Crafty Book Review: Once Upon a Piece of Paper

Although for most of the year Matt gives the children art lessons as part of our weekend time together, the early part of the year is NOT conducive to this--this morning, for example, he took the younger kid to ballet, then while she's there he's going to swing by the Girl Scout office and pick up another 900+ Girl Scout cookies, then go pick up the kid and take her straight to a cookie booth with another Girl Scout at the mall for two hours, then come home for two hours, then take both kids over to the next town over for a three-hour cookie booth, then drive home, get home around 10 pm, and put the kids straight to bed because we have another cookie booth at 10 am tomorrow. Meanwhile, the older kid is having some leisure time this morning before joining everyone for this evening's booth, and I am going to write this blog post and then spend the next twelve hours sewing the younger kid's  Trashion/Refashion Show garment. And then I'm going to figure out the wattage of a strand of Christmas lights so I can do the math to calculate how many batteries I'll need to run them (don't let me forget to adjust for an 80% efficiency rate) so the younger kid can wear them as part of her garment. And then I'm gonna go make that happen.

You can see that we're a tad too busy this month for a leisurely afternoon of art instruction, so I've been intentionally incorporating experiential art lessons, the kind that are more focused on creativity than technique, into our school weeks. We've been getting an especial amount of use out of Once Upon a Piece of Paper, which I was given for free by a publicist. It doesn't intimidate the older kid, since it doesn't focus on drawing by hand (which she wrongly thinks that she's bad at), and it offers the scope for imagination that inspires the younger kid to go all-out in the crazy-detailed way that she enjoys.

We've made some of the projects more elaborate than the book asks for them to be, simply because they're so fun. This project, for instance, was simply meant to be a quick pass across three or so surfaces, to teach us that groupings often look very nice--

--but I pulled out some small canvases that I purchased at some time or other, and then we somehow all got really invested in our work. Instead of one quick swath of paint, the younger kid layered and overlapped and added many, many, MANY swaths--

--and that treasure trove of National Geographics that we scored at the public library's last book sale came in very handy, indeed:

  The kids both really ran with the process and ended up with some super cool results:

We got so invested in doing the project our own way that we completely forgot to even peek into the pad of collage paper that comes with the book. Both kids remembered it for the ice cream project, though:

The project was mostly about making interesting and unusual paper combinations, and seeing how surprisingly well they tend to work together (using ice cream cones for this is pretty brilliant, because it turns out that EVERYTHING looks cute as an ice cream cone!), but the younger kid added an entire narrative to hers, and those awesome collage people?

She has never made anything like that before! I really love the woman at the top--the younger kid wants the red piece to be hair, but I think it looks exactly like a scarf. The younger kid also doesn't think that the blue figure at the bottom looks like a robot at ALL, but I do, and it cracks me up that there's a robot just casually downing some ice cream with all the other folks.

Considering that my goal for each art lesson is for the older kid to feel comfortable and confident being creative, and for the younger kid to learn a new skill or technique, I'd have to say that we didn't do too shabbily even without our Husband/Father Artist-in-Residence to guide us!

Homeschool Math: How to Model the Pythagorian Theorem with the Decanomial Square

Neither kid has yet studied the Pythagorean theorem in math, but they DID both study Pythagoras a couple of weeks ago, and what better way to bring him to life than to model his most famous theorem?

And fortunately, if you focus on the Pythagorean triples, the Pythagorean theorem is also actually really easy to model, and quite accessible to even a younger learner. To two kids who've studied area, square numbers, and triangles, it's a snap!

First, of course, you need to build the decanomial square. Notice that the kid starts with the square, then adds the matching pieces in descending order:

When those are all placed, she finds the next largest square and carries on:

It's also good to model your work on gridded centimeter paper. This makes the translation between model and equation much clearer:

Find the square whose side matches side a. That square is a squared. The square whose side matches side b is side b squared. The hypotenuse is c. Once you've got the squares in place, you can start to do the calculation:

You can either work the calculation first, or find the square whose side matches the hypotenuse first. Either way, your work should match:

Although that's the only Pythagorean triple that's modeled in whole pieces in the decanomial square, you can use the decanomial square and/or Base 10 blocks and Cuisenaire rods to piece together the squares of the larger Pythagorean triples:

And to prove that a squared plus b squared really does equal c squared, break down the blocks that make up a squared and b squared--

--and put those pieces on top of c squared. You'll have to puzzle them together a bit, but in the end, they should fit perfectly!

