Against the Grain: Summer Fun

We've been busy enjoying this glorious sunshine Mother Nature has been blessing us with lately. Heading out for many play dates with local home ed friends during the week day, then home briefly to pack a dinner we take with us on hikes through the forest behind our house. Of course, this means the children are usually awake until sun goes down, which is about 10PM at the moment. I'm so glad we don't have strict 'bed times'. I honestly don't see a need to insist on timed sleep patterns since the children don't have to wake up and go to work or school each day. We're not hunters or gatherers, nor do we depend on our garden for food (thank goodness, because this is our first year to garden so it's lots of trial and error).

Nope, we're just rising when we feel like it (typically around 8am) and sleeping when our bodies tell us to (10pm). No curtains on the window to manipulate the sun from reaching our eyes.

Play dates have been thoroughly enjoyable. We are fortunate in that our home ed group have been meeting up at the end of our road on the beach each week. Makes it ever so convenient to just pop over and play. Since I work from home we have friends over on days when I have minimal conference calls. Taking advantage of the large back garden, though it's more like a 'jungle' at the moment. Our land lord just renewed our 6 mo lease to another 18 mo's so we feel inclined now to weed the overgrown garden. The children want to paint their rooms as well, so we'll give it a go. I'm all for letting children express themselves with their 'sacred space' of a bedroom. Let them choose the colours, let them paint designs and whatever they wish to on the wall.

Our home ed life has shifted somewhat recently in that Indigo and Cypress are looking for more structured projects. (mainly Indigo, but Cypress tends to take her lead). They've expressed an interest in art and science and learning to read, so we're jumping in to the multitude of books we have on our shelves. Chemistry seems to be the science of choice, which lends itself to many fun experiments. Not to mention all that baking in the kitchen will take on a whole new meaning. We've just finished learning the basics of 'Atoms' and have been introduced to the 'Periodic Table', so I think making an 'edible atom model' is in order.

For an introduction to 'Art History' or 'Appreciation', I've put together a list of 25 ''famous'' artists throughout history, from the old masters (a loosely used term) to pop art. We printed out a famous painting from each artist on shipping labels (1 each per label), then stuck those on clasp envelopes (1 each per envelope). Then attached them in some semblance of a 'timeline' on a string I stretched from ceiling to floor on a bare wall (no bare walls allowed in this house!). Cave Art is at the top of the string, which ends with Andy Warhol at the bottom. Artists, such as, Van Gogh, Cassat, Matisse, Cezanne, Escher, Calder, Davinci, Raphael, and more are dispersed in between.

Inside each envelope is a brief 'wikipedia' type intro to the artist, their style, their life (leaving out the risque bits for young children). Also inside are 'projects' we can do together that would help the children to understand more about the artists medium and style used. For example, in the Seurat envelope, there is a project of using q-tips to make dots to create a painting. Fun simple things children will thoroughly enjoy doing that compliments the learning process. Some artists have one project, some a few more, it just depends on how much I found on the internet, or was creative to make up my own (like creating a Mondrian painting using Lego's).

I WILL post pictures of this soon.

In meantime, here are a few photo's of the children's latest summer activities. Later this week I'm going to post our nifty craft project we made for Independence Day.....it's super cute and 'reuses/recycles'