Eric Carle Illustrations Project

This is the end result of our Eric Carle Illustrations project.

At the first class we painted pieces of paper with textured paint. We let it dry. At this class we each chose either an Eric Carle illustration, or an illustration of our own making and we cut out the design and then pasted it onto paper

Navajo Blankets/Rugs

First I chatted with the kids about Navajo Blankets/Rugs and how they were made. Then we looked up Navajo Blankets on line to get an idea of how geometric they are.

I cut out the front of brown paper grocery sacks, and the kids sketched their designs onto the sack and then painted it on with tempra paint.

Thumbprint Valentines

We did two versions of this craft for valentine's day. First, we made thumbprint hearts. I helped a lot on this part. It was difficult for the kids not to want to hold down their papers, or accidentally touch them with their inky fingers. Then we used our thumbprints to make butterflies, or other animals like caterpillars. It was fun, but messy. I recommend washable ink.

Wordless Wednesday

Native American Pinch Pots

Art Class 1/19/09: Eric Carle Illustrating and Angie Vandenbogaard

This is some examples I used for the class of the art of Angie Vandenboogaard. She uses monochromatic polkadots of various sizes to compose her paintings. I love how graphically powerful they are. So part of our art lesson was to imitate her style. Below is Emma and my attempts at copying her style.

Then we went on to do the first part of a project with Eric Carle's illustrating technique. We painted paper with paint, leaving alot of brush marks and texture on the paintings. At the next class we will cut out our pictures from the paper to make our own Eric Carle artwork. So if you missed the last class, and want to participate, make sure you paint some paper with alot of texture for yourself. You will want to do several different colors depending on what you are wanting to illustrate.

Global warming has impacted us all.........florida is GONE

Well, I had tried to cut the cookie into a round about shape of the US. Then went to bed, while I was in bed the children snuck out and John ate most of california, part of Texas, and Emma took out all of Florida like some rampaging Hurricane.

anyways, so we still frosted it, and of course when we were done the camera was out of batteries. The kids were so not going to wait, so we ate it. But it was fun, really fun.

Edible map of Native American groups in USA

Okay so I took sugar cookie dough and just made one big cookie. Tomorrow we are going to cut it "hopefully?" into the shape of the united states and frost the areas where different Native American groups live different colors. Im hoping this will turn out well, I will give the update tomorrow!

Not quite on schedule....Ugh...

So I made a few mistakes this week. First, this was the week that all of our "outside" activities and classes were starting back up. That in itself would be challenging. Then, In some kind of new year organizational fit, I also scheduled all of our "catch up" doctor appointments, you know my well woman, the kids well child checks, the ENT, I have kinda jammed it into the first three days of this week and it has really killed off our leisurely school life. Plus, as a result of one of my exams, I'm on a brand new medication that gives me the same symptoms of the stomach flu. That was like the cherry on my overwhelming sundae. So we have only managed the barest bones of school work for the past three days.

I'm probably over thinking this, but I do feel disappointed that we haven't gotten as much done as usual. Brian thinks I am too hard on myself, we do school year round and we usually don't take all the breaks schools take. Tomorrow we have another appointment and we are at desperate times for grocery shopping/menu planning, but I am hopeful that we can do more in the afternoon that is fun stuff and get back on track!

Practical Living: Handwashing and Squid Soap

We are all over trying to teach practical living skills to the kids. I was thrilled to find that squid soap had made it to my dollar tree store. This stuff is so cool. First of all, it honestly is packaged cool and the kids like to play with the squidy tentacles. But the truly neat part is whenever you go to get soap the squid "inks" you. He puts a little red dot on your palm, and that dot will only disappear if you wash your hands for the proscribed amount of time. Its like having a tattling bottle of soap. I need something like this for tooth brushing, anyone have an idea?

