Wednesday, September 1, 2010

International Day: Japanese Origami and French Bread

The girls wanted to do origami Tuesday, so that's what we did.

Megan had just checked out several origami books from the library on Monday. I was a little reluctant to let her check out so many, but I figured that part of unschooling was letting them pursue their interests unabated. So check out we did, enough to stuff my book bag and give me a shoulder ache from lugging them to the car.

All day Tuesday, both the girls got out their origami paper and started creating things. Sometimes they needed help, but I was careful to not take over their projects. They came up with several different creations and new ways of using them.

Megan created bird heads that could open and close their mouths...she used those to pick up her popcorn and put it in origami cups that held her popcorn. They made boxes out of old playing cards. They made Christmas trees. They made snakes. They made butterflies. They used their new characters in pretend-play, like they were dolls, and had them eating paper food and having adventures. The list goes on and on. I read to them while they made a lot of these, but my voice gave out after a while.

I also broke out Dad's bread maker and made French bread with it. It mixed the dough, but we made the loaves and baked it in the oven. I know that part of the joy of making bread is the kneading and working it, but sometimes it's nice to let the machine do the work. Megan doesn't eat bread most of the time, but Sami really enjoyed it hot out of the oven. Once it cooled down, she didn't like it as well.

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