making art

I’ve been inspired by Lisa’s posts of her daily drawings, and so I thought I’d take a stab at it this school year. I adhere to the educational philosophy of “it’s you, not them.” My real responsibility is for my own education–and in order to teach my kids that they, in turn, bear the responsibility for their own educations I need to be learning and making during school time. So, here’s week one of drawings. Here in writing I’m only requiring myself to do 3 a week, but this week I have 5. You know, it’s new and the motivation is high

They’re all small, about 6″x6″ give or take, on scraps of printmaking paper using watercolors and a regular old #2 pencil.

My other mom school work is working on the Womanhood Course in a new organization called The Art of Womanhood.

Life is a Balancing Act

I’m tired. I’ve been quite a slacker in posting here–and in lots of other areas. I’ve been really bad about doing school every day, because I’m just not quite sure what to do. We’ve been doing first grade Saxon Math, which has worked pretty well so far because it is so gradual in adding concepts. Brenna is perfectly capable of every bit of it–and a little more. But, now we’ve reached a point where she has a worksheet of facts and the regular worksheet everyday, and it is just out of her 5 year old attention span to be able to enjoy. So, I’ve completely backed off on the math and structure and let her just read. But she has plenty of attention span for books. She’s been reading about 2 novels a week. This week she read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and Queen Zixxie of Ix, both by L. Frank Baum. Last week she read Ozma of Oz and one of the American Girl books. I guess I just feel guilty because it doesn’t take any effort on my part to plop her on a chair with a book and let her disappear into Oz for the rest of the the day. She’s got to be learning something, right? I shouldn’t be feeling bad that my 5 year old is reading at an 7th or 8th grade level, but just isn’t interested in 1st grade math.

So, I guess I’m just writing this to try to convince myself I’m doing okay, even though I’m not doing much. I have been spending a lot of time with church responsibilities. There have been lots of sugeries and babies born. There is one sister who has a 3 year old boy, a 2 year old boy, 16 month old twin girls, she’s pregnant due in April, and in the process of a divorce. I have no room to complain about being tired.

But I sure want too

our homeschool

We started school almost 3 weeks ago now. I subscribe to the “kids should not be taught like little adults” philosophy, but am trying to find a happy medium between total unschooling and playing sergeant mom. We start the morning with a song and a prayer, say the pledge of alegiance (mostly because Jonah thinks it is way cool), then check the calendar and the weather. I try to work in some phonics for Jonah and started 1st grade Saxon math with Brenna. Both of them love the math–we stack and count legos and color pictures and count on a 1-100 counting chart. Then Brenna reads and reads. She’s also been listening to books on CD. I had to take The Land of Oz back before it was due because we all had it memorized. She was listening 24/7. I’ve been trying to read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (book 5 in the Chronicles of Narnia) with her, but she gets impatient with my limited amount of reading time and reads ahead. Oh well. I’m certainly not going to complain about my 5 year old reading novels, but it is kind of sad that she doesn’t need me anymore. I’m not the only one with magic reading powers.

We’re also dabbling with history, hence the family tree. This has taken 3 weeks for her to make. I’m glad it’s done so we can be archeologists and dig in the sand box!

Here’s a close up:

felting with kids tutorial #1

Felting is fun for everyone! Felt beads are the absolute easiest felt project to make, so I enlisted my kids to help show you how.

First, you need some roving. Roving is processed wool that is ready to spin into yarn or make into felt. Get MERINO roving– especially if you’ve never made felt before. It’s not too picky about water temperature and felts really fast. I think e-bay is a great place to find roving for cheap and in big quantities.

I just do this on my kitchen counter, but you could do it outside just as well. I set out a towell, get my roving, and fill up a bowl with warm water with a little drop of soap.

Now, pull off a little piece of fluff

and dunk it in the water.

Now, rub it round and round in your hands like you would if you were making a ball of play-dough.

It will seem like wet hair at first, then a soft, squishy ball, and after a little while it will be a firm piece of felt. The harder and faster you rub it, the quicker it will matt up and become felt. Brenna’s (5) beads were pretty round, Jonah’s (3) were oblong because he just rubbed back and forth.

I must admit that most of the time the kids were playing with their little “eels” who would swim in the water and then go potty all over the towell.

White beads are okay,

but we wanted a prettier necklace, so we broke out the Kool-Aid. The only flavors I had left were Blue Raspberry Lemonade, Berry Blue, Pink Lemonade, and Cherry, so that’s what we used.

I put about 1/4 cup of water in each bowl and dumped in a whole packet of Kool-Aid. I’m sure it would work just as well with less powder, but I wasn’t to concerned about having leftovers. Then I put all the bowls in the microwave together for 5 or 6 minutes and let it sit for a little bit. Once it wasn’t scorching hot I scooped the beads out, one color at a time, and put the in a colander and rinsed them with cold water.

Now, let them dry. Then, string them on a string (You can’t use a thick tapestry needle though, you have to use a skinny sewing needle, so my kids need my help to do this.)

We used a piece of skinny handspun yarn that we dyed with the beads so it would match, but you can just use whatever you want.

ALL DONE!! Brenna loves her necklace and Jonah played with his little eels all day.

If you try this with your kids, send me a picture!

Now, go get felting!

to be continuted…

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Category Archives: Homeschool

making art

Life is a Balancing Act

our homeschool

felting with kids tutorial #1