Weekly Wrap Up

In my life this week...
This post should just say, "Zzzzzzzzzzz...."

I'm tired due to excessive SUNSHINE. It makes me skip, and walk, and play, and clean...

No worries, it's a good tired...it's just my muscles revolting after months of lethargy.

At least it was a good tired for most of the week.
My husband has been gone, and today the tired took a different track. We ALL  (the boys and I) hit the "living without Dad" proverbial wall.
I need reinforcements. The boys need to wrestle...
We are tired of holding down the fort.

I started my week out laughing at this cartoon and ended the week feeling a bit like this Mom..:

Comic by Todd Wilson (author of The Official Book of Homeschool Cartoons)

My boys haven't had issues with fractions...but I have DEFINITELY felt that I might die trying before they "get" that I want them to LOVE each other in their responses...or clean up their sports equipment...or eat with their mouths over their plates...or quit complaining about writing...or...
I love a good laugh.
I love that this comic reminds me that I'm not dead yet...and I still have tomorrow - after Prince Charming returns.

This week in homeschool...
We supplemented our curriculum with a bit of Pinterest school.
I only recently discovered this handy little tool. Everything I stumble across on blogs or Google located in ONE PLACE? Jackpot!
So, here are some of the ideas that I stole pinned from others and USED this week:

We did sentence diagramming: 

Videos: http://www.english-grammar-revolution.com.

Worksheets and Reference Sheets:  http://www.a-z-worksheets.com/diagramming-sentences.html

We celebrated Pi Day (March 14...you know, 3.14)

We compared finding the perimeter of a square with finding the circumference of circle.

Found a great little lesson online which EXPLAINS what Pi is. Good times.

We made not one, but TWO pies on Pi Day.
Pumpkin for Big and Chocolate Peanut Butter for Little.
After EATING two pies, the circumference of our waistlines probably increased by AT LEAST 3.14...

And good thing Daddy is finally getting home...so he can "help" dispose of the school projects.


We had Art Club again this week.
I teach a once-a-month class to make sure my children do "proper" art on occasion. (They draw comics, build Legos and construct cardboard guns ALL THE TIME...but those only kind-of "count")

This week, the art element we covered was TEXTURE.
The artists we discussed were Van Gough, Jackson Polluck and Anselm Kiefer.
We also came up with ALL KINDS of methods for creating textures:

Crayon/Chalk rubbings

Torn/folded paper

Patterns and shading 

Found objects 

We talked about painting over the found objects to make them cohesive

Glue Art (draw with glue and let dry, paint over it
and put some shoe polish on it to help glue stand out)

Of course, we discussed:

Adding sand and grasses to paint (like Keifer)

Splatter painting (like Polluck)

And finally, I introduced them to a technique called

Quilling (or filagree) where paper is rolled to make neat things like this:

Click here for instructions
at Dick Blick 's website

I CAN'T WAIT to see the finished projects...and to spend this month MAKING them.
Woo hoo!

Things I'm thinking about...
I'm thinking that this blog gets really long on Fridays when I highlight the "extra" projects we do in a week.
I get so excited as I look back and realize all the fun we had (that too often gets forgotten under piles of worksheets and grading and whining about writing assignments).
I love being part of the learning process.
I love learning a little more each day myself.
Now, I'm off to blog-stalk and steal pin some more GREAT ideas from other teachers and moms who want the best for their students as well.