Yesterday, W went to his monthly book club. The book was "Peppe the Lamplighter", which is about an Italian immigrant family living in downtown NYC. It's a beautiful story with beautiful pictures. The book club had about 5-6 kids and they talked about the book - plot, setting, characters, etc. Then they made a cool project - a big street map of Little Italy. W cut out Peppe's streetlamps and wrote up the map legend. It came out really nice and W had fun with it. I have to give kudos to the mom running it. She's so full of great ideas and knows how to get the kids involved and excited about reading.

Today we went to the Children's Museum of the Arts in Soho. It's a cute little hole-in-the-wall place with so much going on inside! The main floor has different sections set up where kids can just sit and do an art project. J started out at the "still life" area, drawing some fruit that was on the table. W played with a tub of "flubber" and tried doing a self-portrait (a table set up with paper, oil pastels, and tabletop mirrors). Downstairs was set up for "Homeschooler Fridays".
Homeschoolers get a 20% discount on Fridays and have their own classes. Admission is $8 per person or you can get a full year membership for $200 and go anytime. Today they had the first of the weekly claymation classes. About 5 or 6 kids were there, each got their own slab of clay and got to try both the animation and the computer program which takes the pictures and plays the film. I found it fascinating and the instructor taught us a lot. In another room on the lower level there was a drumming class.
The kids bounced back and forth between the 2 rooms. The class was being led by 2 guys who were teaching techniques for bongo-type drums and others, including upside-down milk cartons played with drumsticks. Good music was coming out of there after a while, lol. After more than 2 hours we had to get the train back to Queens for J to make it to dance. It's so great to know that there's a place just for homeschoolers to learn and have fun.