Make and Listen

February 20, 2014 by tam

Today I am happy to be joining Dawn for her make and listen along Thursdays.

It’s been a busy week and much creating has been done to come to the end results of these projects.

The boys have been keen on making clay animals and are loving mythical creatures right now. They finished these polymer clay figures earlier this week, with a little help from me. It was super fun and I think I want to make one too! 🙂

L even made a holder for his sword. 🙂

We had great fun mapping out the bottom floor of our house. The boys used x’s on their maps to hide word cards for me to find, to be made into a story at a later date. L decided to go freestyle and draw the rooms as he saw them and even added the toaster, cutting board, tv and many other items around the house. Xman wanted a more exact measurement so we went around and measured each room showing that one square equals two feet. It was great fun had by all!

The boys wanted me to add this to the post: this is Burrito. He is made from a fraction of the Hero Factory/Bionicle pieces that the boys have. He is over a foot tall. Makes me wonder how big one would be using all of their pieces! Eek!

And last but certainly not least…dum dum dum….!!!

I finished my sock.

Proud of myself and it’s oh so comfy. It wasn’t hard at all – that is with help from YouTube’s Knitpicks sock class series. Super helpful!

Now onto sock number 2.

Happy week everyone!

Make and Listen

February 6, 2014 by tam

Joining Dawn for the second week in a row (pat on the back).

There has been a lot going on this week even with L having a cold. We had some lay low time and watched The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the second time as well as Despicable Me for who knows what time (it’s a favourite!).
During our couch time I knit. Remember these socks? They are coming along and I am about to turn the heel – eek! Haha!

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Also, as always there is much reading in our home as it can always be done when there are sickies around. A couch snuggle is all that is needed and a good book or movie. Still reading The Mysterious Benedict Society. We are enjoying it which is good because it is a big book!

Also, the boys have gotten into mythical creatures again which was inspired this time by the How to Train Your Dragon books and evolved from there…

Which led to learning to speak Dragonese…

…and, of course, creating their own creatures…

That’s a sneak peak as they aren’t quite done yet. I am loving this polymer clay – wish we’d purchased some years ago! I’ve helped smooth edges a bit and Xman is more of a stickler for making it just right, where Lucas brings his own ideas into it. To each his own and I love it!

This was our art table which is really the dining room table. I had a vision of an art piece while I did my evening reiki and like a bee to honey I went straight to work! Will post more on my work on my art blog a little later as it’s not quite finished and you simply cannot rush art, right? Right. 😉

As for listening, it’s been The Red Violin soundtrack and yes, Kids Bop in numerous volumes!

It snowed again yesterday and if L wasn’t getting over his cold we be out there tobogganing. Nonetheless, we are truly enjoying this winter and it was so nice to be greeted by sparkly whiteness this morning!
Have a wonderful day!

Make and Listen along

January 30, 2014 by tam

I am excited to be joining Dawn this week for Make and Listen!

Earlier this week…

I made almond milk, almond butter, chia banana muffins and lentil mushroom burgers from this amazing book by a local food artist…

Finally finished those Minecraft-inpired fingerless gloves for the boys (!)… they love them!

Yesterday morning…

I awoke before anyone, pracised yoga, made tea, and then worked on and posted my character study to my art blog for an online year-long art workshop…

Made some yummy paleo brownies using the almond meal left over from the almond milk (love that!)…

Xman came downstairs and immediately began weaving a blanket for him Pokémon Pidove, whose nest I felted last year with the same yarn. He did a great job and in no time!

L decided to draw out a plan for a constructed Mincraft Enderman and began painting the head. I love that he takes the time to plan out how the character will look and what supplies he will need. Even I am excited to see it when it is all finished! Those boys love Minecraft, especially now that they are playing the survival mode and not the creative mode. I listen in to their conversations and planning and am quite impressed. Can’t wait until they begin Minecraft Homeschool in a couple of weeks! (Did I just say that?)

Watching L so carefully trying to keep the pink paint inside the boxes he drew of the eyes made me grab the painters tape and show him how to tape around the eyes so that he didn’t have to worry so much about precision. They were both so excited when the tape was removed but I will show more at a later date as things progress.

