Map Boy

The little dude took to his composition book for a drawing marathon last night before bed. This is what he came up with. This mama is mind blown. He didn't copy, trace, or even draw with a map beside him - this came completely from memory.

And I love how he numbers all of his composition book pages, ha! It's really nice to know that he was paying attention during our homeschooling and got this much out of it. As usual, I am super proud of him!

PS: OMG, what!? It's June!

Circulatory

Little G used his magnetic drawing board to illustrate the circulatory system. Look carefully and notice that he even made a key to show which are veins and which are arteries, and used little arrows to show the direction of the bloodflow. He later lamented that the magnetic board did not afford him the opportunity to use color for a more realistic appeal.

He rocks.

Aztec Turquoise Cat

We recently studied Aztec turquoise. Reezle chose to draw a cat face for her own artwork. I think it turned out really cool!

Middle Eastern Rug Design

We recently studied some of the cultures and history of the Middle East. Meanwhile, we studied some Middle Eastern art forms in art class. Combining the two, Reezle drew this bright, colorful "Middle Eastern" rug. Love it!

I hope you'll pardon the magnets, but I have it hanging on the fridge already.

Art, Math...and Chicken Dancing

Today is brought to you by the letter M. M is for Math, and my son is now officially in 1st grade Math. You'd have thought Santa had just stopped by if you had been here this morning. We logged into the online school (OLS) and voila! there it was: Math+ Green. He jumped, he danced, he was all yeaaaauhh! Kudos to anyone who catches that reference.

It's funny, because I have a 5 year-old who comes out of his room each morning and either asks if his Math book has arrived yet, or wants to know if he can do Math first. Convincing him it is time to stop writing numbers and mathematical problems for the night when it is bedtime is no easy feat. You won't hear me complaining; it's not a video game controller and a bag of Cheetos I'm trying to get him to part with. If he really wants to sleep with the Sudoku puzzle book under his pillow so no one "messes with [his] puzzles", I'm cool with that.

I love this kid, and his cool, number-focused brain.

As promised, I have more Reezle art to share with you. Though I know her ability is impressive, she continues to amaze me with the things she comes up with. Here is a sampling of her work from the past week:




I love these. Her art brings me joy. It always has. I believe there is something of who a person is in everything they create, like a little fingerprint on the world. Maybe that sounds silly, but, I don't know. When she was about 4 years old, I bought her a really big 3-ring binder and a bunch of clear sheets to tuck her art safely into. We keep adding to it, and it has grown so much over time. I love that she has this little personal portfolio, but honestly, I can't bear to part with most of her art. They are personal expressions of who she is, of what she is thinking, of what touches her heart.

The weather this week is amazing. It is everything I love about autumn, from the warm and sunny days to the cool nights that beg for chili to be made and breads to be baked. They make me think of family, of my babies. My daughter will celebrate her 8th birthday this month. Our beautiful weather is also perfect for PE class. In addition to playing outside and doing some good old-fashioned being-a-kid stuff, we have been learning The Chicken Dance, The Electric Slide, and the Hokey Pokey. Maybe I'm just getting old, but the Chicken Dance is quite a workout! A fun one, though. Our living room was full of sweet little laughter this morning as we wiggled and flapped our wings and danced in circles. And in case I have forgotten to mention how much I love being with my children and homeschooling - I know, I know. But I do. So much. And I count my blessings daily.

The Cats of Mirikitani

Tonight, thanks to a recommendation by a friend, I watched a documentary film (I love documentaries) called The Cats of Mirikitani. It was beautiful. I shared it with my daughter, who wasn't about to let me watch it without her anyhow.

The story chronicles a Japanese-American man, Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, who spent time in an internment camp here in the United States during WWII. He becomes homeless on the streets of NYC, and in the wake of September 11th, a woman who was following his story as a homeless artist takes him into her home. My comments and thoughts on it don't really do it justice; it's such an incredible story about people and history. Really, I can't put words to it.

Netflix has The Cats of Mirikitani available via their Instant watching option, so if you have a membership you can watch it right now from your computer. You won't regret it.

Art and Organization

I had these great plans for a homeschool space in the kitchen. First, I decided on a shelving unit I thought would go well with my decor. Once it was all together, I hated it. It was taller than advertised (I ordered online) and looked every bit the small price I paid for it. For someone already having to make peace with non-kitchen items in the kitchen, this was not going to do. Yes, yes, I have issues. No worries, though; it will make the perfect organizer for our outdoor toys in the garage.

My second option was to buy some paint and transform my daughter's old 9-cubby bookshelf into our homeschooling kitchen storage area. My husband picked up the paint and sandpaper, and I set out to get it done before school started.

I'm ashamed to admit I never even got to the sanding part, though I still have good intentions. However, I did find that the shelf in our living room had just the right amount of space for all of our books and the printer, and the extra cabinet in the kitchen holds all of the manipulatives, shapes, DVDs, CDs, Art supplies and Music items perfectly. Little G approves.

In other news, it seems my little artist girl took us very seriously when we said she would be a famous artist selling her works someday; note the little price tags in the bottom right corners of both of the creations below!


For the record, I got a great discount because I'm mommy. I paid 3 warm and fuzzies for the pair of them! They are now proudly displayed on the fridge for all to enjoy.

There is much more art to show, but our weekend became full of other things and I am currently helping R reorganize her drawers and bedroom and sorting through clothes to determine what will still fit the kids for the cooler weather. We seem to be jumping right into cooler weather here! We're also going to work on R's giant art binder, which we've been adding to since she was a toddler. Projects, projects. Home is always full of them.

