Q&A time...

Kelly (designisgood) asked the following...

how do you keep up with two blogs?

The truth... I'm a big giant procrastinator and right now I have a ton of assignments due for Memory Makers and instead of working on them, I've been busy procrastinating and keeping my blogs up to date! LOL!

And given that I still have a bunch to do (two layouts done though! woo hooo!) I'll be back later to give you my opinions and observations on Atelier Art, Angel! :-)

Apparently I work best under stress! LOL!

the queen of hearts....

Yesterday the kids begged to do another project from our art curriculum. So, we got out the Atelier Homeschool Art stuff and started the next project.

The assignment was to do "action strips" where the pictures told the story from the nursery rhyme, The Queen of Hearts, in four panels. We read the nursery rhyme and even acted it out. Clara was the Queen of Hearts, Alex was the knave who stole the tarts and I got to be the king who scolded the knave. They had a great time acting it out.

After that, they began to draw...

Here's Alex's finished product...
and here is Clara's...
They really LOVE this art program and I love that it's DVD based. Usually I do the project along with them, but yesterday I didn't.

another free lapbook

Hands of a Child generously offers a free lapbook once a quarter. This quarter's free lapbook is about Deer.

hmmmm.....

I sense a school project brewing! This a picture of my kids studying the Burpee Seed catalog over breakfast last Friday. Ever since we went our neighborhood's garden walk last summer, Alex has been determined to have our house entered this year. That should be interesting since we have no yard... only a deck. I talked to the coordinators and anyone can participate even if their entire garden is in containers. So, with the arrival of the catalog, the planning has begun.

And while we're this far into, I might as well throw some school in too. Right now I'm trying to decide between something smaller scale like the Hands of a Child Botany Lapbook kit or full out like Apologia Exploring Creation with Botany. I flip flop daily on which one I want to do. Perhaps we should get through Apologia Exploring Creation with Astronomy first and see which one we have time for after that. We will probably continue to do our botany program through the summer while our garden is growing.

This should be an interesting project. I have no clue what will grow successfully on our covered deck (there are two units above us). Alex has grand visions of it looking something like a Tournament of Roses Parade float. We'll see.... LOL!

Language Arts and Impromtu Art Appreciation!

I know, I haven't posted much lately. I think that's because we're back to our usual routine now that the holidays are over. But today we followed a bit of a "rabbit trail" and had a good afternoon!

First of all... just let me start with giving a little bit of background... in Texas we lived near a 75% Off Books store. Can you believe a whole store full of books with nothing over $5??? I would often go on buying binges... justifying each book with the vague explanation that it would be good for homeschool. Well... today I actually got to pull one out and use it in conjunction with something in our language arts curriculum! (Sadly... I have yet to find legit uses for a lot, okay most, of the books I acquired during my 75% Off Books binges.... but this gives me hope that one day I will...LOL!)

So, today Alex and I were working on his language arts (we use Sonlight Language Arts... I'll try to get a link up to what we use on the right). Tomorrow he's supposed to write a story describing what is going on in an illustration (that should have been today but we're a day behind this week because of the dentist). Today's assignment was to get a feel for describing what is going on in a picture by looking at some and discussing them. Well... what do you know? On one of my trips to 75% I picked up the perfect book....Tell Me a Picture!


It has 26 pictures in it to look at and discuss (it is arranged by artist... one for each letter of the alphabet). We went through and described what we saw, what we thought was going on, how the subjects felt, what we would feel like if were in the scene, what sounds we might hear, etc. I know we could have used any pictures to do this exercise but it was fun to use this book. Because I was doing this rather impromptu, I didn't have time to really prepare, we just started going through it page by page. A fun surprise is that in the back of the book there are the titles and actual descriptions of the paintings. There is also a little biographical information about the artists. The kids LOVED reading the descriptions of what was *really* going on... we would flip back and forth between the descriptions and the paintings. I thought it would be frustrating for them to hear different descriptions than what they had come up with (like their description was wrong... if you know what I mean). But they didn't seem phased at all.... mostly they seem excited to see what they had missed and studied the pictures even harder the next time they looked through them.

Didn't plan on an art appreciation lesson today, but we got one anyway! It's crazy the stuff you learn when you homeschool! LOL!

ETA: Totally forgot... there is some nudity in this book if it bothers you. One instance is very subtle in my opinion... barely noticeable. The other instance is very obvious (a woman with no covering on top)... but this is not at all the focus of the painting. My kids didn't even bat an eye and went on the describe what they thought had happened to the woman. We spend quite a bit of time in the Art Institute of Chicago so it wasn't anything unusual for them to see that in a painting. (yikes... this was hard to type in a way that hopefully won't end up with my blog coming up for someone doing a search using creepy terms)

Ack!!! Why is it...

... at this time every year I get the itch to totally rework our homeschool plan? Is it the new year thing? Is it mid-year burn out?

I think maybe I'll start by rambling here in the next couple of days about what we're currently using for each subject and what I like and dislike about each to see if anyone out there has any suggestions. I keep trying to find this perfect mix of The Well Trained Mindand Charlotte Mason... sigh. I've been rereading The Well Trained Mind so perhaps its time for me to balance it out with another read through of The Charlotte Mason Companion.

I do this every year... am I the only one?

totally gross

Totally Gross Game

Apparently we play a lot of games.... lol! Clara got Alex this game for Christmas (however, the one he got is the mini version, it was about half the price of the one linked to and fits into a small tin... it doesn't include the "lab cards" mentioned or the slime... hmmm... we could be missing out on something fun here).

Okay... we played the game today as our post-lunch, pre-getting back to the books activity. For my kids (ages 6 and 7) it works best for me to be "keeper of the cards" and do all of the reading. So they rolled the die and answered the questions but I got to sit in the comfy chair and read cards. The questions range from intriguing to totally gross. Alex thought they were hilarious since most of them had to do with bodily functions (a lot of "poop" questions and even one about what would happen to you if you peed on an electric fence). Most of them seemed to have a decent scientific explanation to go with the answer. There was one evolution related question about eyebrows (did they have a purpose or were they just left over from when we evolved from apes?). Being the reader of the cards, I got to edit that one and just left it as "do eyebrows have a purpose?".

I can't believe I totally forgot the Gross Out cards. If you land on certain spaces you get to draw a "gross out" card and if you do the activity listed you get to move another space. So far we haven't gotten anything too terribly gross. Today, only Alex landed on a gross out space and all he had to do was blink as many times as he could in 20 seconds. However, the other one on the card was to "groom" the person sitting next to you. Nothing my kids think twice about doing... however, in a year or two in a mixed group of friends, they might seem more of a "gross out".

I'm not sure I could totally count playing this game as a school activity... but its a fun game that the kids enjoy that does have some redeeming educational qualities.