Better late the never! Right?

Wasn't certain we'd get to any sort of Christmas themed activities today. Been a "real" day here. We've all had them, but we just don't talk about them much. These days sort of just exist.

Fortunately, there were some good highlights today.  Here's the run down:

• our Five in a Row (FIAR) book, "Snowflake Bentley" and Beyond FIAR book, "The Saturdays" had a similar lesson ~ snow!  Was able to incorporate both lessons into one time and use a science activity to make snow!    Really like being able to do that!
• got the boys rounded up after dinner and finished chapter one of "The Christmas Carol"!
• Thing Two had his last Wednesday night Christmas Choir practice.  He preforms this coming Sunday!

Unrelated to the above, my little Charlie Brown Christmas Tree has a new pot, new location, and lights!  :)  Kevin's parents have been sending us live wreaths the last few years (very awesome gift!); this years came with a set of lights that are battery powered.  When I read the directions that came with it, it said that do to weather and being outdoors, batteries may only last 7 hours.  Well hello, I'm not going to plow through a bunch of batteries for that.  It fit the little tree nicely and hopefully the batteries will last more than 7 hours.

What are the Christmas happenings at your house?

Wrap-up from school!

We finished up "Snowflake Bentley" today with some science. Thought it would be fun for the boys to make snowflakes and not from coffee filters for a change. Directions to these were easily found on the internet. You need three pipe cleaners twisted together to form the snowflake and trim them so that they fit a small, wide mouth mason jar - about a pint size. In the jar mix 1 cup boiling water and three tablespoons of borax (20 team mule). It's okay if it doesn't all dissolve. I tied white thread on one branch of the snowflake and hung it on a dowl. Put the snowflake into the warm water borax mixture and leave it alone for awhile. Some directions said to leave it overnight, but we found it interesting to look at every 15 minutes or so. I pulled ours out after about 3 hours and they had great crystal formations on them. If we'd had blue food coloring, I might have added a couple drops to the water mixture. Oh well, maybe next time.

Woodcut Art

In art today, we took a look at the pictures in "Snowflake Bentley". Mary Azarian used woodcut printing to make the pictures in the book. We thought we'd try our hand at it today. Here's what we needed:

• sharpened pencil
• green styro foam floral block ~ we used 4" x 4"
• sheet of paper
• 8 1/2" x 11" card stock
• paint

1. cut card stock into four squares
   
2. the floral block was traced onto the sheet of paper
3. kids sketched their idea within the outline
4. with a sharp pencil they drew design onto block
5. then carefully scrap out styro foam from within the lines or areas you don't want covered with paint
6. paint the remaining flat surface of block
7. press the painted surface onto a piece of cardstock

First day back . . .

and it was a fun day for the boys. We spent the morning reading "Snowflake Bentley" (actually viewing the video cassette) and then talked about a home education. The boys liked learning that Thomas Edison, Beatrix Potter, and George Washington Carver were schooled at home as well. It wasn't hard to get them back into math this morning as well.

We got to grammar this afternoon. Late morning got side tracked a bit, then lunch, an errand, pine wood derby cars, and finally back to school. Prior to Christmas break, the boys hadn't been to thrilled with the grammar books we have, so we're setting them aside for now and trying a different approach. Today was focused on Mad Lib's. We prepped by reviewing the parts of speech and coming up with examples.


We then moved onto filling in the blanks of the mad lib. Here's the story, as it read:

Page From An
Analyst's Notebook
(words in bold are the ones boys filled in)

This is the case history of Mom, who is suffering from a cap complex. She also has abnormal fears of boys and six schizophrenia. As a child, she had a blue mother who never let her run outside and paid no attention to her rugs. Also, the father refused to let her play Little League boy. When she she was 166 years old, the pet frog ran away on a rainy night, which is why she was walking at the moon during thunderstorms. It's no wonder that today she never leaves the girl and spends all day watching baseball on TV while eating boxes of donkey biscuits. My professional recommendation: Commit mom to a spa for a week's worth of dad baths, facial doctors, and shiatsu teachers with a big, burly family.

Fun day and more to come!

Happy schooling!

Another Not Wordless Wednesday

NEGATIVE SPACE ART PROJECT

We've been working through "Snowflake Bentley" last week and this week.  Today, we worked on Negative Space.  Don't recall where I found the idea for negative space, but it was a fun art project for the boys to work on.  Here's what we did:

1. start with two favorite colors of construction paper
2. cut one in half and set one half aside
3. fold larger sheet in half (optional) to give kids a reference point
4. draw a design or half of a scene on smaller piece of paper
5. cut out scene or objects
6. lay out the parts cut from the half sheet along the fold forming half the design
7. the remaining parts are placed on the opposite side of the full sheet in locations opposite those from which they were cut
8. glue parts down

Snowflake Bentley

We've been rowing a book called "Snowflake Bentley" this week. It is a biography of William Bentley who became fascinated by snowflakes at an early age. He studied them, drew them, and learned how to photograph individual flakes. The story was a 1999 Caldecott Medal as well.

Yesterday's art assignment that we worked on photography and I let Thing One take a few photo's (before the batteries began to run out). Here is some of his handy work:

Our Christmas tree looks a bit blurry, but thought it was neat how the lights kind of "melt" into the tree.

One of Thing One's current favorite books to check out at the library - Hardy Boys. He's even reading them a loud, very cool.

Thing One got Thing Two and me working on Snowflake Math together. Think it's the first photo with me, in it, actively doing school. :)

The "boys" in the house, seem to enjoy taking self portraits. So, in honor of that tradition, here is one of Thing One.