“Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.”

 

I love that every time we go for a walk Opeie picks up an object to take with him to photograph  Sometimes it's a toy and sometimes it's something he has created, whatever it is though he wants it photographed in a tree, in grass, next to a mushroom or on moss which to me always says a lot about how he feels about nature and being outdoors. Today was Yoda's turn for the star treatment.

"The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality."

Remember those days when if you wanted to take a photo you had to have an actual camera with you? my first mobile phone didn't do ANYTHING! apart from make calls and send messages, which at the time seemed amazing. I am the first to moan about people being glued to their phones or tablets, but despite the frustrating rise in antisocial behavoiur, technology has made everything easier. Documenting Opeie's homeschooling adventures has been amazing and as a lot of our learning is done organically outdoors, being able to capture the amazing things we see and get to talk about means that those things can stay with us.

This week, while scooting home from an eventful homeschooling adventure we spotted a huge cobweb with a very busy spider wrapping up their dinner. Opeie was fascinated and we stood and watched for quite some time. This for me is one of the big plusses for home education, we fill our days with all sorts of little events like this. As we scooted the rest of the way home we talked about what we had seen and the interesting sighting spurred on many, many questions from Opeie, exactly what I want from a day of learning.

Sketchbook memories #2 - Opeie at 9 months sitting on Eames chair with Fisher Price ball

I found myself with half an hour to kill last night, Mrs M was in the kitchen making chocolate, the house was tidy and Opeie was fast asleep so i quickly grabbed my sketch book and pencils. Since stating my doodling again I'm taking every spare minute i can to do a quick sketch. Most of my favourite photo's are on the iPad, i have them on there because i like to have Opeie's early pictures easy to access, us parents always have nostalgic moments and sometimes i just need to see his little face as a baby. 

Today's sketch was from when he was around 9 months old, I had brought Mrs M an Eames chair for Christmas and we had placed him on there with various toys for pictures. There was a lovely one of him with Spider-man but the shot with the vintage Fisher Price musical ball seemed to have more character.

It's been a while since sketching faces and i really need some practice so hopefully they will get better with time. When Opeie saw the picture he said 'Baby Opeie'  so it cant be all that bad.

Previous Sketchbook memories posts...

• Sketchbook memories #1 - Daddy and Opeie at 6 weeks old