January Homeschool Art

We have finally found a way to squeeze art into our regular school week. Ben, Maddie, and Jon have gotten pretty good at getting their busy-work (math and handwriting practice) done on Tuesdays at Bible study. They usually like working a bit ahead on history and reading ("Just one more page, please, Mama!"), and I am the one who usually says, "Let's stop here for science." We are usually ahead a bit of where I thought we would be, so we are squeezing school into the first four days of the week and using Fridays to make up anything we didn't get to. We still have several hours on Friday for art, and I'm trying to make it correspond to something we are studying.

We learned about stained glass art in western Europe, then the kids make their own crayon and waxed-paper versions. Jon's is on top with lots of yellow (the blue ovals "represent a hibernating bear," Ben's is next, and Maddie's has the rainbow.

 We learned about Polish paper-cutting, spent the morning looking at traditional patterns, then I helped them cut their own Polish-style paper art. Jon's has foxes, Ben's is an eagle, Maddie's is a snowflake.

Another week, we learned about Russian mosaics and made paper matroyska dolls in a similar style. Ben was making a bear, Jon made a parrot, and Maddie made a girl with a hooded shawl and apron.

I've enjoyed finding ways to take what we are learning about in geography and history and tying it into the art projects. I'm also excited to finishing up two weeks learning about Eastern Europe and Russia just as the Winter Olympics are beginning in Sochi! Some of our upcoming projects will take more than one Friday to complete, but I'm glad that the kids are excited enough about the arts and crafts to work hard on the other days to make sure there is time on Fridays.

What are we up to lately?

Scouts - the Kaiser family is revolving around scouts right now. A couple weeks ago, we had an information night to start sharing about American Heritage Girls, and the next thing I knew, I will filling out paperwork to register about three times more girls than I imagined we would have. With that came a whirlwind of training and paperwork and meetings. Meanwhile, Allen has weekly planning meeting as the Trail Life troop is also working on getting started, and he is part of the leadership team for that.


Odyssey of the Mind - Will spends about four hours a week with his OM team... working on a design for a stacked structure made of balsa wood. They also have to present the structure as part of a performance. Between planning, building, rehearsing, and practicing for all the judge questions, he is a busy guy, too. I will participate a bit the day of the competition, as each team has to have one parent serve as a judge (but not judging Will's team). Thankfully, that is just a one day plus two hour commitment for me, but I am looking forward to it.

School - home school is going well... really well (but I'll admit we have plenty of imperfect days). Ben, Maddie, and Jon have adjusted well and are learning to be somewhat self-directed through parts of the day. All of them are still reading well above grade level, and they are loving math enough that they keep asking for more. When they are enthusiastic, they learn so much better (and are happier). Science is definitely a favorite subject for all three kids, but they also love the cuddly reading times. I love that we have a fairly regular routine, but I'm learning to be more flexible, too. The times we have an added doctor or dental appointment or one of Will's presentation doesn't throw us off schedule. Meanwhile, Will is wrapping up his latest school projects and is anxious for winter break to begin this weekend.

Scouts: Bible Theater

All through December (or at least the few weeks we met for scouts), the kids have been working on plays. The youngest boys learned to make sock puppets, paper sack puppets, and some of the scenery needed for their puppet show about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Jon was excited to be narrating the show and doubling as the voice of God. When he was getting ready tonight, he insisted that God wouldn't show up to narrate a show without a tie, so he found one to take. Ben was the serpent in the Garden -- or rather, his arm was in the sock that was the serpent. This group of kindergarten through second-grade boys did a great job with their show!

I got to work with the four girls. Right off the bat, they knew they wanted to write their play about the Christmas story, and they quickly decided to write it from the animals' perspectives. I taught the girls some very basic sewing skills (threading a needle and moving the needle through felt) and we put together some headbands for their costumes. The girls spent weeks working on each of their own lines, but also working together to make sure they told the whole story. Their lines were so long that they ended up reading the stories they wrote, but it was really so sweet. They had the added challenge of being asked to put costumes together out of things they already had, but they kept it simple and it worked. Audrey was the donkey who brought Mary to Bethlehem, Katelynn was a cow in the stable where Mary birthed Jesus, Maddie was a lamb who came with her shepherd to see Jesus, and Sadie was a camel who brought the wise men.Yes... I teared up when they did their play -- partly because it was such a perfect story, partly because of what these girls learned as they created it.

Allen worked with the fourth-grade boys who decided to do a play about the end of the world. Full of battles, hand-to-hand combat, and strange visions, it was just what these ten-year olds needed to get out some of their energy. Allen, and two other parents guided the boys through reading and interpreting the stories they chose to tell. Each of the boys wrote part of the play, but in the end there were very few spoken parts, but a lot of battles. Will played the part of Satan.