Native American Unit: day 5 and weekly recap

Well, there are no pictures. I couldn't find my camera ... bummer. But I have it now! Okay so this was a good day. Emma finished her first "grown up" book. She had been reading it all week it was about 75 pages, with no pictures, solid print. She was SOOOOO proud of herself!!!! Brian and I read alot, and she sees me reading a whole lot, so she has decided that reading is a grown up thing that she can do with us, that her brother and sister can't do yet. It was really nice all week when I was snuggled up for "quiet time" reading with the younger two tucked in for a movie, she would bring her book in and sit in my lap while we both read. I really liked that she was choosing reading over TV time.

This week went really well despite the fact that we weren't feeling quite as awesome as normal. We didn't complete my whole lesson plan, but I am satisfied with what we did. The thing that is the most satisfying to me is that we HAD FUN! It was lighthearted and everyone was very excited when we would get started to know what kind of interesting things we were going to do that day. We all had fun while we were learning. I think we might try to make up some of the work over the weekend since it was some of the fun stuff that got the shaft. I like a nice, tidy, completely cleared lesson plan. But even if we don't, I am really pleased with how much we got accomplished and with how the week progressed. It felt like there was alot of balance to the week. We were able to get all our school work done, and the house was reasonably tidy, dinner was on the table every day and I managed to get some time to myself even. I have to chalk this up not really to my superior skills, but to the tools I have been recently using...

• laptop: okay this was awesome. Our computer is in another room, having the laptop right out there where we are doing school means that I was able to do whatever I needed to do online while the kids were busy with work, but I was still there to answer questions. I spent most of the time looking for recipes, doing my shopping lists, ordering more books from the library, tweaking my lesson plan etc. If we had a question about something we read, I could google it right there, it was very helpful.
• the crockpot: AWwwwwwwweSOME!! yeah, I couldn't make it without my crockpot. A good portion of our meals came out of the crockpot this week and it just made everything run so smoothly. I was able to throw everything in the crockpot at about 10 or 11 and then it was magically ready to eat at 5pm. Which left me free to do chores, or cleanup, walk the dogs, whatever I needed to do without being chained to the kitchen.
  

Native American Unit: Days 3 and 4

May I present my Indian princesses and brave to you. They have all chosen their Indian names. We tried to pick our favorite activity and mesh it with our favorite part of nature. Emma is Rides with Butterflies. John is Runs with Puppies. I am Reads by Moonlight and Chloe is Sparkles on the Lily. Yes, really.....don't choke, and for goodness sakes don't make any remarks about shaking dew off. When I asked her what her favorite thing to do was, she answered "sparkle"....and, well its fitting.




Being on the puny side of health has not been good for the school part of us. We have managed to keep up with our reading, and with our math, but me reading aloud hasn't worked out for the past couple of days because I have a sore throat, and its too much for me. So yesterday we braided our hair and got out for some fresh air. We took a walk around the lake in our neighborhood with the puppies.

Today we did our basics and then went to chick fil a. It was pretty much a cop out. We needed to get out of the house badly, and we had errands to run, two birds....one stone.

Native American Unit: Day Two

We started with some find motor skill work. The girls had these cool sticker books their awesome mom had gotten them for Christmas (haha) so we used the prying the stickers off and putting them back on the page to help their fine motor skills

Plus lets face it, stickers are fun!


The we used our tweezers to pick up objects. We started with the glittery pom poms. Then we moved on to the beads. That was alot more difficult. John decided to stick with the pom poms.





















































































John decided to start "reading" on his own. It was adorable! He was narrating the pictures for us.

Emma read her hooked on phonics book and two of her readers to everyone.


By then it was time for recess, but it was yucky outside. So we decided to use the christmas present our friends the Ridge's gave us and play indoor tag. The goal is to rip the tail off the hider. It was FUN!!!!

unfortunately, Mac is a herding kind of dog, and he would snitch on whomever was hiding. He can't stand for anyone to break formation.






We moved on to math, and we had a guest professor. Professor John joined us...he was a scream. When Chloe talked out of turn, he sent her to time out! She played along, but she would act all sad when he was watching, and then giggle when he wasn't looking.

Daddy is scheduled to read some of the Birchbark house to the girls after dinner.