The boys went outside to play during the snowfall/storm. Yay! I love it when they go out in the snow because I remember when I was little and snow stayed all winter long. These days if you don’t go out right away it will be washed away sometimes by the next day.

The snow was so, so beautiful and quiet. Just lovely watching the snow falling and hearing their happy voices. Speaking of snow, I added water to some muffin tins and put them in the freezer for a little experiment from the latest issue of Alphabet Glue!

I decided to use the time to sew (gasp, I know, it’s been soooo loooong!). I was going to read or knit but decided to try the zipper pouch pattern that Dawn had shared a while back. It was so super-easy! You have to try out this pattern! Seriously! I am addicted and now the boys each want one. I knew it! 😉

All this time we were weaving and painting and sewing, guess what was playing in the background?

No…not CBCR2! The Red Violin Soundtrack (love that movie) and Kidz Bop 21! The boys love Kidz Bop and L put another 6 of the CD’s on hold from the library. Some of the songs are rather addictive!

As for reading…

I just finished Wild and let me tell you, I wanted to quit what I was doing and go on a soul searching hike. My goodness, what a gut wrenching, painfully honest journey she shares. Amazing. Read it, I say!

The boys are devouring the How to Train Your Dragon Series which is pretty cool. As a group we are reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and truly enjoying it. The other Doodle Stitching book just arrived for me at the library so I know where I will be heading tomorrow on the way to the boys’ drama class…oh yeah!

Today, we go tobogganing after drama and then a nice Skype with a good friend. Happy days!

Nature exchange package arrives!

January 9, 2014 by tam

A couple of days ago our nature exchange package arrived from Latvia! It was late, yes, but the family is expecting another baby and many of us know how that can affect other things. 🙂

We were super excited to open our box of goodies. We have been learning a bit about Latvia the past months. They are not much different in latitude than us so it was no surprise to see that many of their finding are similar to what we have here in Nova Scotia. If you take a close look you can see that the inside of the egg carton has different languages printed!

Just today, Mud Puddles, created a post on shadow boxes and we thought how apropos that we should receive our nature box so timingly! We are going to make it into a shadow box!

Yay!

The beauty of film

January 7, 2014 by tam

Last year (ya, that’s right) I took out my twin-lens Mamiya, bought some xp2. I was itching to shoot some film and shortly after I purchased a couple of rolls we had a lovely snowfall so I brought my camera outside while the boys enjoyed the weather. Later that week the boys and I went to a fellow homeschooler’s home where we were invited to partake in maple syrup making! We had so much fun and the boys were so thrilled experiencing the process, watching the sap drip so quickly into the buckets from the life-bearing trees. It was a wonderful experience, one they would like to do again, they told me as they saw me finally editing these images. Better late than never!

There really is something amazing about film. I love it. It’s totally different than digital and once I accepted that I was able to accept digital. I got my photography degree (BFA with major) using film. Yep, it does date me but that’s okay. I learned to create images from scratch, by hand, if you will. There is a real connection to the images, the moments you create when you use film and I think only those who have experienced this can relate.

What took my sooo long to share? I scanned the images soon after they were processed but it took me until yesterday, so that’s almost a year, before post-processing – as in getting rid of the dust. That part of film I don’t miss! 🙂

Winter Solstice candle making, new traditions and thank you’s

December 21, 2013 by tam

Remember those felt candies from the last post? Here they are all laid out in a pattern so that we would know how to thread them all on since we make red and green ones. This was Xman’s work. He simply began placing two reds and one green and it worked out perfectly. It measured 5 feet long! I figured we could thread 10 beads between each candy and L said we would need 500 beads. Oh my! Luckily, we had 550 so we were good to go!

I cut a 12 foot piece of quilting thread and started adding the candies then beads as L then pushed them down to the end of the line where Xman took out the pins from the candies and pushed the beads against them to keep them closed. It was great teamwork and in less than an hour we had our garland with some left over! I haven’t taken a picture of the garland on our bannister because it was too dark by that time but you’ll just have to believe me that it looks great – or at least we think so and we really enjoyed the process together.

