martinzoo

This morning I had to pick my bil up from surgery (He’s ok). And the whole way there I kept being awed by the spectacular color of the Fall foliage this year. This is the best year I’ve seen in many. And my bil and I marveled all the way home.

Then, when I got home, someone had sent me this video featuring Sir Ken Robinson speaking about creativity being killed in the public school system.  And the two events, plus my creative nature, converged, and pointed towards a day of artistic pursuits.

While I was picking up my bil, GB was home with my dh dutifully working on his online German course. So that by the time I got home he was ready for a break. While he was outside on the swing set, I got all my art materials out. And when he came in we painted. I got our project ideas from the amazing woman on this site. I love the way she explains her processes.

Usually, GB does not want to do ‘art’ but if you ask him if he wants to ‘paint’ he always says yes. It’s all in the phraseology.

This first picture was done on watercolor paper. He painted the sky and the grass first with watercolors. Then, while that was drying, he painted a piece of copy paper with fall colors, let that sheet dry, then cut it into little triangles. He then cut a tree trunk with branches and roots out of black construction paper. After all the paint was dry, he glued the tree to the grass line, then started gluing on all the leaves. I think it turned out fabulous. And it makes me smile EVERY time I look at it.

This next picture was done with our pastels. It was very basic shapes which he filled and then smudged. The tree trunks were done with clean brown lines. And we used another sheet of paper to make a mat for his picture. This is my dh’s favorite picture.

GB really enjoyed it. And it was nice to spend an afternoon in artistic oblivion.

Nope!

Paper lunch bags and glue. Yep, I swear!

This was my part of the “yes” day. I wanted to do a craft.

First we made a pattern from a poplar leaf.

And cut out a bunch of them, enough to have two sides for eight or nine leaves.

We squeezed glue all over one leaf….

………. bent a floral wire and lay it in the glue…….

……..then covered it with another leaf.

Here is the fun part. You paint the entire surface of the leaf with school glue on one side (you’ll do the other side later). Don’t leave any of the brown paper showing because you are going to burn the glue, which won’t catch on fire. But if you leave the bag part exposed, that might catch on fire. So just don’t.

Now holding the leaf by the stem, hold the glue side against the flame. This is probably an activity to be done with a child who listens to directions well. GB had no problem at all. The wire did not get hot, and the leaves never caught on fire. But if they did, you’d just quickly blow them out. It’s all in the glue application.

The flame will blacken the glue, which is normal.

When you’ve finished with all the leaves paint and burn the other side of each leaf and leave them in a good spot to air dry.

The very hardest part of this craft was waiting for the glue to be completely dry. Don’t go to the next step until they are absolutely dry.

Next you’ll want to wipe them all off gently with a soft tissue or paper towel. Some of it will remain blackened, which only adds to the cool effect.

Here is a close up of the leaves. They really are so cool. It’s hard to believe that you can get that kind of color and shine from glue!

Despite wreckage caused by unsuspecting visitors, GB and I were able to construct and mark this solar clock today. It was pretty fun to run outside every hour and mark the sun’s progress.

We used a long stick that we had just laying around in the garage, and we poked it into a blob of clay, which hardened over night. Of course, when your visitors knock it over a few times it becomes a bit unstable and you have to prop it with bricks.

Now tell me, if you came to our house, you’d notice this in the driveway. Right?

Tomorrow we’re going to go out and see how accurate we were with our lines. Aquagirl asked us what we were going to do if it rains. And I told her that I was going to paint the lines with nail polish so it would be permanent.

I was kidding………. I was looking to get a rise out of my hubby, but he probably would be ok with it. So, now it’s got me thinking that it *could* be pretty driveway decoration……….LOL!

You know what is cool about this project? It’s cool how predictable the sun is. Look how evenly spaced the marks are. Our sun is so cool that it’s hot!

Today was an excellent homeschool day. GB liked it because he didn’t have to write. And I liked it because we learned a lot and got a lot accomplished.

We started with our Tomatosphere project plantings. We got 33 seeds in the ‘A’ packet and 37 seeds in the ‘B’ packet. So we planted all but 4 of the ‘B’ packet and decided to use those 4 seeds to do an experiment that we’ve been pondering.

Last year when we did the Tomatosphere project our only difficulty was keeping a consistent water level for the plantings. They either seemed too dry, or too wet. We’re going to try to do better this year. BUT it made us wonder about how that situation could be improved to the point where we didn’t have to be so diligent.

You know how diapers have that gel stuff inside them to absorb moisture? And you know how some expensive potting soils have something in them to help them retain water? Well, we wondered if we could mimic that result using a diaper’s gel.

We also worked on our Colonial Unit. I know some of you who read us all the time are wondering when on Earth we are ever going to finish this unit. But until now, we have been concentrating on our packaged curriculum, which is finished now. So for the rest of the school year GB and I will be learning in an interest-based environment. It’s kind of like having the best of both worlds for us. The packaged curriculum is nice and orderly, and I don’t worry about missing things that the County might want him to be learning. But I also like to let GB learn things that he is interested in. So the units had to be done in bits. Until now.

