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.  

A Rather Floral Week

The weather has teased up to almost 70* a few times, then goes back to 50s and clouds.  But it still feels like spring.  

Our neighborhood got a new Little Free Library, so I walked over and put some books in it.  I love seeing these, especially when I travel.  Books are meant to be shared.  

Coming back, I snapped a picture of a neighbor's daffodils because they made me smile.  They're one of my favorite flowers, but they're only around for such a short time.  

Our Australia themed art works this week.  I seem to be missing the kangaroos.  I'll try to get those next week.  

Sydney Opera House

Sydney Harbor Bridge

Oops.  Works from last week, out of How to Draw Russia's Sights and Symbols.  Katie's is a statue on a bridge, and Hannah drew Lenin's Tomb.  

Our library books.  The girls did shark reports last week, and now they are working on reports on an Australian animal.  This is a challenge.  

Miss Adorable (Eli's girlfriend) brought over these beautiful flowers on my birthday.  

A quick selfie before Sam and I headed out to the nursery.  His gift to me was plants for the front porch.

On the right are my miracle snapdragons.  They're supposed to die off and come back each year.  Mine have just hung in there, surviving for more than a year now.  I planted some purple and pink snapdragons (hoping they'll be hearty, too) and some yellow marigolds.  

We also brought home this lovely lily, and then I used my Target gift card from Christmas to buy this pretty pot for it.  My grandmother had a thick patch of beautiful Calla lilies that survived my black thumb, so I have high hopes that this one may, too.  Every spring I want to make things grow.  Every summer, the Sacramento sun fries them.  

My dad sent me birthday flowers.  

Paul made my cake from scratch.  

Matilda at the park.  

Milestone this week!  She turned a year old in February, and just hit 5,000 miles.  

And yes, I said park.  Josiah's birthday gift to me was a picnic lunch (from our favorite burrito shop) and a walk by the lake.  Lake?  Hmm, it might be a pond.  Let me check.  No, the website says it's a lake.  At any rate, it's stocked with fish, and we saw several people fishing.  

The sunshine felt amazing, and the wildlife made me smile.  We've got to start getting out more!  

I have a silly habit.  I tend to buy cool stuff and then "save" it for a special occasion or special project.  Only... now I'm coming to The End; of homeschooling, of parenting, and I'm discovering that we never got to those special times, and never used the special stuff.  It's sad.  So this week, I pulled out the ShrinkFilm, and the girls made Australia ornaments.  

Unfortunately, it's been years since I used shrink film, and they folded in on themselves when they curled up.  I was able to save Hannah's, by working quickly with a couple of forks when we pulled them out, but Katie ended up redoing hers.  

Eventually, though, they both had lovely Australia ornaments.  

Or cat toys.  Oh Grumman.  

Perhaps we'll manage an Easter craft with the rest of the pack of shrink film.  

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.