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I'm a part-time clinical psychology researcher and full-time mother to Alex (4/05) and Colin (2/09). We are secular homeschoolers following a modified neoclassical curriculum.
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Current Read-Aloud
The Borrowers Aloft
Mary Norton-
Category Archives: art
Looking ahead to third grade.
Our new school year starts on June 1st. One of my goals for third grade is that Alex start to take a little more ownership of her education, so I asked her what she would like to accomplish this year. … Continue reading
Posted in art, five in a row, math, policy & planning, writing
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Serendipity.
Alex discovered modular origami the night before her math lesson called for visualizing and analyzing geometric solids. Pretty cool.
Quick photo update.
I’m kind of too busy to post, but here’s a glimpse of what Alex has been up to. Learning valuable new words: Combing the dictionary for naughty words like “stupid”: Making Christmas ornaments: Colin, too:
Posted in art, language arts
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Origami.
Alex is obsessed with origami these days. She likes to make the same thing over and over: a fleet of dozens of swans, for instance, in rainbow-colored families. (She cuts a piece of origami paper in quarters to make the … Continue reading
Posted in art
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Beatrix Potter, UU Superhero: More art than RE.
(I’ve been pretty absent here lately, haven’t I? Sorry. I’ve been having trouble getting posts from my head to the page.) We did a UU Superheroes lesson for the first time in a long time today. Alex’s request. I didn’t … Continue reading
Posted in art, religious education
2 Comments
Mrs. Katz and Tush, part 2.
We had a pretty busy week with Mrs. Katz and Tush, despite the lack of posting. (The real issue with that? I was reading the Hunger Games trilogy in every minute of my free time.) In the book, Mrs. Katz … Continue reading
Posted in art, five in a row, religious education, social studies
Tagged mrs katz and tush
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Color, cut, paste.
Alex is going through a huge coloring phase right now. I am thrilled – I can’t think of a better way to improve pencil control and build up stamina for writing than coloring elaborate pictures with colored pencil. Her control … Continue reading
Posted in art, sotw vol. 2
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Alexium, and other news from our week.
I was so proud of myself for posting almost every day last week – getting back into the swing of blogging! Then Michael and I figured out how to watch the second season of Sherlock, and that sucked up every … Continue reading
Posted in art, chemistry (RSO)
6 Comments
Fibers and textiles.
Today, when we read A New Coat for Anna we focused on the coat itself. Anna watches the progress of her coat from sheep’s backs to the tailor’s window. I asked Alex to think of as many substances as possible … Continue reading
Quilts and patterns.
On Wednesday of our week with The Rag Coat (yes, I’m behind in posting. We hosted a Halloween party for 20 kids this weekend; I’ve been busy), we started out by listening to the Dolly Parton song “Coat of Many … Continue reading
Cars.
I never would have expected Alex to be interested in cars. That’s one of the reasons we almost skipped Mr. Gumpy’s Motor Car. But by chance, when I was skimming the library shelves I pulled out Everything I Know About … Continue reading
Wrapping up Gramma’s Walk.
For our science lesson connected to Gramma’s Walk, we spent some time with a lovely older science book, Millicent Selsam’s See Along the Shore from 1961. This book stands out among the hundreds of children’s books about ocean life because … Continue reading
Posted in art, five in a row, language arts, nature study, science
Tagged gramma's walk
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POV and beach paintings.
One of the recurring themes in the Five in a Row lessons for Language Arts is “techniques writers can use.” The Wild Horses of Sweetbriar has an author’s note explaining that the story is based on an incident that took … Continue reading
Magic Tree House book club update.
I’ve been waiting up to see if Hurricane Irene is going to do anything here. It looks like the answer is no, but my time hasn’t been totally wasted – you guys get a post before I go to bed. … Continue reading
Posted in art, BHCC, language arts, stuff we're reading
4 Comments
Compound words, secret compounds, and the plague.
Now Alex has a fever, chills, body aches, poor appetite. This virus has a wicked long incubation period – Colin got sick ten days before Alex, and he was well for four days before she came down with it. I … Continue reading
Working with clay.
In Amber on the Mountain, Amber gives her friend a little mule that she made out of clay. For our art lesson, we did some sculpting too. We used Crayola air-dry clay, which was a nice change from Play-doh and … Continue reading
Wrapping up Scotland and Wee Gillis.
We finished up our Wee Gillis study today, because we’re leaving early tomorrow morning to spend the holiday weekend with my parents. It’s been a really fun week! I’ve been feeling as though some of our recent Five in a … Continue reading
All studies should end with cake.
As a celebratory end to our week with Mike Mulligan, we made a construction-site cake this afternoon. Easiest thing in the world. We just dug a hole in the cake, crumbled the scooped-out cake for dirt piles, added some crushed … Continue reading
Monochromatic art.
Yesterday we were pretty occupied with book club, but we did do an art lesson for Make Way for Ducklings. The FIAR manual has some excerpts from McCloskey’s Caldecott Medal speech, in which he talks about buying two pairs of … Continue reading
Monuments.
Our topic this morning was Greek architecture. We’ve looked at a lot of pictures of Greek buildings by now. I spread several of them out on the floor and we looked for commonalities: columns, triangle-shaped or flat roofs, porticoes, friezes … Continue reading
Posted in art, sotw vol. 1
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