So today we learned about the cities and villages in Colonial times. And we focused on some of the people and businesses that would reside in those villages. Personally, I had never heard the term ‘whitesmith.’ So I learned that that was another name for the smith who worked with tin.

This project required a simple tin can. We then drew a pattern onto a piece of paper and taped it to the can. We thought a star was nice and appropriate.

Then we were supposed to use a hammer to bang a nail through the can, creating holes along our pattern’s lines. Maybe I’m overly protective, but I just kept having awful visions of what could happen if GB (who really has terrible small motor skills) was allowed to use a hammer on this can. So we used an awl tool instead. After trying the hammer/nail technique myself, I determined that the awl was much easier anyway.

These pictures are presented courtesy of GB. This is the inside of the can with a little tea light in it.

And this is the view from the front. We had to take it into our bathroom to get the full effect. Cute, huh?

Then we proceeded to dip some candles. Those of you who are observant will notice that, yes, that is a paraffin wax pot. But seriously people, it made the project so much easier. Thanks to Aquagirl for the nice Mother’s Day present!

Because we were learning about whitesmiths today, we used our ‘tin’ cup filled with cold water to cool down our candles after dipping.

Ta da!

And because we worked SO hard today, we decided to give our hands a nice paraffin wax treatment. Because we deserve it! I just love the older hand with the newer hand thing. Don’t you?

GB worked for a long time weaving this tiny colonial blanket for our Colonial Unit.

In fact, he had to take a few days to finish it. I would have thought that he would have been bored by the tediousness of the weaving, but he wasn’t. He actually seemed to like it. I kind of liked it, too. So I got to help out some, too.

Here, Godzilla Boy is pulling the blanket off of the loom (?) I guess that’s what you’d call it, even though it’s made of cardboard.

Here is the finished product. Usually I put his projects on display on our unit wall. But this time, GB has decided to use the tiny little Colonial blanket as a G I Joe blanket.

The word “stencil” is derived from the French estencler meaning to sparkle. The earliest known stencil-like designs first appeared in Western China at the caves of the Thousand Buddhas. Stenciling as a decorative technique spread throughout the Far East and eventually made its way to Europe.

The French first used stencils to decorate playing cards, books, textiles and wallpapers. Often the painted decorative designs simulated brocades and tapestries. Hand stenciled wallpapers became so popular that they appeared in the finest homes all over Europe.

Colonists coming to North America in the the 18th and 19th centuries brought decorative stenciling to this part of the world. Since wall paper was so expensive, this became an affordable alternative. Colonists stenciled on anything they could, paper, wood, and ceramics. Artisans often traveled the countryside plying their trade and talent in homes, churches and public buildings. Eventually their style of decoration became synonymous with American Folk Art.

The pattern for our stencils came from our Colonial Unit cd. I cut it out for GB because with his poor small motor skills, I worried about him using an exacto knife. As you can see from the photos below, he kind of got into the stenciling. I had to remind him that the stipple technique puts the brush straight up and down with a tap, tap, tap motion. He kept angling his brush, which would cause a bit of paint bleeding under the stencil. But other than that he did pretty good.

I don’t think he’s as good as I am about being able to visualize a finished product. Because when he lifted the stencil and saw the pattern underneath, he was very surprised.

He was so impressed with his results, that he claimed it was no wonder the Colonists liked stencils so much. Now that’s a pretty little box.

I only drink coffee in the mornings. But I still manage to burn a whole container of creamer every week. And the containers are so nice that I feel guilty just throwing them away. So I thought, and I thought, “What can I do with these things to recycle them?”

This cute little guy is what I came up with. I don’t know what to do with the other 51 containers, but at least I recycled one.

We started with the creamer container, an old toe sock (nice people will not point out how the toe sock dates me…. I’ve had them since my Bay City Rollers days….. LOL!), a couple of bamboo skewers, some buttons, two googly eyes, a bit of orange foam paper shaped like a carrot, a permanent marker, and some glue.

First off, I poked a couple of holes in the sides of the container with the little screwdriver that looks pointy. Then GB pushed the bamboo skewers through the holes, angling them up.

Then he glued on the eyes.

Glued on the nose, and drew a smiley face. Just out of curiosity…. How many of you moms have lefty kids? I’ve noticed in my homeschooling group that there are an awful lot of lefties. Maybe more than coincidental? …. Digressing again…

Then I cut off the top of the sock because it had a nice hemmed edge and it was more interesting that the other parts. And I cut off two of the toes. They became the hat and the mittens. I just wrapped some embroidery string around the top of the ‘hat’ to make a pom-pom. Then we cut along the side of the sock to get a long ’scarf.’ And we cut fringe into the bottom of the scarf. I did the cutting parts because that’s kind of hard for GB. I like his fingers where they are.

See! It’s cute, right? We also added some little red buttons to complete his ensemble.

GB named him Fido………. Don’t ask me……… He’s not very good at coming up with names. I worry for my future grandkids.