There are lots of other fun ways to model the Pythagorean theorem, although since they also mostly rely on the 3, 4, 5 Pythagorean triple, it can get tedious if you do too many of them with the kids. It's more fun to make larger square models of the other triples to test, or to use the Pythagorean theorem in real-life situations.

Here are some other resources that we've enjoyed:

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Work Plans for the Week of January 23, 2017: Math, Math, and More Math (and Some Science!)

I meant to post these work plans yesterday, and even got started writing them, and then I derailed into telling you every single thought that I had about Trump's inauguration address.

Ahem.

Other than bearing witness to that travesty, the kids and I had a great week of school. The older kid, especially, zipped through her requirements in record time, with, alas, as little effort as possible. I do like that the kids can work independently, but they're still more passionate and engaged when Mom is right there learning with them.

It's fortunate that this week, then, we just happen to have loads more hands-on assignments. There's a lot of interesting math, in particular, that we have time to get to this week, and I'm looking forward to the map coloring (it's mathematical, I promise!), decanomial square modeling, and Base 60 calculating that we've got going on.

Books of the Week are more David Wiesner for the younger kid, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for the older kid, biographies of other famous black Americans, and books about Greece.

Have I told you that we're possibly going to Greece this summer? We're still running the numbers and looking for flights that would be in our budget, so I can't tell yet if we can afford it this year or not. Darn our tendency to make a budget and only do what we can afford!

Speaking of Greece... Memory Work this week is Greek and Roman deities, reviewing Sonnet 116, and the names of regular polygons. Other daily work consists of typing for both kids, a word ladder for the younger kid, and for the older kid, progress in Wordly Wise 7, Khan Academy's SAT Prep, and an online Red Cross First Aid class. The younger kid completes the daily story starter or journal entry, but the older kid just flat-out won't do creative writing or journaling, so I've been giving her a long passage from our Memory Work to copy in cursive every day.

We're trying something a little different for music. As I've mentioned each Monday for the past couple of weeks, our keyboard is mysteriously broken, and I haven't even tried to fix it or replace it yet--Girl Scout cookie season is upon us, and I'm busy! It so happens, though, that this weekend I was meandering through a Charlotte Mason homeschool site... you know, as you do... and saw their recommendation for memorizing and singing folk songs.

Why, folk songs are music! We've got memory work, we've got singing, we've got the geo-historical context of each song, and for many songs, I'm sure we can find the sheet music so that we can practice reading it. And best of all, the children actually seem enthusiastic about this plan! The older kid requested "something British" for our first song, I remembered how much I love "Froggy Went a-Courtin'" and looked it up, and wouldn't you know? It's British! The kids and I listened to loads of versions (my personal favorite: Bob Dylan's), but decided that Elizabeth Mitchell's would be the easiest to learn. So that's what we're doing.

And here's what we're doing for the rest of our week!

MONDAY: Neither kid seems to be much troubled by her Math Mammoth for this week--more fractions for the younger kid and more integers for the older kid--which is awesome, but the younger kid may never forgive me for subjecting her to the Base 60 system of the math of Ancient Babylon. It was mentioned in last week's Story of Science, so excuse me for thinking that it would be appropriate fare for a child. And it IS sooo interesting! They only had 59 gliphs, because they hadn't figured out 0 yet, and to record numbers with positional notation you have to use powers of 60. So, you know how with the number 324, say, the digit 4 is 4x1, and the digit 2 is 2x10, and the digit 3 is 3x100, or 3x10x10, or 3x10 squared? Well, if you had written that number in Ancient Babylon, you'd still have 4x1, but the 2 would be 2x60, and the 3 would be 3x60x60, or 3x3,600 or 3x60 squared. How cool is that?!?

The younger kid, sobbing angrily, assures me that it is not cool at all. Also, I am mean.

Art is back on our weekly work plans for a while. My partner had been giving the children art lessons during the weekends, but that's also our relaxation time, family time, grown-up time, chore time, errand time, and Girl Scout cookie-selling time, and for the past couple of months, art lesson time had just been seeming like one more thing to get stressed out about on the schedule, to not get to and then feel guilty about. Well, nobody needs that! I may not be qualified to teach drawing or painting to my children, but there are plenty of process-oriented, experiential and creative art activities that we can do together during our school week, such as this book, Once Upon a Piece of Paper, which I most conveniently received for free from a publicist and which teaches the art of collage. On this day, the kids and I did the background painting on small panels, and when that's dry we can complete the first exercise on small, combined compositions.

