Last week I taught a silkscreen workshop for the kids in our homeschool group.  I got all of our supplies from EZ Screen Print and each kid got to make a screen 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″.  We spent the first 20 minutes making their drawings with black Sharpie on 20 lb. copy paper then used the sun to expose their screens.

In art school silk screen was a long process requiring a lot of special equipment– but with the EZ Silk Screen it was a breeze.  Colorado boasts more than 300 sunny days a year, and it did not fail us.  I was so excited that we didn’t even need to use transparency for their images.  The Sharpie on paper exposed perfectly.

We developed and washed everything with plain old water.

And just used tape to hold the screens in place rather than stretching screens on frames.

The actual printing was pretty  messy, but the results were worth it.  I love sharing these kind of projects with kids– helping them do things that seem so complex and showing them that they are artists!  They were all so proud of their finished products.

I ended up doing it over 2 days.  The first group had 8 kids, with my older 3 added to that.  11 kids was a bit overwhelming, I have to admit.  The next day I had 4 extra kids and it was perfect.  It made me wish I taught an art class more than once a year.

Oh, school.  We’ve been at it for several weeks now.  6 maybe?  I think we’re on our 6th week.  It has been so long since I’ve written about school, how and what we do.  I don’t think I wrote about it at all last school year once the Summer Mom-school fizzled out.  Why, might you ask?  Well, I guess my confidence has been a bit shaky.  In my heart of hearts I know that this homeschooling thing is what I am supposed to do with the children God has blessed me with.  It is certainly not for the faint of heart, though, and since Hunter was born and Brenna has entered double digits I have been trying to get my bearings.

Last year I decided I needed some help finding books and creating some structure and after lots of searching and praying we decided to give Sonlight a try.  After starting Core 3 with Brenna and Jonah I decided the reading was too easy for them, sent it back, and got Core 3/4.  Because the kids go to public school one day a week and we often go on homeschool group field trips on Thursdays we are still working through it.  I love the literature and history part of it.  Not so sure about the language arts program, and though the science books are lovely, my kids are tired of electricity and the worksheets are a little beyond Jonah’s interest and ability level.  I make Brenna do them.  Probably because I feel like I need to get my money’s worth.  With Jonah and Logan I’ve actually started using a borrowed Apologia zoology book and so far we’re loving it.  It is written in a way that it makes Charlotte Mason style learning so easy– with prompts to narrate, or tell back what they’ve read, experiments, and notebooking assignments in each lesson.

Brenna just reads and reads and reads encyclopedias.  Here she is writing a compare and contrast essay on snails and slugs.  Did you know many types of slugs actually have tiny shells inside their bodies?  Did you know that slugs actually have a gender, but snails are hermaphrodite?  Well, now you do because my little biology encyclopedia typed it up.

For math we are using Math-U-See, partly because we get it free through our homeschool/public school, and because I like blocks.  Math time is tolerable as long as I have realistic expectations that we will spend at least an hour doing math rather than the 30 minutes I had originally set aside for it.

For scripture study we’re using these workbooks and my little drawers love them.

My littles are a bit tricky.  My house usually looks just like Jessica’s because they will get out every game and empty every box, or every puzzle, or both.

I wish I had time and energy to put together Montessori activities for them every day.  Ian loves the sandpaper (well, felt) letters I made for him, and any sorting activity.  He sorted those pom poms for at least half an hour of quiet concentration a day for an entire week.  I would love to get him a wooden movable alphabet and the Pink series work.  The Michael Olaf catalogs are full of great ideas for toddlers too.  I know that my little guys would really concentrate if I put together and presented things for just them.  I also know they get a lot out of the drawing and reading aloud and counting and all that goes on here too just how it is.

So that’s what we’re doing now.  And it is ridiculously late, so you’ll just have to be okay with this ending.