Spain and First Grade Curriculum

Our quote of the day is brought to you by Reezle: "Sticky is my furry sister. She picked me to be her non-furry sister." Indeed she did.

This morning started off with some unexpected excitement; the OLS had Little G's 1st grade Phonics and Language Arts! The good news? He was super excited and we worked on Phonics today. The not so good news? They don't have 1st grade Math in there yet, nor is it listed in our orders. Of course, that is the one he wants the most, so I bought him a math workbook to hold him over until the OLS updates his curriculum.

In other academic news, we are currently studying Europe in K History. Today's focus was on Spain and I had G color Spain on his Europe map while we talked about it. I found a couple of beautiful time lapse videos on YouTube, which had both of my children saying they want to go to Spain.

They also did some Art, which I will share sometime this weekend. R chose her favorite illustration from a book she recently read, Clara and The Bookwagon, and it turned out amazing! Little G colored Spain's flag and his suitcase for our European adventures.

Over the weekend, I plan to spend some time working with G on his handwriting. His capital letters are great, but his lower case letters could use some refining. I also want to get him writing more sentences, which I'm sure can be easily accomplished just by encouraging him to write descriptive sentences about the things he loves. Like cats. And Math.

I am ready for the weekend. I'm sort of emotionally drained for non-school reasons, and I just want a day or two where I don't have to think about much of anything but snuggling up with my kids and maybe watching some movies, playing a little Monopoly, and getting lost in a good book. The chilly, windy, rainy, 55-degree weather almost begs for chili to be made, so I will probably be adding that to my to-do list as well.

Art

Today, we worked on Art. And other stuff, but I took pictures of them doing Art.

The beautiful results of Art class were these:

And from her former Art class, a sketch that she colored in when she was done:

These kids always manage to leave me in awe of their artistic talents. I'm not nearly so artistically inclined. They're awesome.

After our day was finished, Little G still wanted to work on Math. And so he did, in the Big Second Grade Workbook we found at the Dollar Store.

Today was a good day.

Let's Make a Trade

The kids made their warm and fuzzy trade yesterday; R chose a giant sketch pad and Little G, of course, chose the book with the cat in it.


Since it was time for morning break, G immediately curled up in the chair to read while R grabbed her crayons and got to work on some art.


She filled several pages in no time at all. My Reezle loves her art. Today she asked if we could do an Art lesson about Leonardo da Vinci, as she is apparently a fan. She enjoyed it, and tomorrow we are going to learn a bit about Italy and do some more sketching. I'm also going to have her "invent" something of her own and sketch it up, like da Vinci did.

I want to keep those creative fires burning, so I try to come up with ideas to encourage her to think outside of the box. My very favorite aid in this is the list of writing prompts. This afternoon she wrote a lengthy piece on her favorite food made with apples. She chose apple pie, talked about how to make it, and drew a picture at the end when she was done. I think we're going to have to bake an apple pie from scratch one of these days.

Our Happy Monday

Our happy Monday was a busy Monday. I discovered the joys of coffee yesterday, at wits end with this constant exhaustion I feel due to my inability to sleep like a normal person. So today I tried it again, and discovered (or should I say rediscovered?) the joy of heart palpitations. Caffeine and I don't get along. I knew it 15 years ago, but somehow I thought that exhaustion might trump caffeine intolerance. Nope. So, on to my next plan to feel less zombie-like during our school days. You know, once I figure out what that is.

One of the many things I am enjoying about homeschooling is the flexibility of both scheduling and curriculum content. I'm always supplementing with something, and I find that the internet truly is a wonderful resource. A History lesson about the 7 continents and their well-known landmarks, geography, and climate are much more interesting with the aid of YouTube videos. When I was in school, we basically had one or two pictures in a textbook (sometimes) and our imaginations. Videos about the Great Barrier Reef (Australia), the Great Wall of China (Asia), castles (Europe), The Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and Mt. Rushmore (North America, obviously), penguins (Antarctica), rainforests and macaws (South America), and giraffes (Africa) kept both of the kids engaged and interested. Better yet? They were talking about it for the rest of the day. Good stuff.

For art class, while discussing how Joan Miro lived in Barcelona, Spain and went to study art in Paris, France, we used Google Maps (including street view) to find out what both places look like and how far away from home he went to study (roughly 11 hours by today's travel, in case you were wondering). Reezle decided she would like to visit Barcelona and Paris, especially after we visited the Eiffel Tower via Google's street view. And today, we looked at various images of the earth while we studied the earth's poles and the equator.



An abstract drawing R made for Art using shapes and lines.

With week four of homeschool underway, we're all still loving it. Little G had his assessment yesterday and, like his sister and just as we expected, he scored well above and received the same recommendations as R. Officially, he will be starting some first grade curriculum, probably later this week. He is very excited and keeps asking me to check the OLS (online school) to see if it is there yet, even though I told him it probably won't be until later in the week or possible even next week. He finished his Kindergarten Math book tonight after dinner, so it will be mostly Study Island and working through the remaining Kindergarten lessons in the OLS to keep him busy while we wait for the new curriculum to update on the site.

Reezle will also be starting curriculum for the next grade level because she is assessing out of Math and Language Arts; I'm just waiting to hear back from our second grade teacher on when. I'm just happy that both of them are so interested in learning. Or, um, all three of them if you count the cat; she hasn't missed a lesson yet.

Fall is definitely in the air, with cool nights that bring thoughts of changing leaves, Halloween, squash soup and cups of cocoa to mind. This is my favorite season, the only downside of which is the fact that my least favorite season follows. For now, we enjoy. I hope to make some homemade applesauce with the kids, and we will be making apple shirts soon, which I can hardly wait to post about!