Beach Trip 2016 - Part 2 - Jockey's Ridge State Park

After we had eaten and dried off, we took a ride down to Jockey's Ridge State Park, which has some tall sand dunes that you can walk on and even sled down. They have a hang gliding school there because of the constant winds that blow over the dunes.

The rain left behind some significant "puddles" that were the size of ponds but only an inch or two deep.

We climbed to the top of one of the dunes and attempted to slide down on pizza sleds we had brought specifically for this.

It took a good deal of effort to pack down a run smooth enough to slide down.

Fortunately, the slope was gentle enough that the little went down with no problem.

From our vantage point, we could see the Atlantic Ocean...

as well as the Sound

Over at the hang gliding school, they had a replica of the Wright Brothers' glider that preceded the powered airplane. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see it in action.

The kids and I doing our best C3P0 impression... "Over here!"

At this point, it was getting hot and sticky. The littles were about ready to give up, so we started walking back while Rebecca stayed behind to do a little yoga on the dunes.

On the way, we found a shorter, but much steeper slope that worked much better for sledding.

Even Rebecca went down it when she caught up to us. :)

Beach Trip 2016 - Part 1 - The Wright Brothers Memorial

We just finished a section of our history curriculum that covered The Wright Brothers, so we decided to take a couple of days and go camping in Kill Devil Hills and visit the Wright Brothers Memorial.

 We listened to a presentation about the Wright Brothers and their airplane, which was cool because they have a full-sized, working replica of their plane, so they got to see it up close.

 Next we went outside and got to fly a simple-to-make kite made from some dowels and a trash bag.

 Everyone took a turn flying it.

 Fortunately there was plenty of wind to keep it aloft.

There were some storms rolling in, so we had to put the kites away.

 Then the kids got to walk the rail the Brothers used to launch their plane.

 And they walked the length of each flight, which got successively longer.

 Even though there was a storm coming, we hustled up the big dune and saw the memorial itself.

 The inscription around the base reads, "In commemoration of the conquest of the air by the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright. Conceived in genius, achieved by dauntless resolution and unconquerable faith."

 A beautiful view from the top.

At this point, it looked like the storm had passed us by.

 Rebecca spotted some pretty orange flowers on the walk down.

The kids got to pose with Orville before we left.

Not 10 seconds after I took this picture, the storm that we thought had passed us opened up on us with a vengeance. It poured rain, soaking us to the bone before we could get back to our car. Unfortunately, we had left the windows open on our tent, which was only 5 minutes away, so almost everything got soaked. We wound up spending lunch time at a laundromat drying our clothes, blankets, towels and sleeping bags.

Art Book About Color

For an art curriculum this term, we did Usborne's Art Book About Color, which has great information about art history and colors, paints and styles. Each week or so, we would cover a topic in the book, which was sometimes about a single color and had info like what it used to be made from, how artists used the color and how durable the color was over long periods of time. Other topics were about color mixing and styles like pointillism.

For the colors, we had the kids do a single-color project that sometimes included mixed media.

  Blue

  Green

  Red

  Yellow

 some mixing of colors 

 these were a form of pointillism or using dots to create a picture. Olivia's, in the middle, was excellent. The boys were good, too, but they each only did one element of the painting in dots. Gabe's was rain and Ezra's was the leaves on the tree.