Venetian Masks Type History Project

This week the 3Gs made festival masks that might somewhat resemble Venetian party masks. It was a project for last week and the history chapters about France where King Louis the 16th and his wife were ruling a poor people of France from Marseilles.  We also drew a daily scene from our home along with the Artistic Pursuits lesson about the French artist Millet. The initial sketch was done lightly with a pencil and then today traced with water color pencils and water applied to blend colors. The left picture is from our school room of a beautiful green chair. The center picture is of the stairway. The right picture is of Purple the Hippo in an orange box who also sits on the stairway as the guard squirrel looks on.

More Chemistry with 2nd and 3rd Graders

We've moved with Elemental Science directions to Adventures with Atoms and Molecules, Book 1. I set the Gs to three seperate experiments on their own over the past two weeks. I was in the next room moderating the chaos, but when you consider that the materials are water and food coloring to examine molecular movements, they were just fine.  In the introduction of the book, the Gs were directed to make models of some molecules.  The picture shows their work with Easter candy, marshmellows and toothpicks.

KC VISIT! We're ready!

Oil Pastel Sketch

Lesson 26 about Vermeer Project 26: Studio Painting

Can I just say that I'm THRILLED that I recognize all 3 of the pieces from our real life. Making time for art in our daily study is working out just fine and worth every penny the ARTISTIC PURSUITS book cost us.

Tree Rubbings?

Lesson 29 about Turner in the Romantic Period Project 29: Rubbings (pennies, bubble wrap, sandpaper and paperclip) with oil pastel crayons to see the texture.

African Countries Study

There are so many countries in the continent of Africa and we've looked at each one since August. This school year I have blank notebook pages printed from the file I bought at Homeschooling with Index Cards each day for each student. I bring the computer to http://www.flags.net/ and let them fill in the blanks of the page.  The country, its capital and flag are already colored in on the form.  We mapped major rivers, mountains and deserts. They are familiar with the oceans, seas and some lakes. Now that each page from the African section is complete we are practicing the pronunciation of country names, capital cities and any other physical feature for free at Sheppard Software. 

My 3Gs used this same method to become familiar with each European continent country last school year. We continue to practice the knowledge with the fun pages at Sheppard Software.  The work we did on the United States flags, state birds and capitols was the year before and not as easy to practice, but because my mom bought them a map for the car to identify license plates from differing states, they are remembering some of that knowledge.  The attempt I made at familiarizing them with the Canadian provinces wasn't so successful and I hope that some day we will improve in that area. 

Next year? Well, my sister is planning a fall semester in Peru. So, I believe that an attempt to familiarize the 3Gs with every country south of Texas and Florida is called for then.  I have the notebook forms from Homeschooling with Index Cards and will prepare to discuss more reading selections with them as well as movies and videos. We will also practice from the Sheppard Software pages because I wouldn't know exactly how to attempt many of the pronunciations. It's a plan anyway.

Color Block with Tape and Watercolors

ARTISTIC PURSUITS K-3 Book Two Lesson 22 about Parmigianino Project 22: Blocking Out. We followed the directions step by step and used watercolor set, paper, masking tape, scissors and round brush.

Distractions or Destruction

Make believe battles go on all over this place. If it isn't the nerf guns, it is the expansion bolts pretending to be light sabers.

There are a couple of art pieces to post from school stuff, but these seem to be more interesting to my 3Gs.

Are you ready? Because, Sunday is here!

Really? You are ready?

More Good Things

Seedlings from the gomphrena, zinnia, allysum, pansies, rutger tomatoes, cilantro, basil and green pepper packets are growing under the special bulbs in the basement ready for the garden soon.

Good Things

"I'll take History for 1000, Alex"

Years ago I would sit and watch Jeopardy with my Grams each weekday evening.  Those people had so much useless knowledge in their brains. Or so I thought they did.  Now, I'm facing the challenge to guide my 3Gs through the ancients to the break up of the Soviet Union in four years time.  We aren't anywhere near on schedule.  In fact, I've smashed quite a bit of history into a small time since August, we've covered half of SOTW2 and we are almost through the first half of SOTW3.  Which means that we've yet to cover the second half of SOTW3 from Captain Cooke's "discovery" of Australia to SOTW4 and that fateful event when 15 republics broke apart.  I have been using narration and accompanying games as well as suggested reading, but it just seems like we're whooshing through it all so fast. Will they remember any of it? I wonder how they will handle it when they approach it from a different angle during their Logic and Rhetoric years. Do they hate/love history? Have I permanently scarred them?