Art classes continue....

Abigails art classes continue....she has taken a print making workshop and a water colour workshop. Above are the watercolour paintings she created. She is really enjoying the classes and will be sad when they end. Her last class is 'fibre arts'.

This week we also have the SHINE park day and will sign up to join SHINE for the next year. Abigail is also signed up to go to camp for a week this Summer - a weeks worth of day camp which includes horse riding (all she wants to do lately)!!

Busy in the kitchen.....

Baking cakes, icing them and chopping rhubarb!!! Abigail is enjoying our new kitchen and turning into a great little chef....

Scenes from the last week....

Homeschooling is officially done for the year BUT we've been busy with having friends over to play, swimming, walks together, catching frogs, worms, caterpillars.....skipping, watching thunder storms, painting bat caves, climbing on old trains, making Mothers Day gifts, planting sunflowers, playing at the playground, reading, shopping for herself and budgeting for gifts, ordering for herself in restaurants.....

Bendy!!

Instead of ordering butterfly eggs this year, we decided to just hunt for caterpillars and raise them from caterpillars. Next year we will order the eggs again. Abigail and Sam have found one caterpillar so far and we aren't sure what kind this one is, so after a lot of researching in books and online we've given up trying to find out, and hope to find out if and when it turns into a butterfly or moth!!!

We found this GREAT website though:

insects.about.com/od/keepingliveinsects/ss/rearingcats_2.htm

which includes information on how to look after a caterpillar if you aren't sure what kind it is!!! they have named this one 'Bendy' and he is living in a huge old pickle jar. We have several books on butterflies, bugs, caterpillars etc etc - as well as some story books about them, so we've been enjoying those too - as well as some activity sheets and things that we found online, so Bendy has turned into an all-round project for us!

We'll take more pictures if he survives long term and grows and develops! He's been surviving for about 4 days now so all is good :) PHEW!!!!

Head dresses...

We decided to make Native Indian Head dresses after seeing Stabbed-By-Mistake's Head Dress at the Royal Alberta Museum.

More acrylics painting...

Abigail worked on some more acrylics painting - this time at home!!! She remembered exactly what she was taught at the class and she ONLY bought acrylics in the primary colours as well as in black and white - she then set about mixing all the other colours herself and got the shades and tones she wanted by mixing with black and white. She refused to use any of the paints I had but ONLY the paints she bought and by mixing them :)

She spent most of the time mixing paint colours and I think this is the part she liked the most :)

Art class work

Acrylics colour wheel and canvas, and charcoals self portrait and horse.....

(work from the first two art classes Abigail has been to. She has really enjoyed these classes.

End of year Facilitator meeting

Yesterday we had our end-of-year meeting with Abigails homeschool facilitator. It went really well and I am really pleased with our school board. I have to say our Facilitator is the best one we have EVER had!! She just put me completely at ease, was so relaxed about everything.....so easy-going. Telling me that she doesn't expect any child to be at a certain grade level at any age and she just expects them to be going at their own pace - so long as they are progressing in the right direction...

She told me not to push writing (which is COMPLETELY the opposite of her teacher at school and is EXACTLY what I NEEDED to hear and is absolutely just the best news EVER)!!

...trust me as a homeschooler meeting a new facilitator you just NEVER know what to expect and you don't know what they will expect or how 'schooly' they will be or anything...

She told me she thought I'd done an amazing job of homeschooling through renovations and doing so many activities and crafts in my bedroom with no kitchen or place for studying or crafts etc....that changing our original education plan was completely fine and we had done plenty!!!

It went fine - we are all set to finish the year NOW if we want :) Yep - school is DONE :)

Or we can continue the year until school is out......

Or we can school all year round....

But like I said to her, the kitchen has been out of use for so long, I am just excited to be able to use it at last, for science experiments, crafts, baking, writing, painting etc etc etc......so I just plan to do all kinds of things with the kids there and less 'book work' anyway!!!

We will be outside so much more now the weather is better and many more field trips so there would be less book work anyway and now the pressure is off to do less writing I am much happier. We read more in Summer as we all take part in reading programs at the library.

