FIELD TRIP AT THE BOAT BASIN

fall is here! the air has snapped, everything feels crisp, our shorts have traded places with our scarves... we even busted out our sweaters today. on our way home from the playground we stopped for some cocoa--gotta keep those fingers warm! is the excuse i like to pull out for things like this. 

fall means a new school year, and huck's play school has started up again. and since i get a lot of questions about play school and, you know, since that's what a blog's for is writing about junk, here we be. buckle up, we're talking logistics. 

soooo, play school. there are a lot of kids in my church congregation, and a few years back some of the moms in our congregation decided to organize a little co-op preschool situation. it follows the traditional school year and is organized by age. 

every age group handles their structure differently, depending on the moms involved and their kids' needs. the 18-month and unders are getting together once a week for a play date. last year, huck's 2-3 year class met tuesdays for a short lesson, a craft, some free play, and lunch. this year we're meeting twice a week, the first day for a traditional lesson geared to their age, the second day for a field trip to one of the hundreds of crazy educational opportunities we have rolling around here in the city. museums, interactive playgrounds, story times at various libraries, we're even going to throw in a ferry ride around the harbor and a trip to visit the santa at macy's in december. 

the entire thing is organized and run by the moms, and we each have creative control of the curriculum on the days we host. "there is no paid clergy!" (mormon joke.) we have one google doc where we sign up to host/teach or be the extra pair of helping hands (this year our lessons days are drop-off style. yeah, it's ambitious), and another google doc where we have all of the field trips planned out for the year. our curriculum is literature-based. we start with a favorite children's book and flesh it out from there. we have the structure broken down into 15-minute increments to make it less intimidating for the mom in charge of planning. a welcome song, the weather and season and day of the week, the letter of the day, a book, an activity, some music, then crafting, the snack (my favorite part--hah!), and then free play. it's a lot, and it's wonderful. huck looks forward to his play school days all week long, and every night at bedtime we talk about all of his best play school friends. 

(if you're interested, the days i hosted last year are HERE and HERE and HERE.)

last week we kicked off the new school year with a lesson day about pumpkins and the letter A, and then on thursday, while the last of the soupy summer was still holding on, we hit the boat basin on the east side of central park and rented us some mother effin remote-controlled sail boats. (i've had that mcsweeny's gourd essay i posted on monday stuck in my head all week. so.)

soooooo here are a few photos from our morning of sailing. (is anyone reading this still? i could probably throw out something like "and then my kid was eaten by a crocodile" right here and nobody would notice.)

after our 30 minutes with the boats were up, we parked it on the grass for a quick picnic. huck had such a grand time. he's been hosting picnics with his squishy penguins on the living room rug ever since.

so that's it! life is pretty good when you're a huckleberry and your mom and all ya friends' moms are nutballs.