Creative Glitter Art

E(3) was so proud of her glitter art last week!  She poured a bottle of glitter on a piece of paper and spent a long time drawing in it with her finger.  She explained what she was drawing as she did it.  I love it when our girls get creatively messy (as long as they help clean up!).

What We've Been Up To...

Sorry for the long absence from this blog.  We've had a busy and wonderful summer so far!

We took a train to New York City.

We saw the Statue of Liberty, shopped and ate lunch at the American Girl doll store, went up to the 102nd floor on the Empire State Building, danced on the keyboard at FAO Schwarz, climbed rocks and played checkers in Central Park, visited the Guggenheim, and saw The Lion King...phew!  It was a busy week!

The girls loved jumping on the hotel room beds while pretending they were Supergirl!

We came home and have spent as many days as possible playing on our tiny beach, swimming, and kayaking.

We've gone on kayaking trips around small islands.

O(6) has done about a million handstands and flips in the lake...she said her goal is to do 100 underwater flips per week.  I'm fairly certain she's surpassed that goal every week so far.

O(6)'s reading ability has improved dramatically, and she's reading chapter books now! (Although she's not always happy about it).

O(6) has gotten really good at kayaking by herself, and she's venturing off further and further on her own.

They love it when their daddy is home to swim with them and throw them in the air!

We've visited our local zoo several times, an O always climbs the rock wall.  One time she climbed it 5 times within about 15 minutes!

We've visited our local museum and had a fantastic time!

We spend the mornings outside and have an hour or 2 of school in the late afternoons.  School is going better than it ever has before.  E(3) requested a reading lesson for the first time in months, and we had a great time doing if!   We've done lots of science experiments and lots of art projects that I hope to eventually post about.  I hope you are having a great summer too!!!

Sweet Relief, Joy, and Gratitude

Elliott and I are home from a very long and wonderful day!  We spent 8 hours in the car and less than one minute with the neurosurgeon to hear the news that Elliott's brain tumor is showing no signs of re-growth.  Happiness, relief, joy, peace, excitement, thankfulness...feeling it all tonight!!!

Painting Frescos

After studying Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel in our homeschool group, we decided that a fresco painting art project was the perfect activity!

To do this project, you need tempera paint, plaster of paris, styrofoam trays (the plaster pops out very easily), paintbrushes, and creative kid artists!

I mixed the plaster of paris...2 parts plaster to one part water.  These trays held 2 cups of plaster mixed with 1 cup of water.  Because the plaster of paris was quick setting, I had to work fast so the first tray didn't set before I had them all made!  I set up the trays, paints, and brushes up on plastic tablecloths in order to make clean-up a little easier.  The kids painted on the plaster while it was still wet, but firm.

All of the kids seemed to really enjoy this activity!  It was simple and fun, and I love all of their creative frescos!

This is my girls' art displayed at home. Displaying the frescos in plate stands seems like the best way to do it,  but I haven't figured out where to put them so they won't get knocked over.  I'm sure they'll shatter if they fall.

I love O(6)'s fish and E(3)'s abstract masterpiece!

Painting Sunflowers Like Van Gogh

The children at our local Montessori school have been studying Van Gogh for about a month, so O(6), E(3), and I went to the school today to do a Van Gogh inspired painting project with them!

We went to a wedding this weekend, and the bride sent both girls home with sunflower bouquets.  They were SO excited, and it was perfect timing since we'd planned to do this sunflower painting project this week!

We gave the children green, yellow, and brown paint (tempera), and they painted on white cardstock.

Before they started painting, I read Vincent's Colors (see link below) to the class.  They studied the sunflowers for a few minutes, and then they started painting.

This was a fun and simple art project that we all enjoyed!

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Healthy Lunches

Sorry for the lack of posts on this blog lately.  I guess you can tell that it has not been a priority lately.  I don't allow myself too much computer time (other than quickly checking fb on my phone...I don't blog while the kids are awake), and most of my computer time over the past few months has been monopolized by my online recertification class and making the yearbook for our local Montessori school.  Luckily, I'm finished with my class, and I'm almost finished with the yearbook, so I should be back to regular blogging soon :)

Since food posts are easy and quick (and generate a lot of emails and hits!), here you go!  On this day, we had grapes, scrambled eggs and broccoli, and raw carrots.  I LOVE raw carrots, and I'm actually a little obsessed with eating them (strange, I know).  The girls always tell me that my skin is turning orange because I eat too many carrots, and lately I have realized that they are right!!!

On this day, we had baked sweet potatoes, salad (with carrots, of course!), baked salmon, and oranges.  I try to feed the girls baked salmon every other week, and they eat oranges almost every day.

This was a Friday  movie night dinner!  We had pizza (Digorno's), raw carrots and pea pods, cucumbers, and hummus.

