Pointillism: Fall Trees

As I have mentioned before, Fall is my favorite time of year. One reason being the beautiful colors the trees show off during this season. As a tribute to this we painted our own Fall trees using our own pointillism method, (q-tips).




The girls, Prince opted out of this one, had a blast doing this project





and I LOVE the beautiful outcome of each of their paintings.


Lady Bells 39 months


Lady Jey- 5 yrs


Princessa- 9 yrs


This project has really excited them about art which I have scheduled to start in the up coming week, with Van Gogh being our first artist to study.

A little fun here at Our Days at CA!

Mexico

I just now realized that this post has been sitting in my "ready" folder. My mind seems to shut down near the first of December, after Thanksgiving, I go on break mode.

Here is our weeks spent in Mexico.
So far the kids still think it fun to stand in line and stamp their passports, I wonder how long this will last, after which we watch the powerpoint on landmarks of the country.

We then listened to the Wee Sing CD, again the kids enjoyed listening to the song. We did two with Mexico they liked the song Tingalayo better (west Indies), I think we listened to it 5 times each day!

Along with Mexico we studied the desert ecosystem. Both Prince
and Princessa did their own notebook page that I think turned out awesome! They certainly draw better than me.

 

Prince's desert

princessa's desert

                    We also studied the Oasis in the desert, and they both did notebooking pages for this.

Prince

Princess

In art, which is every one's favorite time this year, we did yarn art. This is a type of art taken from the Huichol Indians, which we also learned about. This was a tedious craft for the kids, I had to help Lady Jey who soon got bored with it.

 I chose to do this during nap time there was no way Lady Bells was doing this one (she gets VERY unhappy when things do not come together as she likes them to) but I highly recommend it as a stress relief exercise, it was for me anyway. 

To go along with our week we ate "Mexican" food all week, which is not a surprise for us. We had Apple Panadas, Pozole, Spanish Rice, Dobladas and Taco Casserole, and drank Horchata. We also enjoyed Erica's Hot Taco soup recipe.

Since the menu for the week was nothing new or special we decided to treat the kids and ended our week with a trip on Sunday, after church, with a visit to our favorite Mexican restaurant.
And That is our days at CA.

United States

Since we school year round, we kind of take a little break for the month of December, doing only math, reading, and grammar. I decided to take this time to catch up on my blogging.

As you may know we are doing Explorering Countries and Cultures, with My Father's World.

And our first stop was America: 

The kids enjoyed "arriving" and having to stand in line to stamp their passports. They were then seated in the "travel agency" living room where the TV is connected to the laptop for easy viewing, and we all watched the powerpoint on America that I put together.

We then listened to the Wee Sing CD, and played follow the leader, just as the Navajo children do. The children really enjoyed hearing the little Navajo boy speak in his own language, as did I.
We read and leaned about the Navajo, and enjoyed some of their legends, along with other Native American legends.

                        

We found an awesome book about types of trees and their leaves, and they enjoyed looking up all the leaves in our yard, and the neighborhood. We even went to Nana's in the country to collect lots more.

  We did a color the world colorsheet.

Which happen to be the Great Smokey Mountains, right here in our back yard. This precented a great oppertunity to discuss some of our state geography and history.

  In art we chose to stick with our Navajo subject and created some sand art. FYI, this is not a project for perfectionist, which we learned with Princessa doing it. She was not happy with her final project, even though I gave her the praise she/it deserved. Although, she was not happy with the outcome, I think all the children had fun with the project.

 This is the first year we "do" art, I can't believe what we were missing out on. We will deffiantly be adding more art and I am also considering adding art history with Erica's art curriculum.

We ended our visit to America with a family night, we ate homemade chili and hotdogs, and watched an old favorite, Angels in the outfield.

                                                 And that was America with Our Days at CA!