Bacchus isn't actually going to be on the National Mythology Exam (perhaps because he's the god of wine, hmm?), but we're including him, of course, in our comprehensive study of all of the Greek and Roman deities, which we'll actually finish up this week. Then it's on to Hercules and then some specific myths from other cultures. And then it will be time for the exam!

The younger kid and my partner thankfully remade all of the paper polygons that somehow must have gotten recycled after the last time we made them, sigh:

I highly recommend this book. Making the polygons was a great exercise in following directions, as well as a comprehensive review of terms associated with lines and angles, and unfolding each piece at the end and finding a perfect regular polygon?

Magic!

On this day, the kids took those regular polygons, ordered them, mounted them onto poster board, and labeled them. We'll keep the posters on display in our hallway into they start looking ragged and I can recycle them, and we'll add the names to our daily Memory Work until the kids have got them down.

TUESDAY: We've proved the Pythagorean theorem using our decanomial square materials before, but on this day I want to show the kids how you can use the theorem to calculate one of the sides of a right triangle. My partner helped me mount our printable decanomial square to foam core, so I'm pretty excited that we'll have a lovely set of manipulatives to work with.

We're beginning Hercules today; he's an entire separate exam on the National Mythology Exam. Most of the study will consist simply of close reading, but I'll also put the 12 labors into our Memory Work.

I have suspicions that the children still didn't do great work on the first part of their unit-long assignment in our Animal Behavior MOOC, but it's almost impossible to look over their shoulders to check work done independently, on their own time. They may be sad kids, then, when they have to show me their work today, mwa-ha-ha! The second part of the assignment will consist of more regular observation and more note-taking.

Girl Scout cookie season is about to ramp up even further, with our cookie pick-up this weekend, delivery of pre-orders next week, and then cookie booths beginning next weekend and running all through February. It's worth the expenditure in time, both to witness the kids' visible progression of skills in talking to people, managing money, budgeting and planning and marketing, and, frankly, to have those profits at the end. The kids plan marvelous things to do with that money! On this day, however, they have just one cookie business job (although the younger kid will surely get my partner to take her out to do more door-to-door selling while the older kid and I are at fencing tonight...): decorating donation cans for Operation Cookie Drop and our troop. Last year, one of our troop's Girl Scouts discovered that when someone pays for their cookies in cash, if she asks them if they'd like to donate some change to Operation Cookie Drop or our troop, they often do! Just between us, donations to our troop are even better than cookie sales, because the council and the bakery don't get a cut of troop donations--that money is all for the kids! This year, I asked that our donation boxes be changed from shoeboxes to oatmeal canisters, because table space is just that important, and between all of the families, I do believe that we've scrounged up enough oatmeal canisters for there to be three complete sets, allowing us to run two simultaneous booths and to have one in another parent's car ready for a third.

And yes, I really can go on just that long about the art and science of selling Girl Scout cookies. Sorry!

WEDNESDAY: Mapping Hercules' journey is an activity suggested by Greek Mythology Activities, and one that I think the kids will enjoy. It involves close reading and research to determine where each of Hercules' labors was said to have taken place, then more research and map skills to place each one on an actual map.

The older kid is working through the cookie business badges in her Cadette book this month (she's currently working on the Budgeting badge--it's already led to some VERY interesting conversations!), but I want the younger kid to finish the Power of One award in her Agent of Change Journey before she starts the cookie business badges, mainly so that she can complete this day's assignment, which piggybacks so well on the Black History Month essay that she just finished a couple of weeks ago. Since she wrote a research-based essay on Mary McLeod Bethune for that, I'm hoping that she chooses a more creative response for this assignment.

Math Lab for Kids is another book that I received for free from a publicist, and I'm super excited to get into it, especially this map coloring lab. Did YOU know that there's an entire mathematical theorem about map coloring? There is, and it's utterly fascinating. 

THURSDAY: You may have noticed, but I purposely make our Thursdays and Fridays lighter. We're a little more tired at the end of the week, a little less enthusiastic, and sometimes we still have the odd project or two from earlier in the week to finish up. So on this day, the special work consists only of having the kids review, refine, and edit their Greek mythology family trees (I'm hoping that they'll be interested in decorating or otherwise embellishing them, as well), and beginning a short unit on meteorology by modeling cloud formation. The demonstration involves hair spray. We'll see how it goes.

