Emma's New School

Emma has been loving her new school here. Since they go all day 5 days a week she's has much more time for fun projects, field trips, and other activities. And although I'm still not entirely sure I like having her gone all day yet (I miss her too much!), it helps knowing she's having fun.

Last month I was able to accompany the kids on a field trip to a fun children's museum. The kids could have stayed for several more hours!

They've been doing different things with wood at school, and had a project to do at home. They needed to make something out of wood. That was the only instruction. They could do anything they wanted, but the kids needed to do most if not all of the work with minimal guidance and help from parents. Emma decided to make a Christmas tree. We got a stake and some thin wooden dowels, and some wooden stars. The only things we (Eric & I) did for this project were to help hold the dowel so Emma wouldn't get hurt while sawing it into the pieces, I taped the base of the tree so it wouldn't get the green spray paint on it, and Eric drilled the hole in the bottom in order to screw the stand to the tree. Emma did the measuring, sawing, glueing, painting, and even mostly put in the screw (Eric tightened it). We were right there while she did all this of course, but it really is mostly her work. It was very fun to see her mind working on this, and then for her to actually do it. It turned out darling, and will now be part of our holiday decorations each year.