Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Spring and NYC

The little boys who live next door, and are the same age as my little boys, go to a small private school in the next town south. One of their classes was going to the Liberty Park Science Center, and, since the charter bus wasn't filled, my boys were offered the chance to go for $70. A bargain, I thought! A field trip, a break from school, a museum, and the Statue of Liberty across the harbor.

Every month, I have my youngest make a calendar of things that will be happening that month. It started when he was 3 years old, and wanted to know how long until Thanksgiving, then how long until Christmas. My mother in law suggested giving him a calendar so he could cross off the days; That worked great, until he started to ask when the big kids wouldn't have school. So, we colored weekend and school holidays yellow. That became a problem when he decided at about 3-1/2 that he wanted them home all the time, took a yellow crayon, and colored all of the days yellow for a month. Ah, the fun of children. When he entered Kindergarten, I got calendar creator software, started printing out blank calendars for each month, gluing them onto large sheets of paper, and having him fill in "events" on each day when they occurred, and making four larger drawings to show things from that month. Calendar study was included in those early math grades, so this made it much more real to him. So, in April, one of his things was seeing the Statue of Liberty, which has fascinated him since he was 2 (I don't know why). I loved his picture of the Statue; I don't think anyone has ever drawn her with legs before.This is the boys looking out the back of the museum; the statue is over Ryan's shoulder, in the upper left of the photo:
And, this is a picture Ryan took of New York City across the harbor. I thought it was beautiful; the sky was, shall we say, "picture perfect".And I'm glad to be here in my little town, with the magnolia having just bloomed; I still think it's a miracle that they've made a hybrid of a southern tree that I can grow here in the snowy northeast!
And my forsythia has finally bloomed! It did this Friday! In a week or 2, fruit trees will be blossoming, followed by dogwoods! And lilacs! And the yard smells magnificent, because all of my plantings are "heirloom plants", that is, planted before WWII - in 1929, to be exact!

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