Wrapping Up School

I am so excited! School is almost over. I think I'm more excited than the boys are. I have so many plans and visions about what I'll do with my time off over the summer - baking, organizing, art with the boys, more baking, exploring, blogging, even more baking - copious amounts of BAKING!!!

The boys have been busy finishing up math and working on their final projects. They were tasked to research an animal of their choice and make a diorama of the animal's habitat. Ezra chose to do his project on black widows. Teo chose tigers.

The boys working on their animal reports.

We checked out some books from the library and the boys took notes while I read to them. Teo read some of his own books. 💖 Then we worked on their dioramas and their reports.



I think the boys had the most fun creating their animals. Mateo, of course, wanted no help. He created his tiger all on his own by rolling up orange paper that he had decorated with stripes. He used scotch tape to tape the parts together to form his tiger.



Ezra let me make suggestions for him and we worked together to glue some puff balls for the body and twisty ties for the legs onto a small round paper base to form his spider. Then he painted the whole thing black.



He also had a blast making a messy web with the glue gun. "Because black widows spin messy webs," he said. This was his first time using that coveted tool. It really made his day.



Mateo made grass and trees to add to his tiger habitat.

Ezra also made a bee trapped in the web for his black widow to dine on. He originally wanted to catch a real insect to put in there. I convinced him otherwise.

For the boys, these projects represent their own creativity, ideas, knowledge, and preferences. They are very proud of themselves and pleased with their projects - as they should be. For me, these projects represent the culmination of a year of hard work (on their part and mine), the amazing independent ideas of two sweet little boys come to life in recycled boxes, and the start of a much needed break from scheduled learning. 

We'll still learn over the course of the summer as we create together, bake together, explore together. It's just a different kind of learning - a restful and free-er kind of learning that happens on the fly - while we're exploring a new hiking trail, trying out a new recipe together to surprise Daddy for his birthday, stopping in at our local library to get books on camping or whatever topic is on the boys' minds that week, discussing what we know about rain forests over Sunday brunch at our favorite local restaurant. You know, on the fly. 😉