A Typical Day?

I thought I would try to show what a somewhat typical day was for us. Every day has it's challenges and yesterday was no different. I awoke fairly earlier and tried to watch the episode of The Journey Home which I had recorded, but about half way through kids were getting up and hungry. My youngest had her one year check up so we had to leave the house fairly early for us. That meant I needed everyone to be up, dressed and fed by about 9:30. I took the oldest four to daddy's office where the colored and watched TV while I went to the appointment. We also watched a Popular Mechanics for Kids DVD in the car. We left the house in a mess so I picked up lunch to make things a little easier. After lunch I held the baby while the girls played. Once the house was in a little better order, the girls wanted to paint. We tried out our new liquid watercolors and they had a great time. Daddy then called and said he would be a little late so we went ahead and ate dinner. After dinner, the older girls took turns taking long baths and I read some to my 3 and 5 yo's. Daddy was then home, but feeling bad, so I had everyone get ready for bed. The oldest two stayed up with him watching some car restoration show and the 3 yo feel asleep on the couch. The baby and 5 yo got in bed with me and fell asleep. Once everyone goes to bed, we move the 5 & 3 yo's to their room. I stayed up reading for a little while longer.

That's a fairly typical day. Today will be changing out winter/summer clothes & laundry. I'm thinking about the arboretum for tomorrow and we have Mass and a park day on Friday.

Old Favorites

I've been busy getting ready for the Little Flowers meeting that will be held at our house tomorrow, but took a break to read some old favorites to my little ones.

Owl babies is one of my favorites and I'll happily read it anytime. We also read a couple of new ones:

Our Apple Tree has lovely illustrations and A Fabulous Fair Alphabet was just fun!

Tommorrow we'll be making sacrifice beads and I'll take some photos and link to the instructions I'm using.

Color Mixing

The girls and I had our first day with our new art supplies. We talked about mixing colors, which they already knew, but reinforced the idea of mixing a little too much.

They made some drip paintings where they let the colors run and mix together. Then, with the leftover paint, we talked about how some mixing was good and too much was not so good. Our red added to the yellow made a lovely orange and the red added to the blue made a deep purple, but they saw how when we mixed them all it made a yucky brown grey.

The blog above is where I have gotten the ideas for our art. She has an online art class going. I was late on getting all my supplies ready so I bought her class pdf.s which has everything laid out and we can go at our own pace. I've learned so much about art supplies just in getting ready to follow these plans! We'll see what we can do today!

St. Patrick's with de Paola

Happy St. Patrick's day! I started with a quick trip to the store to buy Corned Beef and Irish Soda Bread for dinner. I also bought some green iced sugar cookies for dessert, which the girls will love. Then we read several books from one of our favorite Children's illustrator/author, Tomie de Paola. I guess some people aren't fans of his art, but I love it's folkart quality. We also love his Irish tales of Jamie O'Rourke and Fin M'Coul.

I also read the St. Patrick biography by Ann Tompert.

That's the most picture books I've read in one day in a while. The girls enjoyed coloring a St. Patrick coloring page while I read and the two youngest just played on the floor. Overall, it went pretty well. Then we started on our artwork and had fun doing some drip painting. I'll post all about that next! Bye.

Getting Ready!

Well, we're getting ready for an all out Art extravaganza! Most of my supplies have arrived and I'm just waiting on a few more. I know the girls are so excited about doing some "real" art. Quite frankly, I am too. Art was quite traumatic growing up. We were expected to create things thoughout the year and then pick one we wanted to enter into the annual art fair. This wasn't optional. Nevermind that our supplies consisted of crayons, glue, construction paper, and some cheap watercolors. Then mysteriously one night, some anonymous committee would hang ribbons on those bestowed with the highest honors and then others would recieve silver stars as some kind of honorable mention. Year after year I would enter the cafeteria with hope of just a silver star, I never expected a ribbon. Year after year I was disappointed and grew in my resolve that I was NOT an artist.

Finally. Fifth Grade. A silver star! The artwork was a torn construction paper mosaic of a clown. Quite impressive! I probably was recognized for my ability to glue all those pieces of construction paper without creating a mushy, warped mess. Oh well, I was very happy to leave elementary school with the high honor of that silver star.

As an adult, I've come to believe that art can be learned, you do not have to be born gifted, and many things can be art. I hope I can help my children learn this way before they're thirty.