Knights and Ladies

This past week we read The Duchess Bakes a Cake.  It was a relatively simple book geared toward younger kids, but it had so much we could learn from it. The bored Duchess decides to bake a cake one day, and cheerfully rejecting any the offer of help from the cook, she pours in untold amounts of yeast and everything else she finds in the kitchen. The cake rises so high she rides up to the sky trying to beat it down. The king orders it to be attacked with bows and arrows and the like to get her down as she shouts instructions down at her family on what to cancel. It's pretty funny. Finally, when her youngest daughter cries in hunger, they all get the idea to eat the cake down.

 This was the kids' first official introduction to the Medieval Period. They had a castle and set of knights along with other random action figures, so we set up the whole hierarchy. The king sits high in his castle, the large figures including Vader are Barons and Lords. Then come the knights and peasants.

They also looked at this chart and filled out their own. They understood that your lot in life was determined by what class you were born into and learned about the roles these people filled. We also filled out a cast of characters since they are currently rehearsing for a play and this book could easily be made into a short one.

 They did a quick book review. We also did work on alliterations, synonyms, rhyming, and foreshadowing since all of this was easy to find in the story. The girls especially loved coming up with alliterations in the car when I'd assign them a letter.

 

We read a knight's code of honor and they each came up with a Stokes Code. I love Chloe's - "Be nice to each other and keep clean." I guess that does some up a lot of things. 

 They both looked through a large book describing all sorts of Medieval occupations and chose several to write about.

We looked through several representative menus of the period and the girls made up their own menu based on the types of things that would have been eaten at a feast.We did not venture to Medieval Times restaurant since it's quite expensive and they announced they wouldn't care for the food anyway. But we do pass it when we go into Dallas, so this was the first time they officially noticed it and commented on the building.

 

We looked at old style lettering and Hannah tried her name in all capitals. She also came up with her own designs. We also listened to plainchant on our car rides. Most college music students tend to groan at the music of this time period because it seems simple to our ears now. It's actually quite complex and I think it's nice to listen to! Thankfully the kids liked it too! 

 Austria was not mentioned in the story, but one the daughters all had German/Austrian names. We've already touched on Germany, so we learned some fun facts about Austria, glued a flag to our map collection, watched a couple of short videos.

 

The book only used the colors green, red, and white. We talked about complimentary colors and started with primary colors on the color wheel. They then mixed secondary colors and made the complimentary connection. Finally, they mixed the remaining colors on their own. I promise the colors are more accurate in real life than they are in the photo : )

 We looked at a few art examples from the Middle Ages and noted the use of color, how the people were depicted and the fact they were playing chess. : ) They noticed a likeness to the icons we have in the house. Looking back, I should have used the word two-dimensional. Oh well. They wrote their impressions next to each painting.

 Finally, we couldn't read a book about cake without baking a cake! We found out the role of each ingredient and understood that baking is chemistry. Since Hannah was about to have a birthday sleepover, we baked a chocolate cake and they seemed to have better understanding of why we put in each ingredient. 

 The girls were invited to an interesting birthday party at a local store called Denton Scrap. A group of retired teachers have several of these throughout the country. It's really a great place- all recyclable materials (they even hand washed all the party plates) and for pennies, you can get all sorts of fun things. The group activity was to make a diorama out of 5 things they found in the store. Unfortunately, Chloe accidentally took an item from their "boutique" up front which was all art items people were selling. The teacher told her "We don't make art out of other people's art." Of course Chloe didn't know that was someone else's art and had no idea what a boutique was (and that someone else's art was just a plastic palm tree glued to a wine cork, so I didn't think it was a big problem). : ) All was well and she picked a pine cone instead.

 Her finished diorama.

 Hannah's was a dinosaur jungle scene of sorts.

 The girls all played Bingo and won $1 tags to spend in the store. Hannah was the only one to win two, and she gave her extra to the birthday girl. I was proud of her for thinking so generously!

 

 Some pretty days have finally come our way, so we headed to the park right when school let out so they could meet some new friends. They did right away- 2 girls and a boy all the same ages.

