Art that Teaches, Lifting the Bleh

No, I still haven't gotten my camera back. Or shipped it off.
Why?
Well, why send it off until I have the money to get it fixed, right? That's how we poor folks stay outta debt. You don't have it, you don't spend it.
So, my Mom has been letting me borrow her little Powershot. :) Thanks!
I'm throwing some things out there, trying to get my groove back. Drawin' a little here and there because I know it helps my funk, even if I don't feel the effects right away.

This past weekend I suddenly felt the irresistible urge to paint, which is a wonderful sign for me. Our family's lingering sickness is finally lifting. My S.A.D. coupled with my parents' divorce issues...I feel those emotional burdens lifting.

I want to paint again! (insert fantastical music here and a rainbow forming or something)

We're planning for spring...our animals studies, our garden plans. All of that feels good to me. I even ordered some neat seeds with unique names, and I'm aching to get going on all of that.

Good things, good things. It's a colorless post, but I feel very bright and light inside, and want to get back to the daily happiness and enjoyment of it all.

(Still working on keeping my sarcastic inner voice at bay, though. Heh. Life would be easier without the idiots, no? Okay, okay.)

Joy in every day

In family news, Amy got her biopsy results back yesterday. The tumor is malignant. With a 90% chance of this, we were prepared for that kind of news. Actually, she doesn't have "regular kidney cancer," she has Chromophobe Renal Cell Carcinoma, which is a pretty rare form of cancer (only like 5% of RCC patients have this form.) Go figure. Amy is special and had to get a special disease. Right, girl? ;-) Surgical removal of the kidney usually leads to a good prognosis. Just keep praying for fast, smooth, and complete treatment and recovery. And pray that her baby Ransom stays healthy and happy while she deals with these extra things on her plate. We could use continued prayer for peace, too. The "c" word is just scary. Staying busy helped me focus and breathe, usually an involuntary thing but I start holding my breathe if cancer stays on my mind too long.

In school news, I'm lovin' this year! It's like I hit my groove and realized just how FUN I could make everything. Our history and science studies have whetted my own appetite for the subjects.

We made this huge timeline for our dining room, that goes across two walls. Now to transfer our history notebook page info.
We're "supposed" to be studying about earth-y stuff right now in science but, in light of recent family events, we have skipped ahead to the human body. Now this is fun and interesting stuff!! After reading about skin last week, we made pages of our fingerprints and then added more body parts to Dash's outline. The kidneys were one of the first things we read about and added to the body. Amy's disease has prompted me to study kidneys more than I ever dreamed I would! For more pictures of the kid-sized human body, click here.
After "official school" (ha), we did royal paintings inspired by Deep Space Sparkle's plan, using a deck of cards for visual aids. Then finishing up the Mouse and Wizard fable lapbook. More pictures here.

I have to share one of our new favorite computer games, Crayon Physics. It is so much fun. The kids love making their shapes come to life. We just have the demo right now, but they've been taking 10-minute turns with it. Gotta love games that are fun, artistic, and teach!

Side activity: Lego Trojan Horse. Gotta love it. :-D

In spite of (or maybe because of,) all that has been going on, I know this will be a good week. We're not taking things for granted. I know my little sister will be okay. I believe that she will see a great doctor, get the surgery she needs, and she will recover quickly. We have a hedge of prayer and protection around her, and any one of us would drop everything and rush to her aid. But still. This makes me realize how fragile we are. And how much I need to focus on things that matter: relationships, quality AND quantity time with the kids, and my husband. We need to live life to the fullest and take JOY in all that we have been blessed with.

Alphabetical order, Sick Days and thoughts

Double duty teaching is here again: Beginning consonant sounds for Dash and alphabetical order for Nature Man. The Artist (4th) stood by as a teacher's assistant.

Nature Man has already covered ABC order, using our poster and worksheets, but extra FUN practice never hurt anyone. :-)

First the boys put their new 10-foot long ABC puzzle together, down the hallway.
This was a yard sale bargain. Thanks, K!

I gave Nature Man (2nd grade) a list of words to alphabetize: Bear, Spoon, Horse, Purse, Apple, Leaf, Cookies, Watch. Then the boys received items, one by one, that corresponded to the list. Dash (4) had to sound them out, and tell his big brother where they should go.

