Cosmic Education: Potato Clock

We have recently begun Montessori Cosmic Education portion of our curriculum. There are 5 Great Lessons: The Creation Story, The Timeline of Life, The Timeline of Humans, The History of Math, and The History of Language. The Great Lessons are developed to give the child a perspective with which to understand their place in the world.

Our first two Great Tasks were to discover the rules of the universe that all things must follow and to study that everything has a purpose and a contribution to make in the development of others. This link is a good resource for understanding Montessori Cosmic Education.

The first thing we did was create a potato clock. We bought a simple kit at our local hobby store. Kaylee and her daddy put together and studied the potato clock.

Reading the directions together and discussing how it works.

Connecting the pieces.

Putting the wires in the potato. It works!

They also used salt water to work the clock.

There are some great resources out there for The Great Lessons. This is my favorite resources HERE. More lessons coming...

World's Greatest Artists: Field Trip

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

We recently finished our Worlds Greatest Artists Unit 1. We went to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC to see some of the paintings we studied. 

Reviewing the artists in her notebook and deciding what to see first.

We wanted to see a painting from each artist we studied. On the top of Kaylee's list was the only Leonardo da Vinci on permanent display in the United States. It was our first stop.

Here it is Ginevra de'Benci by Leonardo da Vinci. The only permanent
da Vinci on display in the United States. 

The backside of Ginevera de'Benci

We found some Monet's.

Kaylee with a Van Gogh.

The Picasso exhibit.

Kaylee posing by the fountain at the entrance of the National Gallery of Art

We ate our packed lunch in the National Mall.

Kaylee with the Capital Building in the background.

Kaylee really wanted to see the Washington Monument. She has never seen it up close.

The Washington Monument!

She really wanted to touch the Washington Monument. Next time,
we will schedule a time to go into the monument.

We also saw the White House.

We had a busy day in Washington, DC. We spent a limited amount of time in the National Gallery of Art. Kaylee got tired of looking at paintings and she was excited to get to the Washington Monument. I would really like to spend some more time in the Art Gallery on our next visit.