Origami Hats

Ellie is always folding paper and making origami swans and hats and such.

She took it to the extreme the other day though.

She started out with this hat. But it wasn't big enough.

So she made another. But it wasn't big enough either.

Then she made the biggest hat I've ever seen.

Cloud Land by Lexie

Lexie wanted me to post the coloring page she worked on this afternoon. It is Cloud Land.

Tori's Masterpiece

I have finally given Tori the chance to use the crayons. She loves them! They kept her busy for at least an hour. I just have to make sure that she is strapped in at the table when she's using them, so that we don't end up with colored walls and furniture...
I have finally given Tori free rei

"Gold Leaf" Pictures

Today, the kids painted pictures and added "gold leaf" to them. We used gold foil origami paper to get the same sort of effect. Ellie modeled hers after "The Kiss" by Gustav Klimt and Kate decided to do a landscape scene.

Nick's Cucumber

Yes, you read that right. Nick likes cucumbers. Loves them actually. He could eat them all day long. So, here is a picture of a cucumber.

Ellie is teaching him to write his name. Not too shabby for a 3 year old. :)

Bird Artwork

Lexie's little bluebird:

Kate's little bird:


Ellie's bird art. I love her use of color!:

Kate's Artwork

I've been showing a lot of Ellie's artwork lately and thought I'd post some of Kate's also. These are two watercolors that she did this past week.

More of Ellie's Art

This wasn't an assigned project - just something she wanted to work on. She has been spending more and more of her free time with the art supplies. She's been begging for some oil paints (we only have watercolors - which her siblings have transformed all from vibrant colors into a mottled grayish brown).



And I didn't cut the head off of the picture. She composed it that way. :)

Ellie's Self-Portrait

Here is a self-portrait that Ellie did today in oil pastels. :)

Weeks 4 and 5 Update

Ok, so I decided that I didn't like delaying my post by a week. It bugged me. :) We have now finished weeks 4 and 5!! Can we really have made it this far already?

HISTORY
We spent Week 4 studying various rulers of the early Medieval World - Charles Martel, Charlesmagne, Otto I. We listened to Story of the World and Mystery of History CDs (Did you know that Mystery of History is on CD also??).

Anything on CD is much easier for me than reading aloud. Not that I don't like reading aloud, but if we are listening to the CD, then I can be attending to the younger kids at the same time. We often get interrupted (and I get frustrated) when I'm trying to read aloud and there are lots of "little" distractions. :)

We spent Week 5 learning about Knights and listening to the story of King Arthur. We also read a short picture book on Beowulf.

The kids made their own Coats of Arms.

SCIENCE

Our butterflies came out of their cocoons this week. I am so happy that they survived! Nick had moved the butterfly house and the cocoons fell from the top of the house. I was worried that they weren't going to come out, but they did!!

Kate and Lexie then moved on to study the circulatory system. Here is a model of blood we made, using oil, red hots, and beans to stand for plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.

LANGUAGE ARTS
Ellie and Kate have finished the first 25 lessons of Sequential Spelling (4 and 1 respectively). I am really enjoying this program. I like that they don't have a set of words that they study for the week. The kids didn't like the "busy work" of the MCP Workout workbooks. I can really tell that Kate's spelling has improved over the past few weeks with this program.

Ellie's gift is definitely in reading and writing. She is very descriptive in her writing assignments - the words she uses amazes me sometimes. Writeshop has been a great fit for us, because it has very clear guidelines for the assignments, and it has a grading checklist for me (which I absolutely need!!)

Kate struggles with writing a bit more. She is only 7 though - I'm sure that she will improve with time and practice. She also doesn't enjoy reading like Ellie does. Reading is work to Kate, not something she does for pleasure. Instead of assigning her specific reading assignments, I have decided that I need to just make sure that she has 30 minutes of reading to herself (and she needs to be in a quiet place where she won't be distracted).

RUSSIAN
Ellie has finished the first unit of Rosetta Stone Russian. I like this program, but I think that I need to sit down with her and teach her the alphabet, so that she can get the full benefit of the program and be able to read the Cyrillic letters on the screen. I think that I will pull out my old books from when I was studying Russian in the Air Force and go through the sounds of the letters with her. (Russian has 32 letters!!)

ART
The kids are loving Artistic Pursuits and they are enjoying the variations in their lessons. I feel much better about art this year!! This is coming from someone that draws stick people. This makes the lessons so easy!!

MATH
I am loving Teaching Textbooks so far. It has made my day much easier. The lectures are given on the computer. Their answers are automatically graded for me. What more could I ask for??

Kate is zipping through grade 4 math without any problems whatsoever. I don't think she's gotten lower than a 91 - and she's enjoying it.

I wish that I could say the same for Ellie. Math just isn't her thing. I think part of it is a mental block - deciding that she just doesn't like math and then she tells herself she isn't good at it. I can't blame her, because I never cared for math much either.

I have to keep telling her that she is doing fine and not to compare herself to her sister. Ellie is doing grade 6 math and with the speed her sister is going through hers, her fear is that Kate will catch up to her - or worse yet pass her up.

I have to remind Ellie that math is just Kate's thing - and that Ellie excels in reading and writing (which Kate struggles with more).

It is interesting to see how the kids can be so different in their interests and talents.

I should mention that Lexie is working her way through Horizons 1. She isn't having any problems at all - she just needs to work on her handwriting skills. She is making her 5s and 3s backwards quite often. I'm sure that's pretty normal though.

What a Mess!

The kids have had a great time trying out our various new art supplies. It's nice to step away from the plain-old crayons and markers for a while.

We have fallen in love with the watercolor crayons and pencils.

Oil pastels are fun and very vibrant.

Watercolor paint is a joy.