You may also have noticed that we do a lot of science in our homeschool. We've got, what, three simultaneous science units going on right now? We have to have an animal unit at all times, because that's both children's main area of interest, our Story of Science unit is also this semester's history spine, and then I tend to throw in a unit on whatever else I think the kids need to know. Sometime before summer, that will be astronomy, because the total solar eclipse won't be fun unless we study for it!

FRIDAY: With the way the weather has been all year so far, it's wildly optimistic to think that it won't be pouring freezing rain on Friday for our cloud walk, but where there's life, there's hope! My partner designed some super-cool cloud identification windows that I can't wait to get the kids outside to use.

Now that the older kid is twelve (and a half!), she's on the verge of aging out of some Junior Ranger programs, which sucks, because she loves them SO deeply. In my "free" time, I've been browsing National Park sites that we're unlikely to visit before she's thirteen or fourteen, to see if she'll have aged out of the Junior Ranger program by then and, if so, if they offer Junior Ranger badges by mail. Our results have been pretty spotty when we mail in Junior Ranger books; we often haven't received responses even from sites that claim to offer Junior Ranger badges by mail, but it means a lot to the kid, it makes her happy, and it's educational, so why not give it a shot.

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: The big event of the week is Girl Scout cookie delivery! Our entire troop will meet up on Saturday to help pick up, unload, sort, inventory, and distribute the cookies to all of our girls, and then I imagine that much of the rest of the weekend will consist of delivering pre-orders. I promise you, the kids are crazy into it. It sounds insane, but I think it's one of those things that you simply don't understand unless you're in the thick of it. 

And then cookie season will begin for freaking real.

What are YOU doing this week, other than getting ready for cookie season?

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Work Plans for the Week of October 31, 2016: Handwritten and Handmade!

In the three weeks since we've returned from our American Revolution road trip, we've been between semesters in some ways. We finished our American Revolution unit study and Song School Spanish--

Back to the library for these books!

--as well as our sharks and rocks/minerals studies, and hadn't started (until this week!) our Greek/Roman mythology studies, nor our formal grammar book, nor typing instruction, or our animal behavior MOOC, or Will's SAT exam prep. 

What we did do in those three weeks was continue with Math Mammoth, cursive and journaling, letter writing, Books of the Day, with lots of fun projects, games--

--Girl Scout badge work, and, yes, helping me in the house and yard. Those black walnuts and persimmons aren't going to harvest themselves!

We're back on our official schedule this week, with work plans written by the week and including several units of study that I've written more detailed lesson plans for. Books of the Day this week include some leftovers from our completed rocks and minerals unit, a few civics selections, and a couple of readings inspired by our road trip. Memory work includes continuing "Paul Revere's Ride," identifying and characterizing quadrilaterals, and lots of review of previously studied facts.

And here's the rest of our week, handwritten (on pages from this really cool bullet journal) as I continue to try to figure out how I want to redesign our work plan template:

MONDAY: I may be shooting myself in the foot here a little, beginning our new semester on Halloween AND on a day when we had to bustle out of the house early for dentist appointments, but after the dentist (no cavities for either!), I treated the kids to breakfast and here we sit afterwards, the older kid working on grammar and the younger kid on math.

In Math Mammoth this week, the younger kid is working on calculating with decimals and the older kid is working with quadrilaterals. She's forgotten the names and characteristics of many quadrilaterals, so we've added that to our daily Memory Work and we'll be playing more with quadrilaterals later this week, to reinforce the facts.

The older kid finished her Wordly Wise last semester, and I haven't bought her the Grade 7 book yet, so while the younger kid works on Wordly Wise every day this week, the older kid gets to do a Word Ladder (which means that the younger kid gets to do a Word Ladder, as well, since as soon as the older kid finished hers this morning, the younger kid snatched the book and insisted on completing two puzzles before she'd work on her math). The Word Ladders are too easy for the older kid, alas, and the set doesn't go any higher, so when I pick up her new Wordly Wise, I think I'll add this book of mind benders for her new quick and easy logic work (and probably the next younger book for the younger kid, too).

Analytical Grammar for the older kid and Junior Analytical Grammar for the younger kid are new curricula for us this semester. For my own pedagogical reasons, I've deliberately kept formal grammar study to a minimum thus far. Both kids, though, have an intrinsic knowledge of correct grammar and punctuation and are confident creative writers--they're ready for a grammar curriculum that will give them labels and guidelines. I sprang for the student and teacher books for both sets, although I wish now that I'd just purchased the student books, as the teacher books are really just answer keys, and I don't think I'll need them. Oh, well! Regardless, both books look well-suited to the kid in question, and will make for one more daily work this semester.

