Sunnypond: Last Day of "Summer"

The weather here feels much more like early Fall, but today was really nice for an "early Fall" feeling day. And it also happened to be the last day before Ella starts her first day of Kindergarten!

We started the morning off with a preschool dance class that I teach. The kids (my kids) were pretty good considering they had to stay in the corner and watch DVDs and color. The students were good overall, except for the one who cried and wouldn't participate. I really felt for her though and wished I could have done more to make her feel better, but I had to give most attention to the rest of the class that was participating. Hopefully she'll be better next time... It was nice for me to be back in the swing of things teaching dance again.

We came home to the carpenters still working on our house (more on that to come). But much to my surprise and delight, they were finished early! So I scrambled to think of something fun to do on the last day before school.

First I took the kids to the Lake County Discovery Museum which is situated on a Forest Preserve. It is a small but nice museum for both adults and kids and mainly presents the history and nature of Lake County.

As I mentioned, it is situated on preserved land, so there was lots of space and beauty to play in and explore.

The buildings are so simple but beautiful in this landscape.

The Mastodon was a big hit.

She was very patient letting the kids climb all over her.

This is a sculpture of a tree marker used by Native Americans to mark trails. The trees were tied to the ground as saplings causing the trunks to grow in a bent shape which was recognized as a trail marker.

Thistle was scattered around the perimeter of this bog pond.

At home, the fun continued. I bought two small mixes of muffins (kids choice of flavors) and they used their mini-muffin pans I bought for them at a garage sale.

After the prep, they watched the muffins cook. Doesn't hurt that they learned a bit about what goes on during baking from a Magic School Bus book.

While waiting for the muffins to cool, I took the kids out on our paddle boat. I think it must be the first time we took it out this year. What a shame, we really need to take better advantage of the boat and the pond behind our house.