1st Grade Art Appreciation

I have had the pleasure to teach an art class to E and Kaela this last year. We've dabbled in many areas but none so satisfying as our slow intro into the world of drawing. My guide: Drawing With Children by Mona Brookes.

This has been my teaching bible and given me the confidence to have the ability to impart these foundational skills to these two girls that love to draw. After weeks of drawing duplication and mirror imaging warm-ups, and then abstract designs we were ready to attempt our first lesson. The gals did fabulous, and I felt so inspired to have imparted some grain of knowlege to them, however small.

The girls were instructed to listen silently to each step, complete, and then wait for the next instruction; i.e. draw a dot anywhere on your paper, make a small angled line in front of the eye, etc.

Here is what we got!

by Kaela

by E

S-P-R-I-N-G

Fun with acrostic's

Can you tell we have gardening on the brain?

Creative Writing & Art Class

Student of One, No Longer

Usually I set N up with blocks, his cars, or a video while E and I plug away at math or language arts for the day, but fairly often he's been asking for some work of his own. He's been able to recognize more and more letters lately so I thought I'd start there. He did so good and as you can see very proud. For those of you that don't know about this great free website check it out, I get a fair amount of supplemental worksheets and ideas from them! There was something kind of magical about having everyone around the table this morning.

Plural Nouns

E choose steamy piles of dog poop to illustrate what a noun and plural nouns are...(sigh). At least she can't be sent to the principals office for inappropriateness here at home school.

Walk Like an Egyptian

E and Kaela have been working tirelessly over the last few months with Jen creating and practicing for this evening's Egyptian Feast! The girls learned how to write actual hieroglyphics, they discovered many Ancient Egyptian customs and part of their presentation was a choreographed dance (view at bottom of post) . They did so great! Among many other delicious treats for our feast they served us hand pressed hummus, antelope, and alligator! After our meal they included their dad's in a mummification presentation. Yet another tick on the side of homeschooling, E would never have had such an in depth look at Ancient Egypt in a traditional 1st grade classroom.

Ugali

We've almost come to the end of the Africa unit for our World Geography co-op. The girls made ugali, a traditional cornmeal-based Kenyan staple. After they stirred and stirred we formed it into a dome and took small pinches and dipped it into our chili.

A Noun is a Person

Today we began working on identifying people as nouns. E's workbook requested that on a separate page she draw a person and then write a sentence about that person and underline the noun, she choose Kaela, her best friend:

Pitter-Patter

E is just growing up so quickly.  It's so amazing to see how she's learning and changing each day.This is one of the true benefits of homeschooling your child; you see the development in every aspect of their life. Here are a few things that she's done recently that I just couldn't pass up on posting:

This was a reflective assignment she completed for World History in our co-op. They were instructed to look around outside for what a cave person would use or need. Then she drew a picture of the Stone Age...hilarious!

This was the result of her and I having a discussion about what time her dad would be picking her up from her YMCA class. I told here that she would be dismissed from the pool at 4:05 and that would give her 10 minutes to rinse off, get into clothes and meet her dad at 4:15 in the lobby. We talked about what the clock would look like, and this was her reminder note she made for herself. 4 for the hour and 3 for the 15 minutes.

Papier-mâché - chewed paper

Our Art Appreciation and Geography classes were combined today! We started our papier-mâché globes, and had so much fun. As we talk about each of our continents and land features we will be adding them to our globes, but today was up to our elbows in balloons, torn newspaper & flour/water glue.

Art Appreciation - Day 1

Today was my first co-op class here at our house. It was completely exhausting but so rewarding! I decided to take it down to the real basic level of color for our first class. We spoke about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. I had the girls mix balls of red, yellow, and blue play dough and tell me what they got. We then made up color wheels, it was so much fun to see the light bulbs going off above their little heads. E and Kaela were so proud that they had mixed all 9 (secondary and tertiary) colors independently.

A Detailed Sketch of a Plant

E's Science teacher instructed the children to draw a plant with as much detail as possible, and then label. Here is what she came up with:

I love this. When she was showing me this evening, she pointed out that she knows it's "not 'th' at the end of branch, (she) just made a 't' instead of a 'c' on accident." Makes my heart melt that not one word is spelled correctly, but she took her assignment seriously.

Vote for Our Playground!

E attends a resource center 4 days a week. I liken it to community college for homeschoolers. She takes 1 or 2 classes a morning, then we head home and work for an hour or so. The classes are taught by certificated teachers and other professional in their fields. The school has been running for the last 15 years and has n-e-v-e-r had a playground! Please help; you can vote for us every day this month! You may also send one additional vote via text each day to 73774 with the message of: 106309

A New Kinda School

Well, the update is that home school is working for us. The first 1/2 of the year was a personal little hell for me and E, but we've reached a place where it's working and we're planning on continuing next year. I've had to be flexible in my ideas about what learning at home should look like. She's had to set aside ideas about what a teacher/student relationship looks like. And we're both determined to try harder. We want it to work, we see the areas we need to improve, we like our days together as a family. We set out each morning for 1 or 2 classes at our Resource Center where she's been attending Math, Life Science/Animal, Spanish, LEGO Builders Workshop, and a Gym class. She's also enrolled in the greatest YMCA combo class; 1 hour of gym sports and then another hour in the pool! Having activities in our day helps break everything up, and gets her and I geared up for learning at home. We also have made some really meaningful friendships with a particular family, and that has made all the difference!

Here she's helping to plot out our garden; Spring offers so much learning!

Climbing the Walls!

My kid learns how to rock climb in school...

and she loves it!

Cinnamon Hearts

We went to my sister's house to make up a few of our (now) traditional special heart cinnamon ornaments. Everyone helped, and the house smelled so nice. Happy Valentines!

Summer School

Although not in an official summer program, schooling around our house does not cease! I don't force E to sit down for very long, just a few worksheets and a book a day; and it's the first thing she wants to do each morning, she's eating it up! Here is the first page in her workbook that she completed back in June, so cute:

School's Out

We were so lucky to have E's first year of schooling be so positive.  We loved her teacher; a strong, silly and loving woman.  Ms Nani made Jr. Kindergarten exactly what we had hoped it would be.

Thank you, Ms. Nani!

Seattle Tilth's Children's Garden

E's class took their last field trip of the year to the Children's Garden at the Seattle Tilth.  It was very informational, they got their hands dirty, and tasted many different plants, the all around favorite being the silver shield sorrel (tastes like a sour apple).