Japanese Sculpture Garden at Fredrick Meijer Garden Dec. 11th, 2015

Japanese Sculpture Garden at Fredrick Meijer 

Garden Dec. 11th, 2015

We made it back to the Fredrick Meijer Sculpture Garden, and this time spent as much time outside as we did inside.  They opened a new exhibit; called The Japanese Sculpture Garden that we hadn't walked through yet.  The weather being so warm; we decided this was the perfect day to wander around.

 

The "Japanese Garden" had LOTS of rocks, bamboo, evergreen's, waterfalls, moss, and interesting pairings of natural things.  They did a great job making the walking trails very exciting and varied.

The rock is engraved:
Come Out Bat
Birds, Earth Itself
Hauled off by Flowers

Many of the larger rocks had haiku's that were nature based.
 

In this picture you can see the glass buildings that house all the plants and tropical areas we so love.  This is a great picture of the glass buildings.  Remember all the pictures of the butterflies we shared in April---that was from inside these buildings.

This picture shows how they combine so many different types of rocks, granite, limestone, pebbles....etc. all together in such a lovely way.  They did this throughout the exhibit.

This hanging glass sculpture is by Dale Chihuly---he is/was a contemporary to my deceased sculpture teacher, Dale Eldred.  My professor invited Chihuly to visit our school and we got to meet him...  I love seeing his work.

We went through the Christmas tree section again, but I didn't want to show all the same types of pictures again, but couldn't leave out this one pic.

There are sculptures all around the place--I try to include a new one in my posts as I go along.  I don't think I've shared the picture of this Lipchitz yet:

There was a pottery gallery of  Asian ceramists on exhibit--we enjoyed seeing all their works, and are sharing a few of our favorites.

I always love seeing tea sets!

The following two are pictures of the same piece--one of the inside, and one of the outside.  

We just loved seeing ALL the sparrows & finches swarming around these feeders!

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Middle Ages Core G Week 17 "B", Dec. 7-12, 2015 60th week on this core

Middle Ages Core G 

Week 17 "B", 

Dec. 7-12, 2015 

60th week on this core

I just love the expression on this bird's face...so cute!

This week had medical visits that took up two days, and we had field trips (two) to the Meijer Sculpture Garden to see all their Christmas displays, and one day at the Homeschool Building for Band and Choir classes. And a few other medical issues to contend with as well.  So, I scheduled this week to be light to accommodate our schedule.

Our lessons this week:

Bartholomew’s Passage - Family Story for Advent

Bible:

Bartholomew's Passage by Arnold Ytreeide

Advent book that Dh reads each night.

Black Horses for the King

Dd's History Reader:

Black Horses for the King

by Anne McCaffrey

Hidden Treasure of Glaston

History Read Aloud:

The Hidden Treasure of Gaston 

Ch.'s 3-7

Math: Math U See:

7 A, B, C, D, E

Language Arts:

Writing short story Christmas gifts

Christmas cards

Secret Garden CDs

Fun Audio:
The Secret Garden

completed

Outings:

Fredrick Meijer Sculpture Garden:

http://www.meijergardens.org/

Monday and Friday

Music Classes at Homeschool Building

Music:

Alto Sax - 30 Minutes each day

Choir - 15 minutes each day

Piano - 1 hour each week

Cooking:

Stir Fry, 2 X this week

Jasmine rice, Tilapia fish, corn, peas

Dd made a wonderful fish chowder!  It had clams, potatoes, corn, cod fish, tilapia fish, and seasoning.


Busy Hands:
Dd is making a green Yoda

She has got half way done this week.

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Fredrick Meijer Sculpture Garden Dec. 7, 2015 Christmas Trees, Railway Garden

Fredrick Meijer Sculpture Garden 

Dec. 7, 2015

http://www.meijergardens.org/
Monday we went on a field trip to the Fredrick Meijer Sculpture Garden to see their Christmas displays.  The first stop was their Christmas trees from many countries around the world--with the decorations representing those countries.  Below is Greece, they had a plaque to describe the tree, and then next to the plaque was their tree.  It was impossible to pick a favorite!!

Close up of the tree from Greece

Ukraine had spider webs on it? Interesting.

Then we went into the big Tropical conservatory, and they had Christmas decorations and lights there too!

One of our favorite rooms is the "Plants with an Appetite".  It smells kinda funny; in a cool way.

Then we went into the Railway Garden.  There were train cars rushing around above and in the little sections throughout the display.  All the buildings were made of natural resources.  I'm afraid our pictures do not do justice to this cool exhibit.

This is a model of the Meijer Sculpture Garden conservatory buildings.

We walked around to the outside sculptures too---here is the Leonardo DaVinci horse replica.

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