When Zosia was small we've tried many art classes for her. Some were big with many branches around Taiwan, others small led by artists. After trying all of them we've decided on Soho Arts  which is connected to The Children's Art Museum in Taipei.
This art class not only teaches how to draw/paint etc, but also shows different art techniques and talks about different artists and art styles. Children use all kinds of materials and means to create their work.
Both Zosia and Jas used to attend Soho Art class on and off for the past few years. This semester they wanted to go back there again. Here are photos of some of their work:

It doesn't happen very often that the kids finish their assignments early. Today they somehow managed to get everything done by the time of the afternoon walk with the dog. And so the three of us plus Inu went for a longer walk around our community. Jas took with him fish food to feed the very hungry carps in th epond and Zosia had my camera with her to take photos of the surrouding nature. Just take a look at what we saw:

Both Zosia and Jaś have been going to Cloud Gate Dance Studio 雲門舞集舞蹈教室 for many years now.
Zosia, because of her age, should have finished the course this semester, but ... she decided to stay on and retake some of the classes to prepare herself better for the scholarship classes that she has been attending for the past two years. Almost every Sunday she spends dancing for over 5 hours. During that time she has balet and modern dance or Chinese martial arts classes and rehearsal for next year performance. She comes back home dead tired, but with a strong will to go on and on...
Jaś, beside the movement class, has been taking balet for the past 1.5 years. He is the only boy in the class and that seems to be bothering him. He loves dancing and often makes his own dance routines at home, but he doesn't like that other boys laugh at him for taking balet lessons.

At the exhibition about Egypt we bought a kit for digging treasures. Jaś has spent quite some time quietly breaking down the plaster block and looking for all the hidden things. This was our first take on a 'dig and excavate' kit. There are all kinds of kits like that, but I've always thought of them as boring and messy. Now that Jaś had done this one I think they are not that bad :-)

Turns out that on Fridays Zosia will be having classes outside home. This leaves me and Jaś all by ourselves. Today we decided to go to an exhibition about Egypt - 'Quest for Immortality'. Jaś went well prepared as we studied Ancient Egypt last year. He remembered most of the things that were on display. The exhibition was not very big - it took us only an hour to go through everything, but there were still many people.
Later we had a sushi picnic and after that I took Jaś for a haircut - he needed one badly.

Almost 2 years ago, my mom came up with a project ideac about countries that have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. It took this long for the project to come to life :-)
Just before vacation, on Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, we found a list of countries with diplomatic relations with Taiwan. We've brainstormed quite a while and came up with a way to present this project. I've tried to make it as original and artistic as possible... At last I've decided to have little booklets glued to a map/outline of Taiwan (later I ended up using the world map).
It took me a while to measure and count the number and size and the way to fold the little booklets, but it took me more than a while to fit the information I wanted into them. This is the list of what is on each page:
1st page: Country flag and Chinese name (I had to shorten some).
2nd: Official name (in the country's language)
3: The country's outline
4: Population (Vatican has only 820!)
5: Area (and only 0.44km²!)
6: Currency
7: Language
 And btw, Vatican HAS diplomatic relations with Taiwan. >_v='''

Can I say that we are going back to school? We don't really stop learning during vacation or holidays so there is no ... break from so called school. But still ... with summer over we started using our desks more than during the vacation.
This year I am trying to do as much preparations in advance as possible. I've planned all the subjects for both kids for the next half a year. Of course it doesn't mean that this plan is not going to change, we are very flexible and if something interesting comes up or if the kids would be interested in something else than what I have prepared then let it be. Follow the child (most of the time at least).
Zosia is still interested in science - physics, chemistry and she still likes math a lot, so we will be doing a lot of these this year.
Can't really figure out what Jas likes. His interests change all the time, from math to history , to building with Lego or drawing. I never know what he will want to do, how he will want to learn or which project he would like to work on.
I hope that this semester although we are not joining the nature class, we will find time to go out  and explore Taipei and surrounding mountains or even take a trip down south. We'll see...
So far kids signed up for dance classes (Zosia both Saturday and Sunday and Jas Saturday only). Jas is also continuing piano lessons and went back to art class.
Zosia is still going ice-skating and is thinking of joining photography class.

All the hours at Taipei Arena have paid off -
Zosia won the GOLD medal at the Skate Asia 2011 held in August in Bangkok, Thailand. We are very proud of her. Her performance was really beautiful and graceful. See for yourself:

It's hot - very hot - too hot to do anything but sit at home or in the swimming pool. Of course it's not too hot for a summer camp at Juming Museum. And that's exactly where Jas is spending this week. Before the camp he had to prepare a piece of art work with his favourite scenery. This is what he (and Zosia) came up with:
Do you know what it is? It's one of the lakes on Mazury, that we go to almost every year while in Poland.

Zosia is still spending a lot of time at the ice-skating rink  preparing for next week's competition in Thailand.

Almost a week has passed since I got back with Jaś from Poland. Can't say we went there for vacation as neither the weather nor the activities were holiday like. Most of the time we've spent getting the new apartment ready for guests. We painted the whole place by ourselves and bought some new furniture and kitchen stuff. It turned out very nice. Remember to let me know if you are planning a trip to Warsaw, maybe you can stay there ...

As always we drove for three days to Bydgoszcz to visit some relatives. But for Jaś much more fun was a visit to Szumin near Warsaw and to an open-air museum in Sierpc.
In Warsaw the only interesting place we went was the new science center for kids - Centrum Kopernik.