pattern blocks with no direction? In fact what happens when you give a boy pattern blocks in a bucket on an accessible shelf?

They create the sun.

They make an Asteroid Belt complete with a dwarf planet.

And they find a way for Saturn to have rings.

Behold the Solar System

I’m not sure who started this project. I walked in towards the end of the solar system. Jr. added a moon to Earth. But it was Lil’B who made Saturn. We all still include poor demoted Pluto way out on the end. I grabbed a few more pictures which I’ll try to upload to flickr later. One of them has Lil’B's “shapeships” which are exploring the solar system though to be honest it sounded more like they were waging a space battle!

Author name:: Bobbi
Publish date:: April 15th, 2009

Random

For Earth Hour we shut off our lights and painted our solar system. Here you see pluto and neptune.
The boys would like to note that “Pluto is the one that got demoted.”

Chesskers anyone? Lil’B playing “his way”.

Well those are almost real smiles instead of the “picture smiles” they’ve been giving me lately.

Grace in Small Things #75 – The Goslings Arrived Early Edition!

1. My dear hubby still being at home when the post office called in the early morning to say “your chicks are here”

2. Enough pre-planning for their arrival that we only had a few hours of scrambling to get things in the “ready” state.

3. The look on the boys’ face the first time they seen the new baby geese.

4. Our bathroom! It’s heat lamp and the electric heat of the house kept our unexpected arrivals warm until we had everything set.

5. Gramps who was a big help in getting things moved/shuffled toot-sweet!

Author name:: Bobbi
Publish date:: April 9th, 2009

National Poetry Month

What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than with some of my favorite Poets!

30 Poets 30 Days!

I almost swooned when I read through the post at GottaBook! I can’t tell you how excited I am to share this with the boys. Several of the participating Poets are ones we have familiarity with via our fall Poetry Club.

A serendipitously, wonderful way to celebrate National Poetry Month with my boys!

From GottaBook:

Every day in April, I’ll be posting a previously unpublished poem by a different poet. Here’s the alphabetical list of who’s participating:

Arnold Adoff, Jaime Adoff, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Douglas Florian, Betsy Franco, Kristine O’Connell George, Charles Ghigna, Nikki Giovanni, Joan Bransfield Graham, Nikki Grimes, Mary Ann Hoberman, Lee Bennett Hopkins, X. J. Kennedy, Julie Larios, J. Patrick Lewis, Pat Mora, Kenn Nesbitt, Linda Sue Park, Ann Whitford Paul, Gregory K. Pincus, Jack Prelutsky, Adam Rex, Jon Scieszka, Joyce Sidman, Marilyn Singer, April Halprin Wayland, Janet Wong, and Jane Yolen.

Read the whole post here!

Author name:: Bobbi
Publish date:: March 23rd, 2009