Cardboard Cathedral part II

 

 This is an example of several things:
1-A Medieval Cathedral with flying buttresses, stained glass, and transverse architecture.
2-A creation I was way more into than my kids were.
3-A school project I can drop, unfinished, without any guilt while the fun is fading.

 

But it was still fun.

Here are some of the pieces before I hot glued them together:

 

 

Tower

 

 

Side and buttresses; these were simply stuck into the slits I cut in the sides. They didn't even touch the ground and were what I like to think of as a truer flying buttress.

 

 A detail of the Bible stories in the windows (Noah's Ark, David & Goliath, Moses and the staff/snake)

 

People going to church above the "cat rooms where the dead people are."

That's catacombs, dear, and those are the columns in between.

 

And a view from above. It's a lot simpler than it looks, glued in only 7 places. I just realized I had scored the top half of the walls and was going to hot glue them to a peak...maybe it will happen before the dumpster recycling bin, maybe not...

 

 

Night Heron of the Morning

9am
Local Park
Spring has Sprung!

Such a noticeable difference in the sounds of the place now. Bird calls everywhere, getting worms, mating, building nests. No tropical jungle, but for here, a big difference. Just a week after the trees have blossomed.

So we go the wetland boardwalk, and at the beginning I see this white reflection. We creep up on this never before seen bird and watch it fly from the water to a tree and sit to watch us.

Mockingbird decided to name it a Blue Fisher even though we later learned it was a Black-capped Night Heron. I love that name, I must think of someone I can name that...it sounds so tidy yet mysterious.

Last time we went we saw the pond's muskrat for the first time swim the entire length of the pond.
It's just thrilling to me that a place you frequent weekly for three years can still hold so much to be discovered.

Charlotte Mason is like that for me. Layers and layers of knowledge and connections to be discovered. I think that is what I love most about her approach- letting the student discover it and make it their own. Not something introduced to you to the point that all mystery and personal investment is obliterated.

On a Wild Turkey Chase

Not chicken scratch, turkey tracks. About two weeks apart, we discovered a flock of 40 turkeys in the same section of Alpine Loop. A recent snowfall made it a lot cooler than we were prepared for-the valley-dwellers that we are.

 

 

But finding this flock was worth it. The Tom strutted blue & red faced out in the middle of the road and their tracks were easier to photograph than they were...

 

Still, it's fun to see something so very wild, just living naturally. There's just something so exciting about finding something in the world that has always been there, yet never personally witnessed on this scale before. This  South Carolina Cooperative Extension website was very informative on them. In the flock we saw only one mature Tom, but there must have been more as this was a winter flock still banded together. (Tom tail up in left third of picture between 2 trees)

Cardboard Cathedral part I

When Bowery Bird was in Y2 we made cardboard castle. There are catapults and crossbows and all kinds of other instructions for Middle Ages stuff to be made by kids. But it all looked too complicated. But I'm not an engineer, I'm an artist. Maybe when I have a boy in Y2. This go around we are making a cathedral. Easy, right? We had friends over today to help/distract us, depending on the time.

I looked up simple floor plans and images to remind myself what they actually look like, then started cutting. The girls enjoyed making stain-glass windows on tracing paper with color pencils.

Here is the nave and a flying buttress (patent pending). So it's just stuck in with a slit between windows and is in fact, really flying in this picture...I scored the upper half above the windows to fold over making a steep roof when connected with the other side. The slit at the end of the nave is where the folds come out for the transept, or crossbeam of the cross in the cathedral floor plan.

 

This is my favorite part so far. 7y/o Mockingbird did the catacombs. This is just a flat piece that goes below. So there are the color-pencil gardens around the cathedral, and then the buried king, saint, lady, and knight in their tombs below. I was thinking we could open their coffins and see something surprising inside, but this idea never came up. I think it is only because the boys all went to play elsewhere...otherwise it would have only been a matter of time... Then there are "stairs" above.

 

 

We watched this film just before I pulled out the cardboard pieces and assigned parts to work on. It is an older movie, I think geared toward children. It's all very appropriate but quite cerebral.

Cathedral is an animated story where a fictitious cathedral is being built little by little interspersed with two guides taking us to actual cathedrals in Europe to show us relics, gargoyles, windows, and other unique bits about cathedrals. I think it was worthwhile, but I didn't make them finish it, a lot is learned in any part of it, and I was starting to see the squirming surface from the six on the sofa so...we had lunch.

We'll finish it later.

SLC Book Sale scores

Another Awesome Salt Lake City Library Sale!
This time Bowery Bird came with me and found The Song of Robin Hood (gorgeous), several Nancy Drew, and a Paper, Scissors, Sculpt (inspiring).
I was able to score Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples for a mere $8, Dictionary of Ships, DK World War II, some Janson art books, Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, and several BSA Merit Badge booklets, Beatrix Potter stories on 4 cds, and too many paperbacks.
I even made it patiently past the man purchasing hundreds of books--they brought in a cart for him-as in Costco dolly.
I was there 2 hours and felt a little rushed-it's that big, and was that good this go-round. Can't wait for next time now that I've paid my $15 membership fee.