Last night, Ben was running a high fever again, so I had to change our Wednesday plans. His fever went from 99 to 105.3 degrees in an hour, and that was WITH me putting ice packs on him when it got to 103. I was not about to take him anywhere, and I had been up many times during the night to check his temperature. The whole point of our Early Morning Adventures is to get up, eat breakfast, get ready, and get out the door at the time we will when school starts. We couldn't have a stay-at-home only day, because that wouldn't give us our "out the door" practice. So, we loaded the trunk with recyclable, buckled up, and drove around the block to drop off our recycling at the place right behind our house. The kids thought it was rather "lame" (their words) that we were back at home just 7 minutes after leaving (but they did smile when I told them we weren't done.)
Next up for the day's adventure was painting. Again, I heard "lame" when I showed them a few examples of what I had in mind for painting on 16x20 canvases. I was nearly in tears because I had had so little sleep and my original and back-up plans couldn't happen. Now, they were grumpy and cranky about my back-up back-up plan. I asked for a 15 minute recess while I found a few websites for other painting companies, then I let the kids have a bunch of options to choose from... sort of.
Jon chose to paint a macaw, Ben wanted planets and a rocket, Maddie found a picture of trees, and Will asked me to keep looking until I found a good Sword-in-the-Stone picture to paint. For the boys' pictures, I sketched the outline of the main components on their canvases. It was a challenge for me since only two kids fit at the table at a time. First, Maddie and Jon painted their backgrounds. Then, Ben and Will with the dark backgrounds went second. Then it was back to the other two to start filling in the foreground. There was a lot of back and forth as waited for paint to dry or tried coordinating the palletts so the right colors would stay wet, but not be wasted.
Jon learned to mix his colors as he did the background with blues and white. Though it looks like it is all the same color, if you are close to the painting, you can see the variations that give the picture a lot of character. Jon had a lot of fun painting the tree leaves. He would've gone all day, but I stopped him so we could eat dinner.
Maddie had lots of color mixing. She learned the best way to get a beautiful rainbow effect was to do one color at a time, but to mix it into the next color, then dry brush them together to blend them again. This is actually a sunset, but she wanted it rainbowy. When she did her trees, I helped her clean up some of the lines, but otherwise, this was her work. The bubbles were all done with her finger tips as the "paint brushes."
Will chose a difficult subject for a new painter. I'm not that experienced at painting, but I'm always willing to learn something new. The hard part was teaching the "something new" as if I actually had a clue .. because I really didn't. This is the picture he wanted to paint.
I sketched the sword on the canvas using a straight edge, then he began the color mixing using greens, blues, blacks, and a touch of white to make some parts more gray. Lots of color mixing! When that dried, he did the brighter areas, then he did the leaves. The leaves were made with a variety of tools. Some of the leaves were painted on, some were made with a make-up sponge cut into a leaf shape, many were done with a wadded paper towel, and the neatest ones were done by pressing little stems from the garden into paint and stamping them on the canvas. He learned about shadows and light and warm and cool colors, and in the end, he was really proud of his painting.
Ben managed to keep his fever away for the most part. It was low-grade, running less than 100, which is MUCH better than the 105+ we had been dealing with. Ben doesn't always have the patience to stick with longer projects, so it was a great thing that we broke this up throughout the day. He LOVED getting to watch Magic School Bus science shows while he waited to paint. Ben did lots of blending in the black and blue space, he made the parts of the sun have multi-colors and a bit of texture, he had a blast painting the fire on the rocket and making polka dot stars wherever he wanted. If you look closely, you might notice some of the star-dots spell his name down the left side. Just about the time I thought he was done, he added a red shape that he called space rocks, then he finished with a shooting star.
The end products were amazing and the kids were SO proud of what they had done.
Maddie, Jon, and Will used a lot of their non-painting time to make some stop-action movies with their Legos and action figures. All of them watch a bit of television since I found Magic School Bus videos on Netflix. Will made another half dozen God's Eyes and taught Maddie and Jon how to make some, too. (Yes, those stick and yarn creations are EV-ER-Y-WHERE now!!)
As for me, I was exhausted. I had been on my feet all day, and I had to be at full attention the whole time since there was a lot of paint really close to our furniture. I was worn out and my kitchen covered with tarps and canvases and paint bottles and brushes and paper plates full of paint, so we ordered pizza. Ben went all day without getting above 101-degrees, but he was pretty weary. I think most of tomorrow's plan will still work, we just won't do quite as much as I originally considered doing.
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