Friday, March 21, 2008

Weekly Report:

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It has been a few weeks since I have posted an update. We have been pretty busy around here and had 1 week of almost no school (just the bare minimum got done) because I was so sick.

Nature Study

We seemed to get our Green Hour Challenges done each week. We have been having so much fun with these. You can go HERE to find out more about our nature studies. If you wanted to add more nature studies into your homeschooling, Barb at The Heart of Harmony has started these WONDERFUL challenges for us. We are LOVING these and are learning so much from them. They are easy enough to do and not intimidating like I thought they would be. Thank you {{Barb}}!

I picked up a couple neat books to read aloud to the kids: Owen & Mzee (wonderful true story about a baby hippo and a 130 year old tortoise and how they became friends) and Girls Who Looked Under Rocks.

Art Appreciation

We have started our Clouds in Art Mini Unit Study by Heart and Trees. We don't have a colored printer so I just sent in the pdf to the UPS Store and they made the copies for me and I went down and picked them up. They turned out lovely. We learned about Vincent Van Gogh and his painting Wheat Field Under Threatening Skies. We took some time to look at a few other paintings he did. My favorite was Wheatfield with Cypresses, c.1889 and Thatched Cottages at Cordeville is a close 2nd. I think I just love those colors and the style. They are very peaceful to me. The kids recognized a few of his other paintings from Atelier: Starry Night and The Bedroom at Arles.

Something I found amazing was that he painted so many paintings and only sold 1 while he was alive. It is hard for me to wrap my head around how he must have felt only selling 1 painting. "I" now want to learn more about this man to find out information such as this.

We were suppose to do the art activity with it, but Dad got home earlier then expected and took the Jessica and Timmy out dirt bike riding. So we will do this part tomorrow (Saturday). I will post this in another thread HERE.

Co-op

At Co-op, Jake and Holly have been learning tons about the Human Body. They did a project on the eye, created lungs, and more. They are always talking about different things about our body. For example, yesterday they were telling me they need to have wax in their ears and not to worry about removing it because our bodies naturally remove the wax all by itself. They were pretty firm saying, "You can't remove the wax in our ears, Mom.". Oh... Ok. *Ü* LOL

Jake, Holly, and Timmy have been busy creating wonderful art masterpieces at co-op as well. Jake and Holly did modified contour drawings of their classmates, clown paintings where they had to make a value scale using only black, white, and a color of their choice, and a fall farm landscape. Timmy was busy working on a crowd sport picture and is currently working on a clay animal creation. He will paint the animal next week and we will share pictures then.


At zoology we made bird feeder, homemade suet, identified different types of birds based on field markings, played a guessing game "What bird am I" where the kids had to use field guides to figure out what bird each team was, shared the migration route of a bird of their choice, and more. We are recording birds we see that are coming to the feeders the kids made. I am really enjoying this section of zoology because we are finally learning about birds. NO MORE INSECTS!



Miscellaneous

We read some books on St. Patrick's day:


We also planted a Amaryllis bulb indoors and watched it grow. We received this bulb for Christmas, but didn't plant it until sometime in February. Below are some pictures of this pretty flower. It finally fell over because of the weight, but it sure was pretty while it was standing up. This plant had 4 big beautiful flowers on it.
Here is a neat YouTube video that is time lasped and shows one growing. It was amazing. I saw it said something about the music (may be inappropriate), but I didn't have the music up load and couldn't really hear the words. You may want to mute it before watching the video. But man, the patients this person had to create this video. Amazing! I want to do this sometime. *Ü*

Here are a couple pictures from the past few week. First pictures is Timmy working on is Logic page, Second is Jessica's drawing of her cat Angel, and last is a picture of the kids during free time.




And of course we did regular "school" stuff.

10 comments:

The Mom said...

What a great week, I have been looking at the cloud unit for my kids but I wonder if they are to old for it,thoughts?

Anonymous said...

Awesome week! I had to laugh about the ear wax because I am getting the same information over here. There is no way I am not cleaning ears! LOL

I need more info on how you send stuff to the UPS store. I wonder if I would do more notebooking if I did that? Hmmm...

Have a wonderful Easter!

Tina in WA said...

Lori~

I used it with these ages: 12, 10, 9, and 6 and they all enjoyed it. I know they will enjoy the art project tomorrow. I think it is suitable for your ages of children. And for $4.95, you can't go wrong. I like the list of questions she provides and havning the art work on the notebook page is a wonderful idea. I am sure I could do something on my own, but I LOVE having it all ready done for me. I think she mentioned she will have a new one out next week. Oh boy. :o)

-------------------
Tressa~

Isn't that funny! They sure are retaining what they are learning in that class. She is a wonderful teacher. :o)

All you have to do is send the pdf attached to an email and let them know what you want; how many copies, black & white or color, double sided, etc. The more you send in to have copied the less likelihood you would be charged a fee for them copying it for you. But the fee is only around $2. And to get colored copies, I think it is only .35 cents each. Can't beat that. :o)

Happy Easter to the BOTH of you.

~Tina

Wee Pip said...

Wonderful photos!! The artwork is fantastic (I love colorful kid paintings). The cat drawing has very nice shading. I will have to save your site and look at the links later - they look like really good resources! Happy Easter:)

Karen said...

Wonderful week. I hope you are feeling better too. I love your art studies.

Lori C., Texas said...

Love the artwork and the pictures of the flower. Just beautiful!

Lori

Keys to the Magic Travel said...

Thanks for the encouragement on my blog! It's been a wild week. Seems like you all had a great one. I must admit, I got quite sidetracked over on you-tube. I watched the amarylis video...then the radishes...then the pregnant woman...then amusing ones of babies kicking inside their mothers...and then to photoshoping images...wow...you tube can be so addictive!

Barb said...

Wheatfield with Cypresses is my favorite Van Gogh painting too....love the colors, the style, everything. I had it as my desktop on my laptop for the longest time.

I am so glad you are enjoying the Clouds Art pages. She loved putting those together.

Great week,
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Lisa~ said...

Oh I love the flower! Thats beautiful!!!

Not to much longer and co-op will be over for ya!

Great week Tina! Good job kids!!

Lisa

AmandaChristina said...

Tina,
Thanks for sharing the link to your post with me. It is so much fun to see my notebooking pages in action. :)

It agree that it is amazing to hear children connect things they are studying with what they already know.

I am not sure if I will be putting together notebooking pages for my Oceans Art Show, but definitely plan to for my next online art show, which I will be posting April 7th.

Have a great week,
Amanda from Hearts and Trees