The Cloisters 08.27.09

We took a field trip to the Cloisters (http://www.metmuseum.org/cloisters) today. Another homeschooling mom organized a one hour architecture of the middle ages tour. We went with some friends of ours and it was tons of fun. Here are the kids posing at a scenic overlook at Fort Tyron Park where the museum is located. You can just see the George Washington Bridge behind B's head.

Outside the entrance. We are about to meet up with the group.

In one of the Cloisters the kids were learning how the tops of the columns told a story. What were Chinese dragons doing on the top of a French column you may wonder. Turns out this monastery was on a trade route with the Orient.

You can learn a lot from dead people. Here we were finding out how to look for clues as to who this person was and what kind of job he had.

One of the 7 famous Unicorn Tapestries. You see them in the books but you don't realize just how large they are.

The Girls were feeling meditative in the Cloister. They really liked the idea of sitting and feeling nature around you.

Planning, planning, planning

School will be starting for us in a couple of weeks and I am still in the process of outlining our school year. I achieved a new level of geekdom when I squealed with delight this morning because my order from Rainbow Resource will be arriving today.

I will be going through our science and history books to make sure I have the supplies needed on hand. Last year I would occasionally skip that step and ended up scrambling. Not pretty. I am trying to get a handle on it for this year.

In some ways we have started school already. Puberty has been a big topic of discussion. B has been reading What's Happening to me? and It's perfectly normal. I really like these books. They cover just about everything. And I mean everything. If you do not have the liberal secular view on sex and what is okay that I have-these are probably not the books for you. This way he reads the books and then we can discuss any questions he has (or better yet-he can talk to his father. As I explained to him-I am glad to discuss with him but I don't have the equipment and don't really know what he is feeling). M has been reading The Care and Keeping of You and It's so amazing. A story about eggs, sperm, and families. The Care and Keeping of you discusses all those girl questions you wanted to know and were afraid to ask. It's so amazing covers reproduction and some puberty basics about boys and girls. It is the book that comes before It's perfectly normal.

Trip to Philadelphia

Here we are about to leave for our we
ek-end in Philly! Star Trek Exhibit here we come.










I took these while stuck in traffic on the Turnpike. I held the camera over my shoulder and snapped the pic all the while hoping a child would be in the shot. I got lucky. BTW, you should not take photos while driving.







Look at the cool banner at the Franklin Institute. Hubby was very excited. He is such a Trekkie. Okay, I thought it was kind of cool, too..

A giant sculpture of Ben Franklin greets you as you enter the Institute.



Engage! The exhibit was fun. They had an assortment of costumes from all the series. A replica of the Next Generation Bridge. And lots of fun space facts and series facts. For example: The phrase "Beam me up, Scotty." has never been said by a single character in the series.

Check out engineering.

There was also tons of other stuff to see. We walked through the heart, found out how much blood we had in our bodies, watched some open heart surgery, trains, space command, sports, and B rode the Sky Bike.

Enjoy this little video clip of M being a human gyroscope.

We also checked out the Galileo Exhibit. I think I was the only one who was really excited to see Galileo's telescope but they all agreed it was cool. So much was happening in the arts and the sciences during that time. Fascinating. At least to me. Hubby, being so tall, was able to look down through the telescope. The kids were able to bend down low enough to look up through the telescope. I looked at the telescope.

No trip to Philly is compete without cheese steak. This time we tried Tony Luke's. Absolutely fantastic. Way better then the place we went to last time. We ended the trip with a stop at the Reading Terminal Market. It was a lot of fun. We had lunch and enjoyed the Dixie Land Band.