The Quarantine Chronicles || Chapter 8 - all of us

Yesterday for Cruz and Mila's at-home art class, we started a little project near and dear to their teacher's heart - photography!  Since it was the first warm and sunny day of our quarantine, I knew it would feel so good to get outside and go for a hike at one of our favorite places.  But before we left, I taught them a photography skill known as perspective.  We talked about how we can use pictures to show different perspectives.  They now know why I stand like a weirdo on the bench behind them and take an aerial shot anytime we do a puzzle or a paint project. ;)  We talked about how we might change the perspective of an image by how we choose to angle our shot or where we choose to put our subject.  Then we thumbed through family photo books and shared good examples of different perspectives we found.

   

Then out to the woods we went, cameras in hand.  We had a wonderful afternoon breathing in the fresh air, getting some exercise, and exploring the first signs of spring popping up all over the woods.  The kids stopped to take pictures often and it was sweet to see the things they wanted to capture.  Then we all became quite lost in a little pond filled with frogs before ending our adventures at our favorite little spot we've affectionately named, Lake Honeybee.

I knew our little photography lesson wouldn't stop there.  Today, we went through their photos and they picked 3-4 of their favorites to print.  We made a little gallery on the wall and have been using their photos all week to work on things like writing with descriptive words and how we can show a scene or a story instead of just telling exactly what happened.  It's been so fun to see the writing process unfold as we write sentences and then rework them to better paint a picture for our readers.  I've been writing along with them and we thought it'd be fun to share our collaborative piece together.    

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While the world felt crazy, the woods stayed the same. 

The toads were still croaking and the birds were still chirping. We followed the sounds of the croaking while Mila and Dad collected shells.  As we inched nearer to the bank of the water, all of a sudden the croaking stopped.  We heard nothing but the wind in the trees above us.  But then, the frogs decided to play a game with their music.  They'd start their croaking, but then stop every time we'd get close.  We jumped over log after log trying to spot one and just when we did they would jump, too!  Only their jump would make a splash!  Every now and then, we'd spot one, camouflaged and slimy, its eyes bulging in every direction, quietly waiting for its opportunity to leap into the water out of sight.  

Soon enough, we headed to our secret island called, Lake Honeybee.  Mila and I sat down and sank our feet in the small beach right by the lake where we had hot cocoa at Christmas. We looked at all the names carved on our favorite tree and talked about what it will look like in the summer when it would grow its leaves and the forest would wake up. 🌴🌳🌲 

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Mila also wanted to be part of the blog this week so we used her week's sight words sent from her teacher and she had to write topic-related sentences to describe our day in the woods.  She did so great and was very focused.  Quite a bit more focuse

d than her older brother, who I've affectionately called Hyena this week.  Let's just say there have been a few times this week when I felt more like a big cat tamer in a zoo than a home-school teacher!

(Mila's story, with a few minor edits): We had a fun day!  We climbed on a log to spy on some frogs.  We played at the lake.  Did you hear me say, look at the trees?  We looked up and down.  Then we got snail shells.