Catch Up

It's been so long, I'm just going to post these pictures in random order and call us caught up!

 The girls and I had fun with a site called MyFroggyStuff.com. They have several videos and downloads that help you make miniature things for dolls out of cardboard and other things around the house. We made a few things for their friend's birthday. My favorite is the tiny glitter cell phone.

                                                The clay glazed pizza was pretty cute, too.

                                          Colin was invited to his first (all girl) sleepover : )

 We've been on several field trips. One was to the Bayless Selby House, one of the oldest houses in town. This tour guide was perfect for the kids and I was surprised when he admitted later that he hasn't worked with kids before.

 The kids also took a tour of a theater with their homeschool theater group.They got to see all sorts of rooms behind the scenes.

 Hannah finished up her cake decorating badge by using fondant to decorate her own birthday cake.

                                               All sorts of flowers and sculptures : )

 Colin was reluctant to do much written work until I provided Star Wars number and letter books!

 Hannah, on the other hand, gives herself plenty of extra work. I told her to write down a few multiplication facts she needed to memorize. She wrote this entire chart. Understandably, she got tired and only got this far!

 We were excited to have lunch with an old college friend of mine who was in town with his family. It was pretty neat to see our kids have fun together.

 Future Colin, you owe me big. You are always into something!!! The "before" picture is what I set up for this hands-on learner. He had to find the coins hidden in all these objects. See the bucket of dried beans? Well somehow they quickly ended up deep in our new furry rug. He did general cleanup, but I was digging out beans for days.

 Later the same day, I thought of a good sewing project for the girls. We decided to make a beanbag with some extra material I've had forever. They did a great job hand sewing the sides. After playing with the styrofoam peanuts we also had stored, we filled the bag...and discovered it was way too big. We ran out of time that day, so rather than fix it...we stored it in the garage. Big surprise! Maybe someday...

 Colin helped me paint the linen closet shelves. That doesn't sound exciting, but those shelves have bothered me for years! And it's such a tedious project, I haven't ever made it a priority  :)

                                 We happy to attend an Indian Holi Festival for the start of spring.

                                                    Grandma and Papaw came to visit!

 

 Chloe loves to make cards and signs for people. Now our local Subway even displays Chloe's work.

 We visited an old restored town. Here the co-op kids are at a doctor's house from the 1800's. The tour guide is pretending to amputate Daniel's leg. The kids got a kick out of that somehow!

 Here's Hannah in the schoolhouse having to hold books for punishment! haha There was also a wonderful, fully stocked general store the kids got to use for a scavenger hunt.

 I played Mary Poppins, the musical. Glamorous seating arrangement! Actually, we were backstage instead of a pit and the acoustics were pretty decent. The show had some sound and coordination issues, but overall was  very fun to play.

 Hannah with a couple of old friends. These girls were just a few months to a year old when they first met 8 years ago.

 Chloe and Hannah performed in The Ugliest Woodpecker. Chloe had the "starring" role and Hannah played Mother Woodpecker and Dory Duck. They both did a great job. Chloe sure does love being on stage.

 During Lent, we've mostly done written schoolwork, some reading together, and either badge work or science experiments. This day, we took various water and air experiments over to a friend's house.

 One day we had a glorious double rainbow in the backyard. Chloe's favorite "color" is rainbow, so she was ecstatic to see her first one in real life. I think she'll remember it for a long time.

 Another tour- this time to a children's home to see what it takes to run a place like that. It was pretty informative and the kids got to play with two St. Bernard therapy dogs. I didn't have my camera for that unfortunately.

 We haven't managed many Lenten activities, but we still refer to The Garden of the Theotokos. This project was about recognizing all the different symbols and colors in a typical icon of Christ. Some of it, I wasn't even aware of, and the kids began pointing out what they noticed in the ones hanging at church. This was also their best coloring yet. They put a lot of effort into it.

 We actually don't work many puzzles around here, but this one kept them busy while I took a shower. I thought it would be a big challenge since they don't put them together often, but that shows what I know. They were done pretty quickly.

 We learned more about states of matter, atoms, and molecules, and how heat and lack of heat affect them.

 We just took a trip out to a tulip field. They had great time picking out their favorites.

 They drew tulip diagrams in their science journals. 

We had lunch there and they played on a hay maze with another large group of homeschoolers who were there for a field trip. I love to see how quickly they make new friends. I was never great at that.

 Our last Five in  a Row book was Gramma's Walk- about a boy who goes on imaginary walks with his grandmother who is actually in a wheelchair. The kids really loved it. We made out our own map of the walk, which was pretty fun. They learned about crustaceans, lighthouses, and tidepools.

                                                  They made a compound word fold-out.

 We tried crab races, which I remembered to be super fun from when I was a kid, but this one ended in tears pretty quickly, so not everything is fun and games.

At some point in the last couple of months, we got a lot of snow! Hopefully that's over and spring can finally arrive.

                                       

 Lone Star had a wonderful guest artist for our recent concert- Blue Lou Marini from the Blues Brothers. Boy he was a treat. I played with the 1 o'clock lab band with him once a few years ago, but this was a grander experience since we premiered a piece he wrote for us and had him to ourselves for a couple of days. His son even joined us as a singer and they put on a very fun show. Not bad for a guy who's almost 70! He deserved every bit of his standing ovations- a true artist! I never dreamed when I was a high school band member that I would get to work with so many interesting people- countless modern composers, amazing soloists, and conductors. You don't have to have the top orchestra jobs in the world to be a part of important and impactful musical experiences. I'm very thankful.

 Dax met comedian Jon Reep. His brother Alex opened for him awhile back so there was a bit of a connection. Dax also met up with a few authors who share his interest of vampire folklore and also started his own podcast called The Vampire Historian.

I'm sure there's lots more to share, but that's all I've got for now, and it's probably enough. : )

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.