 As for me, I was able to play Assistant Horn for a movie concert. I have this picture because a couple of my students were there and were surprised to see me on stage, so they sent me a picture from the balcony. : )

This week we're "visiting" the seashore with Gramma's Walk.

Cowboys and Stokes Kids

This semester, I decided to better organize the work we keep from school. I liked the previous idea of large scrapbooks, but the "presentation" was too random and messy and the books wouldn't hold up. I looked for other options and didn't find any that weren't too expensive. So on to plain white notebooks and I have to say the result is so much better. Sometimes obvious things take awhile with me. 

 Our first two weeks back were just basic schoolwork and taking care of basic life. But finally we got to a subject I've wanted to do for awhile, The West!!  A book a lot of people were reading was Cowboy Charlie about Charlie Russell, the famous western painter and his life. We thought he was pretty cool. The kids weren't super interested in the art, but did love how he left his family at 15 to purse being a cowboy and succeeded. Above, we learned about Montana and did a basic chart of his month long trip from his hometown of St. Louis to the capital of Helena.

We take any excuse to use a map around here. We refer to maps constantly whether it's through school, general conversation, or current events. We have a world map framed on the wall with gold stars on the countries we've learned about. We pull out the U.S. map, we have small maps, road maps, and 2 kids' atlases. I'm directionally challenged and also feel like I didn't quite have a great grasp on the world map as a kid. I knew all the basics, but I'd like the kids to really have a culture and feeling attached to each country they see on a map. I'd actually rather the kids not memorize the states through a song without any meaning attached. At some point it might be necessary since we can't get to everything individually. Also I know many adults who have no clue where major countries are or even states in our own country, so we try to make it really important.

 We looked up Montana's state bird and they copied the coloring on their own sheets.

 They wrote simple "reviews" of 3 different works by Russell. We talked about how the people in the paintings might be feeling and what they were doing exactly. What was the time of day? How did Russell show expression and movement?

 

Since Russell focused on horses quite a bit, we looked at step-by-step directions on how to draw a horse. This was the first time the girls tried to follow such a thing. At first they were drawing very general copies of the lines given and it wasn't turning out great. Then they realized they had to be more specific and detailed. I think the final results were pretty cute. Chloe couldn't let the picture go without a few flowers to pretty up the scene. 

 

 One night driving home from a gig several months ago, I listened to a radio show that had a guest on speaking about hats. He talked for awhile about the invention/evolution of the cowboy hat and I thought it was so interesting. I guess we take the form and function of things for granted and forget every part serves a purpose. So the kids and I talked about what "function" means and discussed a few things we saw in our house. Then I had them guess the function of different parts of the cowboy hat, several of which they got right. We made a diagram of what we learned.

                               Somewhere I had a cowpoke math sheet that was at Hannah's level.

 We learned about 2 infamous people of the "west" : Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill. I completely did not time this subject matter with my own performances, but it managed to line up again. I recently played Annie, Get Your Gun with Lyric Stage. I listened to several versions of the songs online for reference, and the kids fell in love with them- My favorite is "The Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night" and theirs was definitely "Anything You Can Do I can Do Better."  They laughed every time.  Once we read about the real Annie Oakley, we discovered she was a fascinating character!!  And since she joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, we learned a little about him, too. The girls were asked to recall what we learned and write a few sentences about each.

 

We had fun talking about what an outlaw was and watching a few clips of Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam in a saloon. The kids cracked up and I longed for them to have the same Saturday morning cartoons I grew up with. Such amazing music and illustrators- of course I had to explain the gambling, smoking, drinking, and shooting people in the face with pistols. No, I wasn't wise enough to watch it first, thinking my old cartoons were harmless. Well, they sure seemed like it back then and probably still do to my kids since they aren't exposed to the news and all, so we had a good time.

We also read a few books about the jobs of cowboys. I really wanted to cook an authentic cowboy meal and teach them to lasso, but we just didn't have the time for everything.

