One of the perils of reading too many blogs by homeschoolers is that we often write about our best ideas and our best days. Too much of that, and you can easily start to feel as if everybody is doing a better job than you are.
I'm going to contribute to the problem today by announcing that, in the middle of what has seemed like a month of half-finished, half-completed plans, a day finally came that was one of those bright spots, the "this is why we homeschool" moments. Nothing dramatic; but after having read and discussed medieval China and the voyages of Marco Polo yesterday, I woke up this morning with the idea of going to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see the China galleries.
While I fed the kids oatmeal, I told them my plans, and warned them we wouldn't stay long. The MIA is in the same part of town as our house. We drove there, checked the coats, checked the turned-out-to-be-forbidden sling and got a stroller ("Um… do you think you can ride in this, MJ?" "Yes!" she shouted. So exciting), and went straight to the China galleries. I had brought a sketchbook and art pencil for each child, and we went around looking at the bowls and ewers and iron horses and lacquered boxes. Milo was the first to find something he wanted to draw, a bronze altar vessel; I made him sit on the floor, gave him his pencil, and let him draw (took the pencil away before he stood up—no five-year-old pencil-wielders in the art museum.)
Oscar and Milo wandered and paused and sketched and pointed, and Mary Jane wiggled her feet and scribbled in her notebook. I pointed out a bronze Pi Disc:
and she drew it, a little penciled doughnut, her first still life.
Oscar drew many things, and had to be dragged away from some as he added final details. That's life when you've got two younger siblings to keep happy.
We left before anyone could get tired or antsy and had lunch in a Chinese restaurant before heading home. What a pleasant morning.
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