This was the last day of family-style scouts for the girls and me. Next week we start American Heritage Girls, and we are going from four girls (first through third grade) to twenty-two (kindergarten through eighth grade)! I'm allowed to be excited AND nervous, right?

Sudoku

Allen taught Maddie how to do the Sudoku puzzles, and she looks forward to helping him finish the challenging number puzzles each week. We only get the newspaper on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when the puzzles are at the highest difficulty, so Allen often starts the puzzle, but then leaves plenty to keep Maddie busy. She is always so proud to finish it!

Another one gone!

Baby Blues

This was probably written about me... Baby Blues comic strip (01-04-2014)

A New Year

Our family took some much-needed time off from our normal routines during the holidays. Allen was home for about a week and a half, and all the kids were out of school for two weeks. Some of our daily chores slid by untouched, and many days were spent in pajamas. All of us found plenty of time to read.

Will managed to read four novels during that time, and one night he came down at 10PM to ask if he was supposed to have already turned off his light. He claimed that he couldn't turn it off yet because he needed to finish part of a book so he wouldn't have nightmares. He took Allen up on the challenge to read The Hobbit,with the reward being that Allen would take him to see the movie. They fit that in during the break, too. Will also finished two of John Grisham's Theodore Booth books, and couldn't put down James Patterson's I Funny once he picked it up.

Ben and Jon played with Legos a lot! At the crack of dawn I would hear Jon sorting through his boxes of blocks looking for a certain piece. Ben built spaceships or alien UFOs and floated them through the house on his fingertips. Maddie played with Legos some, dolls a lot, and made several dozen bracelets from the three different bracelet craft kits she got for Christmas. Everyone that visits our house usually leaves with new colors around their wrist.

Several times, we got together with the Browns. One of the times all the kids and adults were at our house. The kids playing everywhere, the adults catching up or playing games. Another time, the younger boys were at the Browns' home and the big boys and the girls were here. We all got together for dinner, let the kids watch a movie, then the adults played more games. I think between all the kids and Allen, our home gained seven new games at Christmas, so there were lots of games being played at our house through the holidays.

We all really enjoyed the downtime that the holidays gave us, but we were also ready to get back to our normal routines. Allen went back to work on January 2nd, and the triplets immediately started asking -- each of the three asked at least once per day -- when we could start doing school again. They were all pretty excited about getting to do some new things with homeschool. Will was ready to get back to school and all his friends there, too. The four kiddos all started school this past Monday, and the week has rushed by quickly.

In our home school, Ben, Maddie, and Jon began doing multiplication. They all feel like such big kids now, and they have picked it up pretty quickly. I suppose it helps that they hear us quizzing Will on multiplication facts often. Each day, we do our lessons together, then I let them do their workbook assignments at their own pace. Each day (you'd think I'd have figured it out by now,) they have each gone through their work SO fast that I assumed they hadn't even started even though I was sitting nearby. These three all seem to love math and pick it up quickly, but Ben doesn't always like doing lots of practice. We have been going through world history and sticking with the curriculum. This week, we talked about Greece and Olympics (and more). I am getting excited about the upcoming games and I am trying to find ways of making TV-watching be a bit educational -- maybe even educational enough to warrant staying up later to watch some of the events. I remember when I was a kid I got to stay up later than normal to watch ice skating. I'm not sure that would hold the kids' attention too long, but I'm trying to come up with some projects or exercises we could do together to learn about the countries the athletes are representing... or bar charts of the different countries' medal counts... or adding scores together to figure out the winners... or making a ethnic dish from a gold-medal country... I have to get busy on that :)

Will is enjoying school and his new projects sound exciting. In history and English, he is researching a character from Texas history and writing journals as if he is that character. In math and science, his team is choosing a city to host Winter Olympic Games for 2018. They must build a model with certain specifications, but they will be working on fractions and decimals while discussing different landforms and environmental conditions. It is really quite cool! In PE, his team is designing and building an obstacle course, and in music he is writing a song. He has more classes than that, but I think they tie into one of the first two projects I mentioned.

Along with the back-to-normal busyness of school for all four kids, Will has begun meeting with his Odyssey of the Mind (OM) team for a couple hours a week. They compete in February, but just began this week. I am hopeful that what his school's teams lack in preparation time, they can make up for because they are already project- and team-oriented workers and used to thinking outside the box.

We are heading into a somewhat busy weekend, but hopefully there will be time for some fun and relaxation, too.