 

Last and let's face it, pretty much least, came our main art project. Sometimes I direct the kids a little too much, so this time I went all the way in the other direction. They received a source photo of a kid's art project- a round setting sun with cacti silhouettes. I put out paper, paints, scissors, glue, the works and told them to go about recreating it any way they saw fit. I was interested to see what they would do. No one copied one another or was even too interested in their neighbor's work. They all three chose black paper and hastily painted the scene. I had to step in and point out- a cactus has a unique shape, let's try to follow that.. The result was alright, but I had expected a little more attention to detail. Oh well! I'm sure their little brains learned things in the process my mom brain missed.

 Chloe is still working on her art badge. We've really neglected those lately. She had to learn about texture, so we got out some drying modeling clay and I gave them basic tools to make some texture happen. They also collected a few things around the house and were happy to work at that for awhile.

 Keeping Mr. Colin occupied is always a bit of a challenge. Mom gave us some beanbags recently, so I set out several letters and had him toss a beanbag onto the ones I called out.

 

I folded up tiny slips of paper with a number written on each. He had to unfold the paper and put the right number of marbles in hole. He liked this, too. Math and fine motor skills!!  

I did have a conference with his teachers and they said he's doing great. He's really well-adjusted in class and follows directions. They said he could work on his scissor cutting because it was painful to watch him! Haha- they really meant that he was cutting decently but made it look very laborious. That sounds about right for most things he does. : ) He likes to make things seem extremely hard and taxing even when he's having a great time. In the meantime, he wins for being the best at holding deep conversations and he'll always be the most affectionate in this house.

 

 Every afternoon, the kids get antsy. They beg for the ipad, movies, and get bored with their toys easily. I personally prefer they spend a little quiet time reading and not making even more messes for awhile so I can get some things done. So I decided to call that time "Special Interest Time." We go to the library each week and head to the Non-Fiction section. They choose any topic in the world they'd like to know more about and choose the books themselves. Most afternoons I announce it's Special Interest Time, and they are perfectly pleased. There's self-directed learning for you! I've been really impressed with their topics. I told them to stay away from princesses so that helped. They've chosen things like "Holidays Around the World" and Chloe told me all about The Day of the Dead in Mexico. They've chosen "Construction," "Sea Creatures," and "Castles."  Even Colin chooses a topic and enjoys looking through the books. I think they feel a sense of ownership. One week Hannah chose "Doctors" and even though she is extremely squeamish when discussing hospitals or doctor's offices, she read through quite a lot of material and decided to make her own First-Aid kit from instructions she found. Chloe made her own, too. : )

When you aren't in a school building or riding a bus home, you can do things like take time out to go purchase a car! The kids talked with the salespeople and were driven around in a golf cart. They even delivered brownies with Dax after the deals were done.

Now we are the Middle Ages and having a good time with that. They also have a couple of fun field trips coming up.

Wrapping up 2014

 I'm going to work a little bit backwards and maybe even scattered since all my pictures in a weird order! I know it's been awhile, but once I got behind on posting, it just kept piling up. Now I have a few minutes and can catch up before we begin our second semester. This is Matt and Karen. Matt has been friends with Dax since they were 14 and he is really the best host there is. I'm glad the kids could see so well how one might treat house guests. We were in Knoxville for this part of our Christmas tour of Tennessee. The kids love this couple and last time we were here, Chloe ate some pistachios Matt had in a bowl on his table. Since then, she's loved the nuts and talked about Matt mostly in relation to them.

                                       Dax and his brother loving some stuffed animals.

 Add in some cousins. I think Alex is missing his Stokes beard. Notice how they're all shaped the same.

 Backing up, before we left, the kids participated in a couple of service projects. They performed Christmas pieces on the piano for the nursing home residents.

 The moms and kids of the co-op also put together these little nativity scenes as table decorations for the nearby monestary. They asked for 23 sets! This was quite tedious to put together, but everyone had a great time.

                             Anna monogrammed some Christmas hats we can use every year now.

 The kids are showing off all the hand-sewn Indian outfits- Colin's being a suit I believe he requested. He also got some cowboy boots. He does live in Texas after all.

                                                       I love these kind of pictures best.

                                                     An attempt at all the Santa hats at once.

 Dax was pretty excited to participate in Tuba Christmas this year. They sounded great and the crowd definitely loved it.

