Journal entry—orioles

Glinda of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (our reviews)

This was the last Oz book written by Baum. He died shortly after writing it, and I wonder if perhaps some of it was even finished by another writer, because in places it sure felt like he was filling space by repeating facts and introductions well known to all Oz fans, and never before revisited. But that really didn't take away from the book much, it just made for some pages I would have skimmed quickly if I hadn't been reading it out loud. Otherwise, I'm still very in love with this series, and worried about how that might change when we read our first non-Baum written book next.

Journal entries—Tulip Time vacation

More about our trip can be found on the main page, and pictures can be found both there and in the Tulip Time photo album. These, however, were some of his favorite, or at least noteworty, moments from the trip.

5-12-11

5-13-11

5-14-11

Egyptian volcanoes

It has been a really long time since I shared any of Calvin's art, or really anything at all in this space other than book reviews. I wish I could say that was just a matter of not posting, but actually we haven't done much art as of late—we've been reading a lot of and playing make-believe, but other than that we've been outside and most of our activities have just been general day to day things that I've written about in the journal. I've been trying to sort out how I'll use this space on the site now that I use the journal space so much more, and so much more inclusively. Right now it's becoming mostly a book review site, and we're even in a transition on that front. Now that Calvin reads so much more on his own we are going through our read alouds more slowly and in the past I've only asked him to write reviews on the read alouds. Though we usually talk about the books he's read after he finishes them, and sometimes he still reads to me, he's not excessively fond of writing reviews so I haven't asked him to do so more often than before. So that leaves us with the weekly bookshelf post, lots of my own book reviews, and a handful of Calvin's for right now. But I have other plans in the works. I think we just go in spurts, that's all.

And today Calvin has some art to share. He specifically asked for these to be posted here. These drawings are a result of a rediscovery of the Egyptian hieroglyph stamps and a still active fascination with volcanoes. Note his creation of hieroglyphs for "volcano" and "dangerous lava", or so he tells me they mean.

Arbor Day sketches

Yesterday being Arbor Day we did a lot of talking about trees—about how they invite wildlife to our yard, about how they provide us with shade, about how they clean our air and beautify our space—and we did a lot of looking at trees, too, so we decided to try sketching them. With lead and colored pencils in hand we set up our chairs in the front yard and started sketching. In her illustrated version of Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, Susan Jeffers wrote about growing up with her artist mother, about learning from a young age that shadows are not simply black, that the tea kettle on the stove was not a solid color after all, the reflection in it not merely a rectangle. What we actually see is difficult to commute onto our paper, and to get started we first have to see. To actually see. We talked about shapes—is a tree really a ball on a stick? We talked about colors—is a trunk really brown? I haven't sketched like that since my days of wildlife observation in college, but it was something I always loved and it felt special to share it. We had a good time.