Insect Matching

I set up this insect matching activity for E(3) thinking she would really enjoy it since she loves insects, and she loves her toob figures.  I was wrong.  She doesn't care about this activity at all.  She is almost completely uninterested in choosing any of the work from her Montesssori shelves...she just can't be bothered with inside work when there  is so much to do outside :)

The insect cards came from Target.  We spread out the cards, and then E matched the figures to the cards.  We read information about the insects that is on the back of the cards.  O(6) really enjoyed learning more about the insects from the backs of the cards.

Both girls LOVE this book that we read shortly before we completed this activity.  We've all learned a lot about insects from this fun book, and E(3) asked if she can get waterbugs for her birthday after we read about female waterbugs cementing their eggs onto the male waterbugs backs.  She thought that was SO cool!  We went kayaking shortly after reading the book and completing the activity, and I had fun asking the girls questions from the book as we saw the various insects on the lake.  Fun times at Lakeside Homeschool!

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Discrete Schooling

The girls are often doing schoolwork, and they don't even know it!

They love playing with paper dolls, and since we are studying Josephina (American Girl) this month, they had fun playing with their Josephina paper dolls while listening to a Josephina audio book on the ipad (via Tales 2 Go).

They LOVE to catch caterpillars to observe in this habitat.  They name all of their caterpillars either Katie or Lily, and whenever they spot a new caterpillar, they shriek with excitement "There's Katie!"

We learned so much during a recent visit to a local botanical garden.  The girls loved this living wall.

We had fun interpreting this art at a recent art festival.  I loved hearing their impressions of what they saw.

O(6) had fun practicing shooting her bow and arrow while building the skills of concentration, focusing, and attention to detail (among many others!).

We have 2 tadpoles that we observe daily.  We've loved watching them grow and setting up their habitat.  We were excited to discover 2 tiny snails in the habitat, which is perfect since we are studying mollusks in science!!!

We love playing with the magna-tiles!  They built a cathedral complete with an attached graveyard.  We've been studying lines of symmetry in math, and magna-tiles are great for illustrating this concept!

O(6) has finally admitted that she loves to kayak!  This makes me SO happy since I LOVE to kayak, and I've been trying to get her to love it for years :)  When we are kayaking, we have fun looking for egrets, turtles, blue herons, and fish.  We also go out to the middle of the lake and sit completely still and silent to practice making silence and absorbing the peace of nature around us.  O has gained so much confidence and seems so joyful as she kayaks around the lake. 

Most of our schooling is discrete schooling with only about an hour or 2 of formal lessons each day (for O).  Fun times at Lakeside Homeschool!

One More Month...

is feeling a sense of dread/relief after finally scheduling Elliott's brain MRI and follow-up appt today. If I sound like a crazy basketcase at times over the next month, it's because I am! I can't wait until June, so this will (hopefully) be over for another year!

We Love Word Fun!

We love this book!  Word Fun is a fun book that is a great compliment to O(6)'s grammar book, First Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind.  

We have fun reading a section or 2 of this book during breakfast or lunch each day.  After reading each section, we have fun playing the games.   This book covers nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, interjections, and propositions.

This is a great book for first and second graders, and E(3) also loves it and has learned so much from it.

Becky- I think Sadie will love this book as much as O and E do!

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Cheerios Books!!!

You can find these wonderful bilingual books (English/Spanish) in boxes of whole grain Cheerios now! We love Cheerios (obviously!), and I always stock up when they offer books in the boxes of cereal.

We love all 3 of those books, but Where Is Home, Little Pip? was our favorite. E(3) was so engrossed in this book that she clasped her hands together and tears came to her eyes as I read the book. I rubbed her back and assured her that everything would be ok, and her face glowed with joy when we finally got to the happy ending.

Nature Walk Bingo

I REALLY love taking walks with the girls.  Unfortunately, they usually don't want to go, so I have to make them.  Once we get going, they enjoy themselves, but it's hard to tear them away from their play that they are always so engaged in.

However, these Nature Walk Bingo cards motivated them to get moving, and we had a WONDERFUL walk today!  Both girls were much more focused on noticing their surroundings, and we saw so many things that we usually would have overlooked!

E(3) was reaching down to pick up this flower, when we noticed the bee in it.  We observed the bee for a few minutes before she picked up another flower.  She sniffed the flower and then had pollen on her nose for the next hour or so.

We were sad (but intrigued) to find this dead baby turtle.  The girls insisted that we take it home, so I carried it home on the leaf (I was a little squeamish about touching it, and it was covered in ants).  We buried it when we got home.  There is an ongoing discussion about whether or not we will eventually dig it up so that we can have the shell for our nature collection.

We saw this dead fish by a tree.  It was pretty far from the lake, so we are guessing that a bird accidentally dropped it there.

The girls LOVED walking through this field of thousands of tiny yellow flowers.  Their goal was to make it across the field without stepping on any flowers.

We stopped to touch the bark of trees along the way since their cards had "rough bark" and "smooth bark" listed as things to find.

The Nature Bingo cards came from Ladybug magazine.  You can find a printable black and white version here.