Degas and a New Whiteboard

This weeks' Meet the Masters course was about Edgar Degas, a French Impressionist. We learned he liked to paint dancers and horses.

We also learned that ballerinas, during his time, wore different colored ribbons around their waists to show their dancing level (kind of like martial artists and their belt colors). So the art project was to do chalk stains on a drawing of a dancer's ribbon.

First, we flipped a line drawing of a bow upside down and copied it that way, to help activate our right brain and deactivate our left brain. We then rubbed a piece of chalk on a scrap paper until chalk dust piled up, wrapped a tissue around our paper to gather the dust, and rubbed this dust onto the drawing to create a "stain". It was neat trying out such a different technique than anything Skyla or Penton have every really tried before.

Gathering chalk dust with her finger wrapped in tissue.

Rubbing the chalk onto his paper.

Our final products.

 We also finally got a large whiteboard in the school room. Once the kids found out they were allowed to draw on it, it has been covered by people and bubbles and animals and treasures and whatever else the kids can dream up.

The red marker is Penton's and the blue marker is Skyla's.

Experiments in Molecular Gastronomy

For science, we did a little molecular gastronomy experiment with lemon juice, water, and Soy lecithin (sounds fancy, doesn't it). Skyla did everything herself, except measure out the water and lemon juice and open the packet of soy lecithin. After mixing, she ended up with a lemon foam that could be scooped out and maintained its foamy shape for a few hours.

Pouring in 2/3 cup lemon juice

Add soy lecithin powder

Mix with an immersion blender to get a layer of foam

Skyla tries the final product. It tasted very much like a lemon had been turned into foam--quite sour!

Skyla likes lemon juice on sliced bananas, so this was a great mess-free way to add the lemon juice.

   

Learning about Mary Cassatt

Art: This week's art lesson was about Mary Cassatt, an American artist from the early 1900s. She liked to make portraits of people in hats, so the art project was to decorate paper with oil pastels and cut out a hat shape. We mounted the hat on black paper and decorated it. Skyla then wanted to make a shirt with Pikachu (a pokemon) on the front. Learning about Mary Cassatt's life and doing the art project ate up the majority of the school day.

Math: Practiced the Yellow is the Sun song (see previous post) and practiced writing numbers correctly.

English: Read the Bob book "Muff and Ruff" and practiced separating individual sounds in words for spelling.

Social Studies & Geography: Did a few workbook pages. I ended up ordering the pdfs of the workbooks myself, since CVA still hasn't sent anything. Skyla really enjoys doing workbook pages and coloring stuff in.

Yellow is the Sun

Field Trip: Park Day!

We went to a NOT Back to School picnic today and met some other homeschoolers through a meetup group. There were six other families there, so the kids had a nice amount of others to play with. It was a great park (but I forgot to bring my camera, so no pictures!).

Then, we just barely made it to story time at the library at 1:30p. Finally made it back home and the kids were pretty tuckered out, so Skyla and I did a little bit of reading, spelling, and math and called it a day. My teacher's assistant lounged in front of the television researching super heroes and such.

Second Day of School

Creating a decorative pallet for the front of their art portfolio.

Learning about how to read maps in the Navigation lab.

The second day of school went by pretty quickly. Still no new curriculum updates from CVA, which is pretty frustrating. But luckily we have plenty of stuff here to work on.

Art: Did the first lesson from Meet the Masters, where we learned about the artists that we will be learning about this year. Then we all made a portfolio in which we will store our future art work. Skyla took a little T/F quiz after the "lecture" and got a 9/9 correct (which was amazing to me, because she really didn't look like she was paying attention most of the time).

English: Both kids had a great time practicing handwriting on some wipe-off cards we have.

Math: Lesson 2 of RightStart (this was the first subject Skyla wanted to do today, even before Art!)

Science: Opened a Little Labs box about Navigation and learned how to read a map. The kids then took all the stuff from the box and preceded to run around the house "following" the map and play-pretending with the other stuff in the box (e.g. a mirror, whistle, compass, chalk).

First Day of School!

The first day of school has finally arrived! 

We started the day with the breakfast of champions... Donuts!! (I guess I only have myself to blame when they have their sugar high and subsequent crash during the school day)







Then we went outside for the First Day of Kindergarten photo op.



Penton got the First Day as Teacher's Assistant sign.

 

The 2012 Class Photo.

I still have almost no curriculum from CVA, but we did what we have and supplemented with other activites.

Art: Skyla and Penton both painted a Memory Tile and frame.
English: Skyla went through some phonograph cards to see what sounds she already knew (which was most of them, except every sound each vowels makes, which was tricky).
Math: Finished Lesson 1 in RightStart math (numbers 1 through 3) and was excited to go immediately to the lext lesson, though I decided we'll hold off until tomorrow.

It was a pretty easy first day, but at least we ended it with Skyla excited for tomorrow's school day.