Our Week with a Spot of Sewing

My friend is home from the hospital and doing well.  Her kids are happy to have their mama home.

We got back to art this week!  The first project involved soft pastels, which are messy.  We keep diaper wipes with the art supplies for things like this.

Our first project involved creating an animal shaped stencil and then using pastels to color around it several times.

Then we put a small piece of cardboard under the stencil and glued it onto the page, creating a 3 dimensional effect.

Still loving the Can Do Cubes.  Actually, we're still enjoying the Jolly Phonics books, too.  Katie's working through book 2 now.  Here, she's using the cubes to spell out words.  I find myself reaching for these when Katie misspells a word in her spelling book so I can show her the way it should look.  Especially with 2 letter vowels and ch, sh, th, etc.

Math drill work.  Not a favorite, but a necessary evil.

When my friend's kids were here last week, I made a discovery.  We had no crib sheets.  After Luke left the first time, I decluttered down to just two of them:  the ones I made for him and Katie when I decorated the panda room.  When he came back, we used them to death.  He often slammed his face into the crib to self sooth, and I'd go in to get him in the morning and find blood (from his nose) all over him and the crib.  When he moved again, those two sheets were gross, so I threw them away.

After having to "make do" with what we had around the house while we had 6 spare kids here last week, I decided we should probably have some crib sheets.  And since I have oodles of fabric, I should make them.  Left sheet is a travel print with landmarks from around the world.  Center sheet is fabric from Alaska.

Sheet on the right is a purple calico print.  If you're curious, this is How I Make Crib Sheets.

Our second art project this week, also from the Home Art Studio 4th grade DVD, was treat bags for Halloween.  The tutorial was on how to make a monster or Frankenstein treat bag, but she mentioned you could also make them to match a costume.  I told Jack and Hannah they could choose.

Jack decided to go with a monster, and Hannah decided to match her costume.  She's going to be a tiger.  Katie was working on her math, but I made her a panda bag to go with her panda costume.

When I pulled out the pipe cleaners chenille stems, Jack played with them for a while, and ended up chained to his chair at one point.  Boys!

Our finished treat bags.

What's this?  We're at another pumpkin patch?  Yes.  I confess, I'm really, really enjoying being able to get out of the house and meet up with friends to enjoy all the special fun that only happens in the autumn.

We hung out with some other homeschoolers we don't get to see very often at our local pumpkin patch.

It was really, really good for Jack to get to run with a flock of boys his age.

Hannah and Katie had a great time, too.

We went on a hay ride.

 They posed for silly pictures.

And they got to pet animals.

It was perfect fall weather; sunny and nice, with lots to see and do.  I took new pictures of Jack, Hannah and Katie to update the blog sidebar.

My China trip is only a couple weeks away now, and I'm starting to get things ready.  We got a letter from Josiah, and we heard from his commander when graduation will be, so it looks like we'll be traveling again for that, just a short while after my return from China.  Exciting!


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