Next came my job of grating the beeswax for our solstice candles for today. I only scraped one knuckle. Not bad for my track record. 🙂

I tried hanging the wick line with a clothespin attached to the bottom to help straighten it out but this didn’t work. The wick had been rolled in a ball for so long I almost decided that there was no way to straighten it out so it would sit in the middle of each candle. I decided to take my chances and just added a bit of wax to the bottom of each dixie cup and then place the end of each wick piece in and let that dry before adding more wax. Once the wax was dry I gently pulled up the wick and straightened it out by clipping a clothespin to each wick then resting the clothespin on top of the cup.

We were now ready for Solstice!
We also decided to begin a new tradition. I find that the holiday season goes by too quickly. Once the frenzy of gifts is over, we rush off to relative’s places for visits and dinner and then suddenly it’s time for home and bed. So this year, we decided to have small gifts in the boys’ stocking for every day up to Christmas beginning with the Solstice. A nice way to celebrate the shortest day of the year and the holiday to come. The boys were so surprised to see a gift in their stockings. Oh, two gifts!

These pocket microscopes are wonderful portable magnifiers and the boys were thrilled. They can zoom 20-40x, have a focusing lever and an LED light. Not bad! Next we would open the geodes and look inside, but first, mother must go off to work so the geode breaking would have to wait.

Once I arrived home from a very busy workday we lit the candles inside our previously made lanterns.

We then each took a turn in saying what we have been thankful for during the past year. L decided we could light four candles today, three tomorrow, two for the 23rd and one for the day before Christmas. Sounds like a great tradition! Happy Solstice to all!

Felt garland and didgeridoos

December 19, 2013 by tam

This week we have been making holiday decorations. I was aiming on the beginning of the month to begin crafting but better late than never! And from time to time the boys run outside all suited up and play until they are too cold or too hot. It’s wonderful to see them playing in the snow!

I am still chugging along slowly with the fingerless Minecraft-inspired gloves that I began over a month ago I believe but through the day it’s holiday making with the boys!

We have a favourite book for our holiday crafts. It’s our go-to book when we get stumped on ideas. The great thing about this book is that many of the projects are relatively fast and something we can all do together.

At this moment we are making felt garland where you cut the felt into strips, roll and then string together with beads. It’s a bit of a process but things moved along much faster when I realized that I could use my rotary cutter to cut the felt strips – love that cutter even more now!

During our crafting L had been looking at an old Chikadee magazine. They used to get the Chirp, Chikadee, and Owl mag subscriptions from some friends and are good enough they keep going back to them which is great because L left the room and came back with two paper towel rolls taped together. He said it was a didgeridoo like in the magazine. Very cool idea! So, we took a break to find some videos on what the didgeridoo sounded like and even how to make the sounds. I think we have a new project on our hands!

I chose this video because the musician is amazing. It’s 9 minutes long but so worth it. Listen while you work! 😉 You can also find a didgeridoo made with wood shaped like the Fibonacci spiral on Youtube. Very impressive!

They also practiced the sounds with some left over plastic shelving tubes stick together!

We’ve also been listening to a bit of holiday music but X usually gets sick of it unless it’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree over and over again! Then it’s Yo-Yo Ma. Then he asks for the music to be off. There is something nice about the quiet while we crag from time to time. He may be onto something there. 🙂

Back to crafting! We made 50 candy rolls and Xman was great at rolling and pinning! Remember, if you do this you must place the rolls into pyramid shapes as you go along…

or a Christmas tree shape..

or a tree with eyes. Very important.

More later when the garland is finished!

Following along with Dawn today!

HOMESCHOOL ADVENTURE WEEK 10

November 18, 2013 by tam

This week was all about the number six.

We were talking about shapes that had to do with the number six, such as a cube (six sides), a tetrahedron (has six edges), and an octahedron (has six points). The boys made a cube, tetrahedron and octahedron out of their crazy fort pieces.

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I took this picture of the Octohedron to show the star shape on the inside and the hexagon (six sided) on the inside of that. From there we started talking a bit about mandalas but we will work on that this week.