We have found an art medium that I don't enjoy much though - soft pastels.

They work much like chalk. Very dusty. And they smear everywhere. You have to spray the pictures to seal them in a bit. It was quite a mess to clean up when they were done and I wasn't as impressed with the results.

Ellie enjoyed them more than I did. Maybe it's because I'm the one that ended up cleaning the room....

I don't see us using these much - maybe outside?

Art: Still Life

First of all, I have to say that I love all of the cool art supplies we purchased this year. Our new favorite thing is watercolor crayons. You color with them and then paint over them with water. The effect is neat - and much easier than actually watercoloring with paints (in my opinion).

Today, we did a still life. I just grabbed a bunch of interesting things from around the house and put them in the middle of the table. All three girls drew what they saw and then colored them in.

Here is what was on the table:


Ellie's interpretation:


Kate's version:


Lexie's masterpiece:


I think that they all did a wonderful job!!!

We couldn't stop there though. When the art supplies come out, they tend to continue drawing.
Lexie's bird:

Ellie's sketch of an old man:

I had them listening to their history CDs while they worked (Story of the World and Mystery of History). I like to multitask. :)

I also read them a couple of fairy tales of Charles Perrault since we're studying France this week. Wow, are the originals different from the glossed over versions that we usually hear! Did you know that the prince's mother in Sleeping Beauty was part ogre and wanted to eat her daughter-in-law and grandchildren? Yikes! And there was no happy ending for poor Little Red Riding Hood. The kids enjoyed comparing the versions they had heard with the ones I read today.

Artwork from Week One: The Materials Matter!!

I am beginning to realize that when it comes to art, it pays to invest in some good quality supplies.

We are using Artistic Pursuits art curriculum this year and I am very happy with our first week. They did the lessons and then continued to work on their own projects. They were very excited about the new materials and couldn't keep their hands off of them.

Of particular interest was their new drawing pencils (Ebony pencils for the younger kids and some good quality woodless graphite ones for Ellie). They make a difference!! The kids love the way they feel when they draw. They make much darker lines and the end project turns out much nicer.

They also used watercolor pencils this week. They drew pictures with their new drawing pencils, then colored them in with the watercolor pencils. Next, they took a paintbrush dipped in water and wet the colors in their pictures. They turned out so nice!!

I also love how nice the projects come out when the thick watercolor paper is used. I wish it wasn't so expensive - especially since they all want to use it and it seems to come in pads of 12-15 (which won't last long in this house!)

By the way, the pictures turned out much darker than I had expected. I took pictures of them and the lighting in the room was very dark. They look much brighter in person. :)

Art Class goodies

Here are the goodies that Ellie brought back from her last art class:

A beautiful, painted card that says she loves me. How sweet!

A small piece of pottery.

And this is an earring holder that she made.

Art Inspired by Eric Carle

Over the years, we have all enjoyed Eric Carle's books. Brown Bear, Brown Bear and The Very Hungry Caterpillar are among our favorites and I'm sure that I could recite them by heart.

So, when I saw this neat art project posted on Chocolate on my Cranium, I knew that we had to give it a try. I can't seem to find her exact post, because it was a few months back, but they made some beautiful artwork.

First we took some plain, white paper. I used cardstock, because I had some extra and thought it might be easier to work with. You could probably use plain paper also.

We used various different paints and just painted the blank sheets, trying to make different patterns and textures. The poster paints looked best - especially the "glitter" ones. They gave it a really neat shine. We also used some acrylics, because we had them in various colors. They left a more "dull" look to the pages, but still worked.

This is one of the times that I am eternally thankful that I have an arts & crafts table. The thought of doing this at the dining room table scares me. Especially since I let Nick participate!


I let them dry overnight. Some of the papers were pretty wet, since we were making interesting textures in it. They curled up as they dried:


I stacked them all up and put them under the monstrous Webster's Dictionary to flatten out a bit.

Then we started cutting pieces out to make our pictures. We used glue sticks and put them onto cardstock as a background. I would definitely do this project again!!

Ellie made a caterpillar:

And a butterfly:

Kate did a flower:

Lexie made a cute little ladybug:
I had to jump in and make some flowers too. I couldn't help myself!!

Doesn't this look like fun?????? Give it a try!!

Bathing Beauties

The girls have taken two very fun and very foo-foo classes over the past week.

First, they made their own soaps:



Then they made their own bath oils and decorated the bottles:



I was so impressed with how nice the oils actually smelled! If I had a tub of my own instead of our cramped little shower, I would be tempted to take a long, hot bath.

Here is the recipe they used for the oils:

1 cup light oil, such as mineral oil, massage oil, or baby oil
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup unscented liquid soap or unscented shampoo
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

Mix together the ingredients in a clean bottle with tight fitting lid. When read to use, shake vigorously, and pour 1/4 cup under running bath water.
Then, of course you have to decorate your bottle with all sorts of pretty, girly things!

I will have some bathing beauties tonight as they try out their homemade oils. :)

Roman Sticky Mosaics

Months ago, I found a neat art product called Sticky Mosaics.

At the time, I bought an additional set to use during our Ancient Rome studies. The kids have seen it sitting on the shelf for half a year and have been begging to use it. Yesterday they finally got their chance. We have officially started our studies on Ancient Rome.

They spent at least an hour or two working on them and it made for a very peaceful afternoon. Even Nick joined in the fun!

We used the Classic Edition, which contained reproductions of Roman mosaics found in Tunisia. The kit contained 4 large and 2 mini mosaics and was enough to keep the 4 kids busy for quite some time!

Art Projects from Today

Ellie has been working on watercolor painting this semester. This is her first big project. She chose the subject herself. It looks a little bit blurry because of the scanner. Aren't the colors beautiful?

Kate drew a cat today. What fun!