“I” driven learning:

darla chose I for this week. i lucked out again since both st. patrick’s day and the ides of march fell during our time frame. well, the weeks are getting pretty sloppy and i think this might have been 8 days but whatevs.

ice was also a very versatile subject for us. we did our ice cream visit to jeni’s, made ice cubes with food coloring – an idea from jamie – and talked about ice in the arctic as it relates to polar bears. we saw the polar bears at the zoo and scoped them out a bit more in friends’ magazine. darla is pretty distressed by the fact that the polar ice caps are melting and the polar bear population is declining.

mike has been sailing around the south pacific islands so we looked all those up on the globe and then darla drew a picture of her “dream island” which she said didn’t really consist of anything besides pink trees.

for the ides of march i tried to get the kids to say “et tu, brute” to each other all day but do you know what 3 year olds don’t like to speak? Latin.

and of course the st. patrick’s day celebration was lots of fun and useful. we learned about ireland, watched the secret of kells, had irish inspired snacks i.e. irish cheddar – lazy mom – and we made four leaf clovers. i asked her to list four things she felt lucky to have in her life and her list is as follows: lipstick, crayons, glow worms, and her bunny. hmmm. her lipstick is actually chapstick and the bunny, incidentally, is not even hers. i may have to do a more thorough job of teaching her our blessings. for mine i listed family, friends, health and music. she made me write her name out underneath family because she proclaimed she needed her own spot. quite right, but i did point out to her that i didn’t even place above glow worms in her heart. such is the life of a mom.

darla is with her grandparents this weekend so i’m going to take the opportunity to recharge and come back with more dedication to education this upcoming week. we did start on G today – she picked it out but universe helped me with the start of gymnastics today and her visit to grandparents.