It felt good to be back wandering again! With our Thanksgiving break it felt like a long wait for this Wednesday. Today’s Wandering Wednesday was about two things: learning about architecture/building and picking out all the places we could play with the letter P!

Today we took the CTA 201 bus again, but this time we were headed southbound through Northwestern’s campus and through downtown Evanston. The children immediately started noticing things that looked familiar.

My mom works there

Look…Lighthouse Beach

We’re right by my house

That’s my mom’s work, with the flag on top

This is where I go to breakfast every weekend

We followed along on our map of the route and talked about turns and directions. The kids love finding themselves on the map! After going through downtown Evanston, we headed south on Ridge Blvd to our stop. We got off, saw some tree trimmers, and walked down the block to our first location.  My neighbor is an architect and was kind enough to invite us into his home. He started by showing us that he drew his first home plan when he was only 6-years-old…that’s inspiring! He completely redesigned and rehabbed their house, so he showed us the blueprints, talked us through some architect lingo, and taught us some interesting things about building. It was really cool to try to read the blueprints of the basement where we sat! We even found a secret room that we could see on the plans, but not from where we were sitting.

After our lesson in architecture, we headed over to my house for lunch and a special P treat: POPCORN! (But not before saying a quick hello to Ms. Christian from last year’s Pre-k B class.) There was one more treat too…TV with lunch!  Don’t worry, it was totally connected to what we were learning! We watched as the Treehouse Masters built an awesome structure for a school. They talked about measurement and used huge wrenches, pliers, and ramps to construct this awesome owl-shaped library. As always, we also tracked and journaled about today’s weather.

Finally, we got back on the bus to head north to Penny Park! When we arrived we realized that there were pennies everywhere! So, we had to pick up pennies and put them in our pockets! Even I was surprised how excited the kids were about running all over to pick up those pennies! Once they found their pennies, many of them took it upon themselves to count their collection.  Today, they should have come home with a pouch full of pennies! If you have time, we would love to know how many your child collected so we can have a great math talk tomorrow!

Also overheard today:

Remember last W.W. when we went too far and almost missed the bus? That was fun!

You don’t want to put your hands in concrete. They can get stuck.

Me and my dad are really good at building.

We could be anywhere.

I found paw prints.

We made blueprints.

When you cut down trees you need to wear construction stuff. You could break your head.

I want to pet your dog

We are stuck together like peanut butter and jelly. What are we learning? This is just a whole bunch of fun.