I don't think 'homeschooling' ever stops :)

I'm looking in to horseriding lessons. I want to get easels for painting so we can go and paint around the acreage and out by the lakes etc around here.

I registered Abigail for next year, so thats done! Funding will be $715. I have no clue how to spend it! I've spent a little already but not much! I'll take Abby to Education Station and Michaels and go crazy :)

Art Classes...

Abigail started art classes last week and has been enjoying them very much. The first class was on 'acrylics' and they painted a colour wheel and then had time to free paint on a canvas. thery also learned about a Russian artist. After the class we went to Michaels and she selected the materials she had used in the class and we are going to spend time working on more acrylic paintings.

This weeks class was on drawing with charcoals. They studied Picasso amongst other artists....then they studied portraits and learned how to drawer a face. They drew a self portrait and then had some time to do a free drawing - Abigail did a horse.

I will take some pictures of her work later and add them! She is loving the classes and I will definitely be signing her up for more!! the teachers are wonderful and Abigail loves being at Smeltzer House surrounded by all that history!

While she is at the class I go for coffee with my friend Jennifer, who is involved with organizing SHINE. I'm planning to join SHINE this year and go along to some of their field trips, workshops and park days. I think Abigail needs this and I need the push! Jennifers pretty good at encouraging me to do more and Abigail loves her children :)

Solids and liquids..

Playing with cornstarch and water...first with very little water then slowly we added more and more water.....

Volcano....

A mini volcano we created :)

3d shapes....

Today was a lovely lazy morning....we sat on the bed and homeschooled from bed :) We studied 3 dimensional shapes and learned all about cubes, cones, prisms and pyramids!!!

It was wonderful to hear Abigail and Sam thinking of how these simple coloured shapes relate to the real world!!! I would ask them to think of where they could find rectangular prisms in the real world and they would think of things like 'the buildings where Daddy works' and 'long trucks'.......and for cones of course 'ice cream cones', 'party hats', 'carrots'.......and so on......

Sam spent ages afterwards building castles with the shapes and when Lloyd came home form work Abigail got the shapes out and showed them to Lloyd, remembering all the different names (thankfully YAY)!!!

Abigails home made table mat

Recently Tara mentioned that her Daughter had a small laminating machine that she LOVED, and recommended this machine as a great resource for the home and for childrens crafts and hobbies.....Tara uses one in her daycare setting also with the childrens projects there and I thought this sounded fabulous! I checked out the laminator at Walmart and thought it was a brilliant idea!!! thanks Tara!!!

We finally tried it out yesterday when Abby made a table mat with her favourite theme - horses!!! I think we will be laminating a LOT from now on :) it worked really well :)

Dance Recital

Abigail recently took part in her year end dance recital with her dance school. Her class (with only 5 students - how wonderful!!) danced to songs form the musical 'Grease' and also the song 'Move It' from Madagascar. Then they took part in the Finale....it was such a lovely evening ad I really enjoyed watching it. :)

Ice cream!

First really warm day and we headed out to celebrate - where else but the ice cream store!!! :)

Easter fun!

Egg hunts, painting eggs, hopping bunnies game, jelly bean bingo......just endless Easter fun!

Science - Senses....

We're working on the topic of Senses right now and one of todays experiments involved sticking our hands in cups of water of varying temperatures and then sticking them in cups of warm water and seeing how the water felt on our hands - did it feel warm or cold depending on whether our hands had been in hot or cold water????

Abigail also had to follow directions I called out in an odd order to draw something and see if we drew the same picture. She also had to draw pictures of things she likes to smell and another picture of things she likes to taste. We looked through the Senses book and read about the five senses but Abigail seemed to know most of it from last year anyway so this is really a rerun for her. Fun though...more tomorrow!!

Happy Cheepster Mom and Dad!

An Easter picture from Abigail.....

Glow golf

During Spring Break one of the activities we have done is visiting the new 'glow golf' centre in our town. We were very impressed with it there and will definitely be going back soon!