A Glorious Day in My America

Today was a real hint that the dry season is near.  It has been a very rainy summer (even for here), but honestly I'd rather have a hot rainy summer than just a hot summer.  If it is going to be 118% humidity, it may as well rain!  The sun is visibly more to the south and the fence shadow is creeping it way back across our backyard.  The light by itself was a clue.  But for the humidity to drop, we had to wait.  Finally today it did - which made 86 degrees seem so much more amazing than it did yesterday.  The air was lighter and it felt like a hint of old times, I'm just not sure what memories it's stirring up.  The first two years here, I was not able to discern a change in the weather.  It was just too subtle to get my attention.  I guess the light air with the sea breeze made me feel...younger.

In My America we painted.  And we are not allowed to paint in the classrooms, which means to paint I (and a recruit) have to move the tables outside (and the tables are old and heavy), tape all the papers and paint cups down so they would not blow away, and then afterward clean up paint brushes, scrub the tables, hunt for an able looking volunteer to help, and then lug the tables back in.  None of this happens during the actual class of course!  The kids love to paint though and I guess that makes it worth it every now and again.

I felt like the natural place to go after the Civil War was westward expansion.  We sang Home on the Range and talked about pioneers.  And then we watched a video about Johnny Appleseed.  Now Johnny Appleseed pre-dates the Civil War, but he did have an impact on early pioneers.  So that is how I merged the two things together.  Folks, it was either that or make corn husk dolls...with 14 kids...so instead we painted the apple tree perspective paintings I made with C & A a while ago.  They turned out pretty nice. 

This one is Caleb's.  I think it shows that he'd done this craft before.

So we press on - the next 3 weeks have to be election themed and I am stumped, so if you have any ideas feel free to toss them this way.  We've been doing this song thing and I'd like to keep singing, but I can't think of any election-y songs...much less 3 of them!