Our End of February Week

Tomorrow will be March!  My birthday month!  I'm so happy to see daffodils popping up and trees bursting into bloom.  It's like nature is decorating for me.  

Sometimes I feel like there's never enough time to learn all that I want to learn, or teach all that I want to teach.  I'm aware of the vast amount of information and knowledge that's out there, and the reality is, I know only a little sliver of it.  

The pandemic has taught me to be even more grateful for our libraries and librarians.  To have access to so many free books is such a blessing.  

Josiah and I collaborated to Crikey up some iron-ons for his new apron.  I think they're video game related things.  I'm kind of just tech support while he makes his ideas come to life.  

I'll just lay these tops out and get a quick picture...  Oh Grumman.  

pastel rainbow bunnies

Last week, I said I wouldn't show these until I was done with all four of them.  Only, I didn't finish the other two.  So I'm showing them now, and hopefully next week, I'll be able to show the others.  I stacked the fabric and cut out all four tops at the same time.  "Stack & Whack" was introduced to me as a quilting technique, but I quickly realized that cutting out 4 pairs of size 4T bike shorts for Brianna went faster if I used the same principle.  

pandas and bamboo

These are for Hannah.  I feel bad always making stuff for Hannah and less often for Katie, but the reality is, Katie has all Hannah's hand me downs, so she doesn't need as many new things.  

We watched a YouTube video to draw Russian nesting dolls.

Here are the colored versions.

The next day, we painted wooden matryoshka dolls. 

 

I'm so grateful for the sunshine.  People in the curriculum group I'm in have been mentioning the February homeschool blahs, and I think part of the reason those haven't hit here in our house is that we've had some lovely spring weather lately.  I'm glad our school room has such great natural lighting.

Our finished matryoshkas.  Hannah was playing peek a boo behind them.  

 

We thought we might have lost a book.  The girls were sure we'd returned it, but we tore the house apart looking for it, anyway.  Finally, I wrote a note and stuck it in the book drop with more returns, and they did, indeed, find it on the shelf, having not been scanned in.  While we were in panic mode, I slowed way down on new library acquisitions.  This was my sole pickup one day this week.  Now to fill our hold list with books on Australia, our next country.  

WE WENT OUTSIDE!  Sorry for shouting, but I think it's the first time the girls have been out since September.  It was a very brief sketching trip, but it felt very good to be out of doors again.  The photo above shows our muse for the day.  

Hannah included some info from the plaque on her drawing.  

You can really see Katie's perspective here, as she's closer to the ground than I am, and she included fence posts in the foreground.  She goes for speed in most things in life, so while Hannah and I were still sketching our schoolhouse building pictures, she finished and drew the school bell on a separate page.  

You can tell from my wiggly jiggly doors that this was a brief, standing, rough sketch.  But it was wonderful to get out, and I'm glad the girls' clipboards are seeing some action again.  

The girls have been learning about sharks this week in Swimming Science, including drawing them, of course.  They're working on shark reports now, which will be read at the dinner table.  

One of Katie's projects this week was paper cup dinosaurs.

Eli sent a picture of a coin he found at work.  Makes me so happy to see even just a little bit of him.  Miss my boy!  

We learned about the last imperial family of Russia, and made faux Faberge eggs.  

These sharks were a cut & assemble printout from Twinkl.  I used cardstock when I printed them to make them sturdy.  

Sturdy does not equal Grumman proof, however.  

Katie's shark regularly eats glue sticks and other school supplies.  

This was my stab at getting pictures of us doing something other than art.  

We watched Wild Russia, from Disney +.  Grumman took on a bear.  

Another of Katie's projects.  This one features the ancient Chinese art of papercutting.  

She also did a dragon puppet.  

And this is Grumman attacking her dinosaur magnet.  

We had Panda Express for the last night of Lunar New Year.

And we celebrated with cupcakes topped with Chinese zodiac animals.  I actually got the animal toob months ago and set them aside for this very reason.  I'm glad Lunar New Year is a 2 week long holiday, because we just barely managed to accomplish it.  

Hoping we can make it outside again next week.  The fresh air and sunshine is so good for us.  Our neighborhood just got a new Little Free Library, so we'll probably donate some books there.