We got off track with "A Year of Living Poetically" last semester, but it is something that I'd like to continue; I think that we can get by with doing one poem a month, then adding that poem to our Memory Work to keep it fresh. In at least one of the remaining three-ish weeks every month, I'd like to have the kids work more consciously through their MENSA reading lists, and the other weeks I can toy with poetry composition, book reports, or simply work in different subjects.

The kids have both mastered cursive, but still struggle with writing long passages--they know they want to type their work, but their prior keyboarding lessons haven't stuck. Well, we're going to fix that this semester! I've played with other typing instruction resources in the past several years, but I'm hoping that typing.com is going to be the end-all, be-all solution for us. Here's hoping!

We all loved our sharks MOOC so much that we're doing another one this semester, this time on animal behavior. Although we ended up actually doing our sharks MOOC twice--once along with the class, and then another time on our own with enrichment work that I assigned--I'm planning to do this archived animal behavior class just once, with enrichment activities a combination of my own assignments and class assignments. We've actually did Wednesday's assignment of visiting the animal shelter to interact with companion animals today--we witnessed two dog/cat tests, one pass and one fail, and filled out an application to hopefully adopt Jacob, a one-year-old black lab/Newfoundland. That means that on Wednesday we'll do the nature hike/wild animal observation that was technically today's assignment, and that should work out fine.

TUESDAY: Inspired by her obsessive love of the Percy Jackson series, the younger kid requested a Greek mythology study for this semester. I signed the kids up for the National Mythology Exam, and am using their bibliography as our spine for this study. The basic lesson plans consist of studying one god/goddess per lesson, using the assigned reading (the older kid has more assigned reading than the younger kid), and completing one enrichment activity. This week's activities will be reading the introduction and labeling a map of Ancient Greece, then studying Gaia and her family tree prior to Zeus and beginning a unit-long family tree of the gods and goddesses. The kids will also learn how to write each god/goddess name in Greek, and I'm seriously considering studying Song School Greek concurrently, maybe beginning next week.

Neither kid is enthusiastic about learning an instrument, but I feel like I have to make them give it a try just one more time before I give up on it forever. The younger kid did enjoy Hoffman Academy for a while, and I do have all of their written materials, so we're going to review that for a bit and see if it sticks this time. This week, it's lesson 1!

WEDNESDAY: The older kid needs some more reinforcement in identifying quadrilaterals, so it's time to once again bring out the pattern blocks! We'll be challenging ourselves to build similar figures with the various pieces. Good times will ensue.

THURSDAY: I normally have the kids work together on larger projects, but I think that I'll have them each do their own family tree for their Greek mythology study. The younger kid might want to make hers more decorative, and I can make the older kid put more information on hers.

FRIDAY: We've got a Girl Scout meeting to earn the first aid badge on this morning, and then I'll be staying afterwards to complete my CPR/first aid certification.

The lesson in this day's Animal Behavior MOOC concerns the importance of observation in studying animal behavior, so the kids will practice that with an animal of their own. I'm sure many new discoveries will be made about chickens and cats on this day!

SATURDAY/SUNDAY: Ballet class, Mandarin class, Nutcracker rehearsal! We may actually finish the tree house this year, if we can just get a couple more good weekends like this one is supposed to be. Or maybe we'll go to the apple orchard instead!

What are your plans for the week?

American Revolution Road Trip: Smithsonian National Zoo

The older kid has been wanting to go visit Smithsonian's National Zoo since we were planning our last trip to Washington, D.C., years ago, so I was thrilled that we could finally take her!

And nope, we didn't let the all-day rain stop us!

While we did see every single animal who lives in the National Zoo, the highlight for me (the kids saw some at the San Diego Zoo) was the pandas!!!!!!!

One panda was hanging out in the rain...

...but all the other pandas were staying comfy and warm inside.

Comfy, indeed!

See? Proof that I am both on this trip, AND saw a panda!

 

The younger kid's camera battery died halfway through, so we shared my camera for the rest of our visit:

Will really wants peafowl, and I even know where to buy the chicks, but they're 50 freakin' bucks unsexed, so I've told her that she has to spend her own money if she wants one.

 All of the exotic birds on display, and the younger kid was the most fascinated with these...

We stayed so late at the zoo that all of the gift shops were even closed by the time we walked out, meaning that I could not buy myself a stuffed panda souvenir. Yay for saving money, although I really want a stuffed panda souvenir!