 After that, we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese as a surprise. I had told Colin that when he pronounced it correctly (rather than saying "ch" as "l") I would take them. Chloe is so unconcerned with earning tickets. She uses all her tokens in the portrait booth I found a whole stack of poses at our table. I do think she has the hang of it : )

 Nana gave Hannah some play makeup for Christmas and as usual in this house, you pretty much have to share. The house is too small for much privacy and the girls too close in age to feel like one is old enough or young enough to have something exclusively. I set up the bathroom mirror and they had some salon time.

                                 I'm just posting these two because they make me happy : )

 Every year we go to Bass Pro Shop for pictures with Santa. They have a few activities for kids without being overwhelming and there's almost never a line.

 At one point, our friend John told us he and his wife were pig sitting. He was so nice to bring the pig over for about an hour. Tallulah got along with the kids and Oreo great.

 Chloe talks about the tree lighting all year long. Last year it rained and was close to doing so this year, but turned out clear and relatively warm. I was excited to see a St. Nicholas there!

It especially cracked us up when Chloe sat in on the manger scene. Other kids were doing that and taking a picture, but Chloe just parked herself there and smiled at the family. We walked off a bit to give her some space and after a few minutes she got up and they all called, "Goodbye, Chloe!!"

 

 The girls played beautifully at their piano recital. It was Chloe's first performance ever. Neither girls were nervous and both played with awesome musicality. This is one of those photos I'll cherish forever. Sweet girls.

                                                    With some of the performing students.

 As an extension of the last book we left you with, Cranberry Thanksgiving, we did a few extra activities. One was trying silhouettes. They look so alike in their funny little profiles.

                                                                Here is the book picture.

 

And then ours. 

 

 We read a book called Snowflake Bentley, about the first man to photograph snowflakes. It was a great book and made us realize it wasn't that long ago that people had no idea what a snowflake truly looked like. Since the illustrations were all woodcuts, we tried a few different materials to experiment with printing. First was styrofoam. Although it printed the best, it was a terrible material to use since all the pieces flew everywhere : )

 This one turned out a little better. We also used cardboard- terrible. And play dough- not too bad.

 

We found a terrific online snowflake maker and the kids spent hours cutting virtual paper. I decided we should at least step out of the 21st century and cut our own to hang up.

 

 One day I also set up "stations." This has been recommended to me plenty of times to help the kids play on their own but with a little structure. It only worked somewhat. I had 5 stations. The girls were excited to rotate every 15 minutes, but along with it came "Is it 15 minutes yet??" Yes, I had a timer, and yes, I told them not to ask, but they were so obsessed with the timer, they could barely play! Also, Colin disagreed with the theme of almost all the stations so he was a bit of a troublemaker.

 This little play store was most popular, but overall, I'm not going to do it again, at least the way I tried it, anytime soon.

 Just for fun, I'm sharing this picture Chloe drew of "Two Swans Wearing Red Shoes."

 Colin surprised me with quite a detailed play dough dinosaur. He's never created anything this clear before. He's not excited about writing or drawing, so maybe he'll be a sculptor instead : )

 Due to his very sweet but also very stubborn personality in the last few months- okay maybe so far in his life- we weren't sure if Colin would actually perform at his Christmas program. He only downplayed it whenever we brought it up, so I thought he might be one of those kids who just stands there pouting, which is always funny if you aren't the parent haha. He got right up there and sang every song proudly and did all the hand motions. I think he cooperates best when you just hang back a little and let him do it. After 4 years, that was our very last pre-school Christmas program. I can't believe it.

I'm sure I'm missing tons of pictures and most of the ones of my family are already on Facebook.
After Christmas we realized we didn't even get pictures with many people! I wish we had since it will be so long before we see them again.

During the break I tried to get some school planning done and am working on getting the preparation more streamlined. So far, that has equaled more preparation. We are continuing with Five in a Row for at least a few more months- probably until we run out of material, but I'm also adding in some books from Charlotte Mason's curriculum. They are quite a bit more advanced than picture books, but the girls have caught on quickly. Eventually we'll be switching to that and a mixture of classical methods to go through the historical periods. Till next time, which hopefully won't take as long!