Sigh.

My camera is missing.

Again.

This happens every year or so, and it really really upsets me.

It also makes it hard to blog.

Poop.

Art Lesson: When Do You Marry? by Paul Gauguin

This week, we studied this painting featuring Tahitian women and a vibrant Tahitian landscape ny the French Impressionist Paul Gauguin. It have us the opportunity to address two concepts: first, the idea of landscape and foreground and background in a painting, and second, primary and secondary colors.

It was an exercise in observation to notice the details in the foreground and background. Sky, mountains, hills, rocks, grassy meadow, and pond or river, this painting had a variety of landscape details to notice.

After observing the landscape, I gave the children only primary colors on their paper plate palettes.

After drawing their landscape outlines with a pencil, they got to work, creating bright colors from the red, yellow, and blue they were given.

Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the final works of art, because my camera is missing. :(

"In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters." "Where do we come from ? What are we ? Where are we going ?" Paul Gauguin 1898

ETA: Found the camera! Here are our finished works of art:
Nicholas just sort of went to town. He had fun mixing colors though.

Katie Grace made on ocean scene, with waves, fish, sunshine, an island, and a volcano!


And finally, Michael made two volcanos with large palm trees. I think.

Something for Nothing!

It's Tuesday, which means it's time to check out all the great giveaways.

Enter to win a tie-dye frog Webkinz over at "A Happy Hippy Mom".

World Water Day

Last week, I wrote about Dream Village's World Water Day to be celebrated on March 22. The theme this year is "Transboundary Water: Sharing water, sharing opportunities".

You can join an event here. Some ideas might include:
Watch a World Water Day online video, found here
Send a World Water Day e-card
Download campaign materials, including shirt transfers, posters, banners and buttons
Find a World Water Day event near you
Download kid-friendly materials from Dream Village and visit their World Water Day website

Whether we live upstream or downstream, we're all in the same boat!

Story of the World: Aztec Hot Chocolate

Mmmmm... we're looking forward to trying this!

In a saucepan, combine 2 cups of milk, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1 tablespoon honey, and a pinch each of ginger, cloves, and red pepper.

Heat to boiling over medium heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for three minutes. Remove from heat.

Using a wisk, beat in 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa and a teaspoon of vanilla extract until frothy.

Serve in mugs and top with whipped cream.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday: Kids eat free at TGIFridays!
Tuesday: Corned beef, cabbage, mashed potatoes
Wednesday: Broiled herb butter chicken
Thursday: Stuffed shells
Friday: Pizza
Saturday: Black bean burritos
Sunday: At church with the youth group

Just a little bit of Daniel love!

Weekend Round-Up!

Yee haw! Here are some things that caught my eye in the Blogosphere this past week.

First, some fun lessons for this beautiful spring week:
A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling has a lovely St. Patrick's Day/rainbow lesson outlined here.
Or you can hop on over to Our Little Nature Nest for a Rabbit and the Sky main lesson.
Art Projects for Kids had two fun ideas this week: A Starry Night group mural and a Landscape Collage.
I'm so intrigued by the Peace Box over at Montessori Mama.
And finally, No Time for Flash Cards has some great ideas to use with a homemade balance beam.

There was some yumminess floating around the internet as well:
Weelicious has chicken on a stick. Because you know, everything tastes better on a stick.
I'm really wanting to try this broiled herb butter chicken from Carrie's Cooking.
And of course, tomorrow we'll be making Weight Watchers Corned Beef and Cabbage from Laaloosh.

And finally, some things that just look fun to try:
An herb spiral from tipnut
and
Spring cleaning my sewing machine, compliments of Whip Up.

Have a wonderful week!

Charged up about recycling

Well, I feel foolish.

I had no idea you were supposed to recycle batteries. I don't know how I missed this important fact, but I did.

According to the EHSO Website:

Batteries may produce the following potential problems or hazards:

	Pollute the lakes and streams as the metals vaporize into the air when burned.
	Contribute to heavy metals that potentially may leach from solid waste landfills.
	Expose the environment and water to lead and acid.
	Contain strong corrosive acids.
	May cause burns or danger to eyes and skin.

In landfills, heavy metals have the potential to leach slowly into soil, groundwater or surface water. Dry cell batteries contribute about 88 percent of the total mercury and 50 percent of the cadmium in the municipal solid waste stream. In the past, batteries accounted for nearly half of the mercury used in the United States and over half of the mercury and cadmium in the municipal solid waste stream. When burned, some heavy metals such as mercury may vaporize and escape into the air, and cadmium and lead may end up in the ash.

Scary stuff.

So what can we do? We decided to take a three-pronged approach.

Step One. Reduce
Obviously, the best choice is to not buy electronic doodads that use batteries. But when that's not possible or practical, we can choose to purchase better batteries. Reduced-mercury and mercury-free batteries are better choices, both for the environment and for the safety of those in your household.

Step Two. Reuse
Rechargeable batteries, like those found at greenbatteries.com are another green choice you can make. Metaefficient has reviews of the best rechargeable batteries here.

Step Three. Recycle
This morning, Nicholas and Katie Grace searched our pile of boxes to reuse and found a smallish one, the perfect size for holding batteries to be recycled. Nicholas decorated it, and we put it in the basement on the workbench to collect our used-up batteries. Then we'll recycle them. To find a battery recycling drop-off point near you, visit this web site. I found eight drop-off points within 10 miles of my home!

Art Lesson: Ballet School by Edgar Degas

Last week we looked at Degas' painting "Ballet School". We talked about pastels and how to make pastel colors, and also looked at the figure and form in the painting.

To make our painting, we first made pastel paints--in retrospect, I wish we had made them pastel-y-er--and used sponges to sponge a light background on our papers, overlapping colors as we went along.

We then drew some practice figures on scrap paper.

The next day, the children drew their figures with oil pastels on their sponge-painted papers.
Michael went with a football picture. Nicholas's background reminded him of an Easter egg hunt. And Katie Grace, of course, drew a ballet picture. You can click on the picture for more detail.

Besides lightening the pastels, the only other thing I would have done differently would be to have the children outline their figures with either a fine black marker, or black tempera paint and a thin brush.

For more about Degas, see:
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/D/degas.html