California Field Trip #3: The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose

It took a trip to California to really bring our study of Ancient Egypt to life. The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, right in San Jose, boasts an absolutely epic collection of Egyptian artifacts, and that's where we and the girls' grandpa spent one very happy morning:

I bought the girls these little "passports" that had questions and activities for the various exhibits, and stamps to collect in all the galleries. It was just the thing to keep the younger kid occupied and engaged--

--while the older kid and I shared an audio tour (it's a free download!):

Isis with Osiris' coffin, just like in The Story of the World!

Matt reckons that their Egyptian tomb recreation is an even more elaborate version of the one in the Children's Museum of Indianapolis--there aren't that many pristinely-preserved tombs to recreate, you know:

Look--cuneiform! We've read about it, we've copied it, we've downloaded images of it and pasted them on our timeline, but this is the first time that we've seen it in real life:

And as a counterpoint... look--papyrus!!!

California sunshine? It's verra bright.

giant Senet

 The girls gained a ton of valuable context to our studies here, and I got some more great ideas and great inspiration:

Model pyramids! Kid-made Senet games! Home-sewn Egyptian costumes! Mythology skits!

I'm more sure than ever that we will NEVER move beyond Ancient Egypt in our history studies, sigh.

California Field Trip #2: San Francisco

San Francisco in the winter is SO much nicer than San Francisco in the summer. If you go to San Francisco in the summer you'll freeze your butt off, but in the winter it's gorgeous and pleasant--often foggy, but it IS San Francisco...

We didn't even have the fog on this winter visit, which included all our favorite traditions, first of which is always a nice lunch with the extended family in one of the many seafood restaurants on the piers. We didn't do oysters this year, but both girls were nevertheless adventurous eaters--Will had rock fish, and tasted her Uncle Carlos' baby squid tentacles, and Syd ate a calamari "steak" sandwich. Yum!

After lunch, while the rest of the family shopped, we strolled past Boudin, of course--

This baker, unlike last year's, didn't *really* want to be in the show window, and stoutly ignored us as she worked. After she finished this crab, however, she lifted it up to show the audience, as she'd been trained to, and Syd burst into applause. The baker smiled in spite of herself.

 --where we bought the girls a sourdough sea turtle each, of COURSE, and then went to pay homage to the sea lions. Of course.

Pier 39 is SO touristy, but it does have fun, festive things to pose in front of:

Matt laughed at me because after I took this photo, a strange couple handed me their iphone and asked me to take a photo of them, too. They wanted a boring old front shot, but you can't see the TREE that way(!!!), so I insisted on lying back down on the ground and getting this exact same shot of them.

After this, the family picked us up, drove us over by Crissy Field, and then went off shopping again. We did a little more looking around--

The girls were unimpressed with Alcatraz--until I told them that this is also where Azkaban is!

--and then did some climbing and jumping and digging and running while the sun set:

And that's what you call a full afternoon in San Francisco!

California Field Trip #1: Mission Santa Clara

I have many opinions about the California missions, and it's definitely one concrete case of the victors writing the history books, but nevertheless, missions are a notable feature of the state of California, and so explore one, we did:

Will and I talked about the generalities of missionaries, religious faith and superstition, the destruction and conversion of native peoples, etc., without going into the sordid details of the public floggings, work crews, mule stealing (and eating!), and a priest/prophet that typify the history of the Mission Santa Clara de Asis, but we also all took the time to explore, absorb, and study the architecture and design of the building and grounds:

Look, a reliquary and relic! As a former medieval scholar, I had MUCH to say about this, as well.

 

hole in the wall

 

This visit turned out to have been quite a successful one when, the next day, as we were driving around town, Will pointed out the window at a school (Matt's former high school, I do believe) and declared, "Hey! That looks like the mission!"

Yep, mission-style. We got it down.

P.S. Here are some of the resources on the California missions and Catholic saints that we've been using:


Saints and Angels offers an interesting tangent to the mission study, since the saints that the missions are named after have fascinating (and often fascinatingly gruesome!) stories of their own. Life in a California Mission is as close to a children's living history as I could get--it discusses the daily life of the people involved, at least. And The Birth of a State: California Missions DOES include the very problematic conversion activities of the missionaries, but in matter-of-fact, declarative sentences that make it a little easier to stomach.

All My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: The Post-Vacation Catch-up Edition

Here's what I worked my butt off to write and schedule so that I didn't have to take a break from eating pie:

a tutorial for art dice made from wooden cubes 

a tutorial for our travel journals from brown paper bags, manila envelopes, and handwriting paper

and a tutorial for pumpkins carved with autumn leaves (a great seasonal natural project!)

and finally, a tutorial for personalizing greeting cards using Scrabble tiles

And that brings us back to business as usual! I'm keeping this week as a vacation week for the girls (bonus to homeschooling year-round is that no matter your state's attendance rules, you have AMPLE days extra for vacations), both to let them decompress from the fun and get back into an east coast sleep schedule, and because I have a pile of etsy orders to catch up on.

It's hard to believe that after this, we'll only have two weeks of regular schedule before we're off again!

On Vacation

Look where we are!

We'll see you back in Indiana!

Apples at Anderson Orchard

We finally made it to the apple orchard! Our belated adventure was made much better by the fact of the unseasonably beautiful November day, and the presence of Matt, experiencing his inaugural trip.

Turns out that Daddy has his uses!

Have you ever seen a bigger apple?

Syd actually took this excellent photo of us. It's probably been 18 months since our last photo together.

Matt took this photo of me. I'm always pleasantly surprised when someone wants to take my camera and put ME in a shot!

This is what Will's hair looks like in direct sunlight. Spun gold, I tell her.

An entire enormous haystack to play upon, and *this* is what they decide to do for fun.

All that happiness in the day, AND we came home with two bushels of apples.