29 January 2009

Welcome February

Before we say so~long to you, January, I'd like to show you a project O and I have been working on.
We discovered Blue Yonder's Book of Days. Below is an short explanation taken from her blog:

"The Book of Days is a monthly journal of mindful experiences, natural pursuits, yummy recipes, and science experiments. It is meant to be a simple way to make family time fun."

It's in our plans to home-school and since I've got a very curious and experimental child on my hands we have taken things to the next level.

Through finding Blue Yonder's Book of Days we have started journaling, experimenting, drawing and creating.

Not that we weren't doing all these things before, for us, it's a new level of schooling and bit more focused, with a little more of a curriculum, if you will.

So, without further ado......here is our Book of Days for January.......

I wanted to be able to keep these books for many years to come.
And to make it more special and add our own touch we put the printed pages in a folder, adding a blank page in between BY's pages for O to add his own words or drawings.
The folder also having pockets made it easy for O to add any goodies he might want to add.

On small sheets of thick drawing paper, O made paintings of snow, mountains, and animals, for each page of the book. Really owning his book of Winter in January.

Here is our egg experiment on it's first day. We put an egg in a jar and covered it with white vinegar.....O watched and watched it. We have recorded our findings in the pages of our
January journal.

You can see here the bubbles on the egg as it started eating away at the outer layer of the egg. When we shook up the jar a little, you could see that the egg had begun to get softer, there wasn't the sound of an egg on the glass.
And the egg below you can really start to see the egg shell dissolving.

I think this is the 4th day of the egg experiment. The outer shell has dissolved and and when held against the light you can see the yolk inside. How cool! We plan to go outside and pour out the egg to see how soft it really is, but dang....it's too cold out there! Soon though, for sure.

Each page of the book is decorated with lovely art from Blue Yonder.

She really adds so many beautiful details to the little people, animals, trees and nature scenes.

Above, O drew garland going straight into the little birds mouth. Inspired by her little birds, we set outside to string some popcorn, raisins and cranberries garland for the birds.

O's red cardinal above. Also for the month of January we have decided to work with only one color. O picked ReD this month, so you might can tell that everything he painted, drew or write is in red.

Our January Book of Days has inspired us to slow down and realize the living around us, it has encouraged us to try new things and has embedded a spark of creativity for future months.

I hope to reflect imagination within our space with each month.....so here's to February!

ps Thank you Stefani for your inspiration.....you can find out more about how to obtain your own monthly book here.

1 comment:

  1. I love this project...that cardinal of O's was actually really good, geometrically speaking...thanks for sharing Ansley.

    We're back from England now.

    ---Erin---

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