Would I settle for a stuffed George Washington instead? Stay tuned and find out!

American Revolution Road Trip: A Tour of the US Capitol, Etc.

Sorry, but you don't get any photos of our morning spent at the National Archives, on account of there are no photos allowed. It was for sure a highlight of the trip, though, especially for me! We got to see a 1275 copy of the Magna Carta (this was a major reference point in our History of Us spine), and the Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation, AND the Constitution!!!

Some takeaways:

1. You would not believe how faded the Declaration of Independence is. Much of it is completely illegible to the naked eye by now. This website explains why, and in fact, we have that entire NOVA episode on hold for us at the library to watch next week.
2. Americans cannot handle not standing in line. To get into the Charters of Freedom gallery, we did have to stand in line, and the guard would let in 30 or so of us at a time. As the guard verbally instructed, AND as the display of rules clearly stated, we were not to stand in line in front of the various documents; instead, we were to simply pick our way through the gaps in an organized scrum. So what do 90% of the people do, then, as soon as we're let in? They form a long line wrapping around the gallery, blocking the exit and keeping other people from being able to enter the gallery while these particular people stood in line in front of nothing rather than simply looking at what they wanted to look at and then leaving. The older kid and I pick our way through the gaps to see the various documents, ignoring the stink-eye that we get from tourists who've been standing in line for 20 minutes for no reason. Those tourists then continue to stand behind us, leaving the document displays on our other side completely empty, until a guard takes pity on them and says to them, "There is no line. You don't have to wait."
3. Nothing beats primary resources! Over a week later at our tour of Independence Hall, the tour guide asked which colony didn't show up to the Constitutional Convention. Both of my kids knew that it was Rhode Island, because I'd stood each of them in front of the signatures on the Constitution and had them recite the colonies while finding them on the document. Rhode Island was missing! Alexander Hamilton was there, though, and we knew where to look for him thanks to my obsessive listening to the Hamilton soundtrack.

We didn't get the White House tour that I super wanted (it's my hazy understanding that it was too close to Election Day?), but we DID score a private tour of the US Capitol through the office of one of our senators. It was especially cool because we didn't meet at the Capitol itself (although we did walk right past it)--

--but at our senator's office building. Side note: the office building had a giant sculpture that was bafflingly by Calder, and Matt I were both like, "Since when does Calder do big-ass sculptures that aren't mobiles?" I just looked it up, and there was totally supposed to be a mobile there above that giant floor piece! 

The cool thing about meeting at the office, though, isn't the installation art: it's the secret underground senator train!

Friends, there is an honest-to-gawd secret underground senator train:

There are even celebrity senator sightings--we saw Richard Lugar!

The train takes you right to the basement of the US Capitol building--

--and I was even more excited about our tour group of six when I saw the giant public tour groups milling around, so large that everyone had to wear headphones so they could still hear their guide.

Here we are in the Crypt, standing by the origin point of Washington, DC's street numbering system.

This is the old Supreme Court chamber. I'll show you the new one in a little bit!

Senate Rotunda--my color is off, but it was dim.

This is the ceiling of the Rotunda, with the most insane painting of George Washington

George Washington would NOT have approved of this depiction of himself.

Sister suffragists! See the unsculpted marble at the back left? There's also room for you!

Look whose office we found! These offices are right in the middle of public spaces, I was surprised to note. Our tour guide said that while they do have extra security at times, the Speaker of the House does, indeed, need to walk through throngs of tourists to get to and from his office.

Here's the view from the front door of the Capitol--the Supreme Court is on the left and the Library of Congress is on the right.

 We couldn't take photos of the Senate or House chambers, although we did get to go sit in the galleries and look around as much as we wanted. The gallery tickets that we were given are good for the entire season, though, so maybe the kids and I will travel back to DC and sit in sometime when they're actually in session.

After the Capitol, we zipped across the street and raced over to see the Supreme Court right before the building closed for the day.

Up the stairs...

---and to the gallery!

 

Bizarrely, a wedding party passed us as we were hanging out in front of this room. Seriously, someone was getting married in the Supreme Court! I even tried to look it up when we got home, but I can find no page for reserving a room in the Supreme Court in which to get married.

Yes, I still make the kids imitate sculptures.

 

We did get to see everything that we wanted to see in (and outside of) the Supreme Court--

--but that left no time for actually going into the Library of Congress, alas: 

Good thing it's not going anywhere, then! We'll see it some other time.

Not on the next day, though. On the next day, we went to see the pandas!!!