art museum

Our day was much better today.  We had a really good trip to the National Gallery and checked out several Van Gogh paintings.  I was thinking about why this trip went so well (compared to a few others in the past), and this is what I came up with:

1.  L wanted to help pack our lunch, which I allowed him to do.  No whining at lunch time!

2. We looked at You Can't Take a Balloon into the National Gallery, by Weitzman and Glasser, that my mother-in-law sent awhile ago. It had some reproductions throughout, and the kids kept saying, "Look!  That one was in the book!"

3.  We took the Metro with Jomo on his way into school, so the kids got to hang out with Dad for half of the ride.  

4.  I brought along things for them to do on the train ride (Pokemon handbook and a library book).

5.  I stopped before we walked into the museum and told them the rules about museum behavior.  So glad I did this (though it did need to be repeated a couple of times).

6.  A nice woman at the information desk gave the kids "picture hunt" sheets, and the kids were excited about finding the different pictures.

7.  We ate lunch first thing.

7.  The baby fell asleep in the stroller after lunch.

8.  We kept the trip short.  We saw the Matisse cut-outs that Z was excited about, then tried to find a few pictures from the "picture hunt," then sat on the couch in front of the Van Gogh's for a bit.

9.  I had five bucks in my pocket (I normally don't carry cash) which we used to give the kids a ride on the carousel at the end.

Certainly we had some difficult moments, and some tiredness, but all in all a pretty good visit!

L and Z both picked out their favorites of the Van Gogh's to take a picture with.

I let the kids each pick out a postcard from the art store, and Z chose this Matisse cut-out.  She ripped the white space around the piece because it was distracting, but then went on to draw her own versions of it, including a "ballerina" one.  I love her enthusiasm about art!

This has nothing to do with the museum, but I wanted to post these before and after pictures of Z's handwriting.  She was doing copywork with Psalm 23 over several weeks.  I tried to tell her to slow down and use her best handwriting, but she wasn't too interested.  I didn't care too much, but I thought I'd try out a Charlotte Mason idea which was to work on one stroke, one letter, one word at a time and basically require perfection.  So we gave it a shot, and I'm very pleased with the result.  I underlined letters that she needed to redo, which she wasn't too happy about.  But she did slow down after a couple of days, and now she's even voluntarily using this beautiful handwriting on her own sometimes.

Before

After

I'm having a day

It's one of those afternoons/evenings where things keep going badly.  Especially my attitude.  We drove Jomo in to school this morning, then hit the library since we were already out.  I was planning to do school in the afternoon after rest time.  But ever since the baby has woken up from her nap she's been terrorizing me.  She's been getting into everything!  The piano books, the library books, the bottom drawer with tupperware (which I usually don't mind except she has a raging cold and snot everywhere!), the pictures on the fridge, etc.  And just as I was putting the styrofoam tray from the chicken in the trash, she of course heads right over to grab that.  On top of all of this, she's figured out how to climb onto the couch and likes to play a game with mommy called "Stand up smiling and watch for mommy to say no!"  She's fallen off the couch three times today, one time head over heals which turned out not too bad, and I just can't be there every minute.  Oh, look. She's playing her game right now as I write.  So admittedly, our house is not very baby-proofed.  And I'm seriously considering spending a good chunk of the holiday weekend working on that.  So, needless to say, with my crabbiness, I went ahead and scrapped the rest of school.  We did read some Thanksgiving books and a little about Van Gogh.  And I think we're going to the art museum tomorrow, but for now the kids are quietly watching a video (after coming in from outdoors covered in mud, including their coats which I just washed), and I think I'm going to go give my little terror some one-on-one time.  Sorry for my long-winded rant.  It all doesn't feel so bad anymore, and I'm going to spend some time thinking about all the things I'm thankful for.  Happy Thanksgiving!

school again

So we started up school again this week.  I'm kind of relieved.  It's nice to have more structure back in our day, and I missed the schoolwork.  The break turned out, well... not as I expected.  I wanted to do more relaxing, have fun with the kids, go to parks, read books, and so on, and yet, the house still needed its normal maintenance and Jomo was still in school.  There just wasn't as much time as I pictured.  