I would have given them a different "H" item, if I'd realized that the puzzle actually had a picture of a horse there!
When they were finished sorting their items, Nature Man wrote all of the words in the correct order on his page.
We also did an experiment today on water states, but I neglected to get pictures (gasp.) We worked ahead today, too, because Daddy was home to help (swollen and sore from the swarm of yellow jackets he encountered.)

All of that was before we fell ill.

Dash was sick with a stomach bug on Saturday night. Thankfully, it passed after a few hours (of non-stop vomiting.) This evening The Artist, Little Lad and I all got the same thing. :-( Whimper...
And I missed the homeschool house tour because of it. Whimper...
And I have 20 loads of disgusting laundry. Whimper...
But we'll all be okay. I believe we may be all better by tomorrow!

However, even if we have to trudge through any more sickness, we won't get behind. There's no pressure. Ah, the beauty of homeschooling. If The Artist was, say, sick in bed for 4 days, she wouldn't be recovering under a mountain of make-up work and tests. We can school right through it, if she's able. And, if the load needs to be lightened, then the schedule is adjusted and we can smoothly move along. This evening I took over her chores, and just read to her, even though she had some math "homework" (ha) to finish up. She'll finish it soon enough.

If she feels able tomorrow, she can sit at the computer and get her math done, lie down and orally give me her spelling answers, and so forth. We'll do fun calm work, versus our usual fun enErGeTic work.

It's a huge weight off of me to be able to focus on the kids, and not on what they are missing during this time. I fully expect to fall behind on the house, too, when I'm ill and Little Lad is throwing up and needing cuddly time, and The Artist requires attention and care, plus there are still the two healthy boys. Yeah, I'll fall behind. No sweat. Just don't visit the sick house for a couple of days. It will be a wreck, I can assure you, because I am attending to more important matters. Although I AM sanitizing everything!! And doing tons of laundry and dishes. I'm just not cleaning up toys, or hanging clothes or anything else *minor* like that. :-)

Sooo, well or ill, tomorrow will work out.

Double duty teaching: emotions and pronouns

What can you do with poster boards? Draw huge "emotion faces." It's fun. :-)

With four kids, ranging from 4th grade to 2-years old, teaching must get creative. Kids are learning ALL the time, so we might as well sneak in extra education when we can. And the funner (and funnier) it is, the more memorable, right?

I had one of the kids sit on the couch to complete the sentence. Dash and Little Lad "read" it to me. Little Lad would just shout out "circle" most of the time, so we helped him along. The face is supposed to be "bored" and The Artist did her best to mirror it.

She looks very bored, doesn't she?

Then we talked about what a pronoun is. Simple explanation: A word that can take the place of a noun. This is review for The Artist, so I had her go first to lead by example.

Artist, how would you read this sentence?

Yes! "I am bored."
"I" is the pronoun.

Then the middle boys sat down.
Boys, what might someone say about you when they see this?

Yes! "They are angry."
"They" is the pronoun that takes the place of "boys."

Short photo session.
Little Lad needed to get in on the couch-sitting action,
so I took some pictures of him sitting on the signs.

Okay, now that he's had his fix, we're moving on...

Nature Man is happy.

Dash, what could take the place of "Nature Man?"

Yes, "he" is happy! "He" is the pronoun.

(Nature Man has also studied pronouns --beginning of last year, I think-- but he acted like this was all new info. Go figure.)
Nature Man, your sister is worried. What could take the place of "Your sister?"

Yes, "she."

She is worried. "She" is the pronoun that takes the place of "your sister."

(The Artist and Dash got up on the couch for this next one,
but Little Lad needed to be in the picture again. So be it. He's a cutie!)

Dash and Artist, how do you feel?
"We feel confused."
Yes! "We" is the pronoun.

Great job, kids!!!

a spider and school work

Okay, and here are some misc shots from the week. Fred and the kids found a humongous spider when they were clenaing up branches by the shed. YIKES!!


Here is Isabelle being a great big sister, and one of her working on embroidery:



Ethan concentrating on his short vowel worksheet of the day.


And my I love NY baby.

Trevor didn't make it into this set of pictures, because he would NOT sit or stand still!!!