Our Week Before St. Patrick's Week

It's starting to look like St. Patrick's Day around here!  

The girls worked on sequin rainbows.

Grumman ran through Katie's rainbow before it was dry, and picked up a couple red sequins.  I replaced those for her, since she was downstairs when it happened.  

No study of Australia is complete without touching on kangaroos!  The girls did animal reports:  Hannah on kangaroos; Katie on Tasmanian devils.  

Hannah's mandala got bumped before I got a picture of it.  

I think this may be the first time we've used crayons all year.  Crayon and watercolor watering cans to celebrate spring.

I found it amusing that Grumman seems to be interested in the book Hate That Cat, a novel about poetry.  

Another of Hannah's projects, a firecracker from one of the Chinese New Year library books.  

It's always interesting to see what things are a challenge for which child.  I drew a picture of the necklace I wanted them to make on the white board.  No other instructions.  Just "make this necklace" with all the supplies provided.  One of them understood what I wanted and had no trouble.  One of them struggled and struggled.  (Meanwhile, the one who got it was having a hard time with a poetry lesson.)  

Our faux aboriginal art.  We used acrylic markers for the drawing part, and then made the dots using a q-tip and acrylic paint.  

I'm wishing I'd been more proactive about using this black art paper.  I have one more project planned with it.  With the kids going back to classroom school next year, I'm feeling compelled to "use up" as much of the homeschool and art type stuff that I can.  At the same time, I'm kicking myself for some of the things I got rid of last summer.  I let the gold foil origami paper and the regular origami paper go to the school rummage sale, and then we needed it this year.  

Grumman, watching intently while we had Rescuers Down Under playing.  

Books to keep!  Our adoption support group blessed families with a trip to the bookstore...

...and the chocolate shop!  It was nice to feel like we haven't been forgotten.  

Katie was working on the floor because she'd just cleaned all the glue off her table, and it wasn't dry yet.  I glanced at her and giggled a little.  That pose made it look like someone assembled her incorrectly.  

We've reached the octopus section of Swimming Creatures.  

New library books to sniff!  Yum!  

I managed to snag a couple St. Patrick's Day and Easter craft books, including a St. Patrick's origami book, to help use up that new pack of origami paper I had to buy.  

Hannah's Lines & Contours.  Looks like I didn't manage to get a picture of Katie's project from this art book.  She did stick art.  

We're taking next week as our Spring Break, since I didn't want to split a country in half, and we just finished up Australia.  We'll continue to do art and projects and read books, of course.  Hopefully, without the press of a full load of school work, we'll be able to get out and enjoy the fresh air.  The girls have been playing in the back yard more lately, with the weather getting so nice.