Growing Everyday

Beka and Jared’s art teacher at their school is amazing. So this summer when she offered a week of art camp at her house, I signed both kids up. They went for an hour every day for a week. The first part of the week was spent studying Gustav Klimt and his painting of a baby in a blanket. Each child then tried to make a similar drawing of themselves wrapped in a colorful blanket.

The second part of the week focused on sunflowers. Each child drew a closeup of two sunflowers and colored them with oil pastels. I wish I could have gotten pictures of all of the sunflowers. They were so beautiful. The kids in class really took their time.

(Beka’s picture is on top and Jared’s is on bottom)

Beka and Jared were bugging me incessantly to buy some worms so we could go fishing (which will be a different post). So we bought some worms, but in my house you can’t just leave the worms alone. We got the worms out, put some non-toxic paint on paper, and then the worms crawled through the paint to make a painting. To make an extravagant painting you would have to have much more patience than Beka and Jared can achieve.

While I was cleaning up the paint, Beka and Jared decided to have worm races.

And, just to prove that Beka plays with the worms just as much as any boy would. And bribe material for when she is 16.

Another school year has come and gone. It was a year of adjustments for both kids, but they did great and learned so much. I am so proud of them and their accomplishments. I now have a first grader and a second grader. I picked them up at school today so we could celebrate with milkshakes from Steak ‘n Shake. Delicious!!

A couple of Saturdays ago, it was beautiful outside. And I wanted to be able to read outside, so I moved the kids arts and crafts outside. We spent an hour outside painting, drawing, and playing. I got to read my book and Andrew got to take a nap. It was a really good afternoon. It is amazing how toys are new when you take them to a different venue. Jared hadn’t played with legos for months, but outside the legos were exciting again.

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Beka has taken up finger weaving. So far, she has made three necklaces and a bracelet. It is something relatively easy for her to do and kinda mindless, but it keeps her hands busy.

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Yes, we play with oobleck all the time. I just like make the slippery slidy stuff and the kids enjoy running it through their fingers and over their hands. This time we added food coloring to make it more exciting.

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Beka and Jared really like ice cream as a snack. Sometimes I even make them milkshakes. Anyway, all the ice cream eating leaves me with lots of ice cream containers around the house. So, I took three of containers and some left over tissue paper and had the kids decorate them. We used a mixture of glue and water to make the paper stick. The project kept the kids busy for an hour. Beka is using hers to store her slippers so Kahla can’t get to them. And I think Jared is using his for some of his action figures. I am using mine as a makeshift trash can for now. This was a fun project and as Beka pointed out a way to recycle.

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Once again this year, we took on the task of carving pumpkins. I am beginning to think the kids do it just so I will bake the pumpkin seeds. Anyway, Jared had brought one small pumpkin home from a field trip and we had purchased two bigger pumpkins so there was plenty of work to be done.

First, we cleaned all the seeds and goop out of the pumpkins.

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Then, I had the kids design a face for the smallest pumpkin. The design for the bigger pumpkins came from a book we had. Andrew enjoys a challenge.

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This year Beka tried her had at carving portions of the small pumpkin.

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The kids school is having a Spirit Week. The first day of Spirit Week was silly hats. The kids and I spent about an hour on Sunday making our silly hats. Beka and Jared loved doing this. They both had great ideas. The hats turned out silly and both kids were proud of their creations.

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Beka loves to create pieces of art out of clay. She has gotten really good at making dogs and mice. Jared enjoys play doh more. I think it is easier for him to form than the clay. Andrew even had fun playing with the clay.

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