I moved our schedule around a bit, and I think it's going well.   Since the baby's naptime has moved later in the morning (I think she's going to be dropping a nap pretty soon here), I decided to move school a little later to have more time with the kids without the baby.  So we're starting at 10am.  I feel like such a slacker.  But it really works well right now.  There's plenty of time in the morning to do more household chores, which is good since by the afternoon I'm tired and don't want to clean.  And I'm just generally more relaxed starting the day.  I don't feel like I have to rush through everything.  The other thing I changed is that depending on the time, we're doing our history/science reading during lunch.  Then Z can do a notebook page during her rest time.  

As soon as I get motivated to put new batteries in the camera, I'll post some pictures of Z's recent schoolwork that I'm very proud of.

happy birthday

Our little baby turned one this past weekend.  To celebrate we had a little family tasting party so that she could try some new foods.  It ended up being mostly desserts and tacos.  But the big hit was brownies that our good friend brought over.  

Opening presents was a drawn out process.  She wasn't sure what to do!

Her favorite present seemed to be this green sippy cup.  We could hardly get it away from her.

What is this stuff?

Ew, it's all over my hands!

Brownies, that's more like it.

bittersweet

I'm a little sad these days because our baby's turning one next week.  It's so exciting to see her grow and learn new things, but I know I'm going to miss this phase of life.  And since we may not be here again, it's extra sad.  She had her first taste of cow's milk this week (to which she turned up her nose!), but I'm going to miss our quiet cuddle times away from the chaos.  And Jomo and I have been talking a lot about the mechanics of moving at the end of the school year, and so we're planning to get rid of all our baby stuff.  I know it's going to be hard to say good-bye to all those tiny little outfits! 

plans

I've looked at a bunch of books from the library and have ordered a few more.  I'm recording my ideas here, mostly for my sake so I don't forget.  So here's what we're going to be studying this next, short, little while.  

I decided for our composer and artist studies, that we would choose Mozart and Van Gogh, and continue on with more popular individuals in starting out with the kids.  The reason is, there's a lot more available information for their age level, along with fun books, and easy to find prints and music.  And hopefully, later on, when we all know a little more about some of the basics of art/music history, we can join in with Ambleside's schedule. 

Mozart- I'll pick up a bunch of resources from the library next week.  I decided to start with him, rather than Beethoven in keeping with chronology.  Beethoven will be next.

Van Gogh- I have a book on him, and we will read  The Yellow House, by Susan Goldman Rubin.  Also we will look at Ambleside's selection of prints.

History- I checked out Story of the World, by Susan Wise Bauer (again), which we will read along with a few other resources.  I'm separating Bible history to read during our Bible time in our children's Bible.  So I guess this is take 2 (or 3 or 4) for history.  I'm sure we'll figure it out at some point.

Science- I'm planning to learn about Birds for the whole five weeks, though we may try to finish up our pages of our tree book we're making.

Math- We may just work on Miquon math for now to try to get in a groove with it.

Language Arts- Continue with Sing Spell, and I think we have another Shakespeare story on the schedule.  We may also read our first Plutarch.  I think I may drop First Language Lessons for now.  So maybe I'll have Z choose a poem to memorize in its place.  Go back to working on our Handwriting book.

Bible- Read the bible stories that correspond with history studies to both kids.  Also, memorize Psalm 23.  Also work on Leading Little Ones to God (I'm looking forward to having these discussions with Z), though I may do this at a different time.

That's it for now.

on break!

So we're officially taking our break.  I looked at our years' schedule that we had planned out, and I realized that we were suppose to be finishing our break right now, rather than starting it.  So the next "quarter" is going to be pretty short, five weeks, until the break for Christmas.  

We decided that we are going to let the kids watch some extra dvds.  And I'm going to do two cleaning days when I can focus on some organizing in the house.  Otherwise, I think we'll just take it easy.  Hang out with friends if that works out, go to parks if we feel like it, read a lot.  And I think we're going to hold off on the museums.  It's fun to go, but it's a lot of work and not very relaxing.  So since they would be considered field trips, and part of school, we'll wait until we're actually doing school.

Happy voting, everyone!

obligatory halloween photos

I guess I'm a bit over Halloween this year.  I think I'm just tired.  We did some Halloweeny things this week, including trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  It started out a bit shaky what with the dog attack at the first house.  Well, it wasn't really an attack, but the dog thought Z was playing when she was really running away.  She got a little jumped on, shed a few tears, then we got back to it.  But the piece de resistance was when some guy swore in front of my children when he couldn't find his candy.  Great.  Thanks.  But the kids were pretty cute.  Z picked out her own costume from her dress-up stuff.  She was a snow princess.  L is obviously a ninja turtle, and S was Eeyore.