Creativity In Many Forms

 When you think of creativity, it could mean art or maybe drama. Maybe you think of someone writing a song. Maybe a creative story? Oh and there is dance! You have to admit... it comes in many forms. If we just let those creative juices flow naturally when they emerge, who knows what could happen. I think that living without school, my kids get more creative freedom in their lives. I can't even share everything here that they do creatively. Their lives are rich with it because they have much more free time compared to the kids who need to stay in their seat at school. My kids dance, act out plays, dress-up, play games they invented, and the list goes on.This is a picture on a table cloth at a restaurant, drawn by Zoe.

 This is a tattoo she did on my arm. 

 This is her taking pictures at a hockey game. I must say that her clothes were also creative that day.

Everyone is creative in some way or another, even if we don't realize it. Some of us are more on the expressive, artistic end of the creativity spectrum (Zoe) and others are on the more innovative/scientific end of it. This is Austyn taking video of snow melting on the deck. It sounds so simple, but I have to agree with him! It looked REALLY COOL!!

A Coyote?!

One day we came home from the library on a quiet afternoon and my son was startled to see a coyote crossing the empty lot across the street. It stopped and looked right at him. He was afraid that it would come at us, but it turned and ran away. When he alerted me, I just barely saw it as it disappeared behind a house further into our subdivision. There seem to be many of them around. There are stories of people seeing them at parks trying to get their dogs. I don't remember it being this way before. There must be an abundance of them this winter. We decided to run out and find the tracks from the coyote we saw. Apparently they run in a very straight line, have tracks about 18 inches apart and there are protruding claws at the front of each track. This is a picture of one of the tracks we found.When I FaceBooked it my hunting friends confirmed what it was. Otherwise, I'd just assume (if I didn't see the animal) that it was dog tracks.

Lesson Pathways has some great links on coyotes. Check it out HERE if you have a free account with them. I really like their site and use it often enough. I also like that it's free!

Book Sharing Monday - Eat Like a Dinosaur

 I admit that I've not read this whole book. I haven't even tried any recipes in it, yet. I just want to let everyone know about it, because it looks like a great book to have if you are deciding to go gluten-free with kids. This was found in the children's section of our library.

 It starts off with a story about a family who are going gluten-free and what their experience is like when doing it.

It then has a large section of recipes that are all gluten-free.

A Word Window

I learned about a word window at a homeschool meeting a few years ago. When children are learning to read, sometimes they become overwhelmed when they see all of the words or just big words. A way to get around this is to use a word window. That is what I call it anyway. I'm not sure what official name it may have. What it is is a bookmark that you cut a rectangular square out of the middle that would be the length and height that would fit around a regular sized word. Zoe uses this sometimes. Ours is made from a foam sheet so it feels smooth, comfortable, and maybe even a bit more fun than just using a regular piece of paper. With a word window she can focus on each word without being overwhelmed by all of the other words around it. It helps the child to focus on each word until they get more comfortable doing it on their own.