We also made some six-sided stars. This is a great link for making your own stars. We then flattened the stars under a phone book and forgot about them. We will be hanging them soon!

L decided to take one of his stars and instead of making the final folds and cut made a dog instead!

From here the boys made their own 3d shapes. I found a site which gives the printouts making it easy for me (paper folding into 3d is not my forte!). The website is so wonderful for showing the shapes in a rotating video to fully understand them in 3d.

This site is great for getting to know a bunch of shapes – very cool! We will be making more!!!

Of course, one could not make these shapes without including this one…

Oh! How we are loving The Weather Watcher’s Handbook! It is taking us forever to get through because it is so interesting!

This time we read about longitude and latitude. We then went to our world map and I called out co-ordinates and the boys took turns finding the country which matched. It was great fun and really helped them to understand the use of these lines that they always see on globes and maps.

We went online and found this fun song on youtube for longitude and latitude:

We also watched some great videos on this youtube site which I have bookmarked for future viewing. These videos are great and so fun – I think they may have been made by students as part of their program…

We learned about the layers of the earth, longitude and latitude, why there are seasons (also in the handbook!) and more.

Then we somehow got onto fractals and the boys were amazed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwWyTts06tU Fractals

Homeschool Adventure Week #8 and the Eclipse

November 4, 2013 by tam

It was an unschooling week this time around what with the usual programs and Halloween.

We went to two parties, one of which consisted of finding dragon eggs with much excitement! Inside each egg was a joke instead of candy and I gotta say, I like that lack of candy business.

We also brought along these yummy cookies! You may want to bookmark this site! There is an amazing overnight oatmeal recipe too, I kid you not! But, I digress…food does that…

We also tried starting a fire which didn’t work that well as it had rained the day before and we didn’t have much kindling/newspaper as starter at first. Another family arrived who happened to have a bunch of newspaper in their car which proved helpful as some of the kids were very determined to get that fire going. I must say, despite the wet wood, we did manage to make it work eventually. It was fun for them to see the different ways that wood, leaves, and paper burned. I think next time we need to make some of these starters from the summer edition of Alphabet Glue and come prepared!

Later in the week I had a big order for a family photo shoot to prepare so the boys sat down to make their own Pokémon cards. There was a lot of drawing, colouring, cutting, and writing. It was quiet with all of this studiousness. I have to say it was so lovely. Gypsy was curious and hopped up on Xman’s chair to get a little closer to the action.

Yesterday morning, as you may know, was a solar eclipse. It was not only an annular but total eclipse! We were very excited to see if the sky got even a little darker from our wee spot on this earth of ours but with all of the overcast weather we did not see a thing. If we had had a clear sky we would have been able to see some of the eclipse from our area, most likely the annular part. However, the boys had a great idea on how to view the eclipse another way using their Star Walk app on their iPods. It showed them where the moon, sun and the earth (among other celestial bodies) would be at our specific location and exact moment. It was the next best thing I’d say! I know, it looks like the same picture twice but that is because it is! Both boys took a screen shot so they would each have their own record of it and I could show them on the blog. Even Stephen, right?

There are some pretty incredible images of the eclipse here. Did you see the eclipse in your area? We’d love to hear about it. Feel free to share a link to your pictures if you have any!

Viewing Ursa Major in miniature

October 31, 2013 by tam

My boys love the sky, anytime of year, anytime of day. A while ago we crafted these great star gazer scopes by Alphabet Glue and they now sit on our window sill for easy access.

The boys are always in a picture taking mood and yesterday Xman took this photo from the inside of the Ursa Major scope. I felt like I was outside staring up at the sky.

Are you in the mood for some crafts that are not only fun but educational? Pop on over to Alphabet Glue! If you visit the blog you will find the new super-cool-and-amazing Weather Watcher’s ebook!

the shards

Category Archives: art/craft

Make and Listen

Make and Listen

Make and Listen along

Nature exchange package arrives!

The beauty of film

Winter Solstice candle making, new traditions and thank you’s

Felt garland and didgeridoos

HOMESCHOOL ADVENTURE WEEK 10

Homeschool Adventure Week #8 and the Eclipse

Viewing Ursa Major in miniature