Day 40 / 103 - The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of my most favorite places in the world.  In fact, if you live within several hours of the museum and don't visit occasionally (or even regularly) I believe you are truly missing out.  This museum has done more to introduce my children to the connection between History and Art than anything they could ever learn from a textbook or a class.  The museum's historical collections are beyond superb!  When I view works of art that are several hundred, or several thousand, years old, it is like I have stepped back in time and I am experiencing them in their original context.

I was debating writing another post about the museum, since I have posted about it in the past (here and here.)  But, this museum has become part of our educational lifestyle.  When we were five miles away, we visited it several times a month.  Now, we attempt to visit it several times a year.  It is always worth the trip.

Earlier this week we were in Cleveland for the Thanksgiving holiday, so we made a quick stop at the museum.  A current exhibition on display is Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads with bronze head sculptures inspired by an 18th Century Chinese zodiac clock.  My children are pictured with their represented animal year.

By the way, general admission to the museum is always free!

Day 39 / 103 - Fall IEW Portfolios

I did a much better job this fall at requiring my children to complete an IEW paper almost every week over the course of 12 weeks.  Their assignments ranged from paragraphs on the Byzantine Empire, to a retelling of The Sword and the Stone, to their Writing From Pictures assignment that I posted in an earlier post.  I'm continually impressed with their creativity, and their willingness to incorporate the IEW skills and techniques into their weekly papers.

Day 38 / 103 - National Geographic Giant Traveling Map: Asia

On Wednesday, we were fortunate enough to visit Concord University and see one of National Geographic's traveling interactive maps.  These maps provide entertainment and enjoyment for children as they learn geography and map reading skills.  Traveling and exploring countries and landmarks by foot, we spent the afternoon in Asia on this basketball court-sized map.  The college provided a guide, resources, props, and activities to enhance our journey.

Below you will see a picture of my children standing atop Mt. Everest.  Also, there is a picture of my son in Kobe, Japan.  A city he lived in while in utero.

Day 37 / 103 - Tripod-Frame Tent

Their shelters are becoming more and more elaborate.  My son quickly constructed this one Monday afternoon.  His original plan was to sleep in it that night, but by the time it got dark it was quite cold and ridiculously windy.  The frame is still standing in our yard in order for him to revisit that plan when it gets warmer.

Day 36 / 103 - Rockets !!

4 ounces of water, 3 ounces of vinegar, 2 tablespoons of baking soda, a plastic bottle, and cork will yield the following results -- including the screaming children.

This was our Classical Conversations science project for week 11.  Totally worth it.

Day 35 / 103 - Veteran's Day 2013

As a result of his involvement in his Boy Scout troop, my son participated in a couple Veteran's Day activities.  Early Monday morning, he placed flags along the road leading into Beckley's VA Medical Center.  Later that day, he participated in the Beckley Veteran's Day parade.

One of the benefits of scouting (of course!) is that it gets the entire family involved in local community events that we might have overlooked.  I'm grateful!

Day 34 / 103 - Her Teepee

Not to be outdone by her brother's tripod from last week (here), my daughter constructed this full-fledged teepee over the weekend.

P.S.  This picture was taken on Sunday.  There are about two inches of snow on the ground today!!

Day 33 / 103 - IEW Sentence Openers

One of the stylistic techniques taught in the IEW program is Sentence Openers.  In my few years of using this program, I have found that by modifying the way a sentence reads, it leads to more powerful and effective writing.  Obviously, most children write sentences that read subject-verb-object.  IEW helps them to naturally program in different ways to open a sentence -- for example with a prepositional phrase or a clausal opener.

I have been working on this technique over the past few weeks with my own children and their Essentials class.  Today, we completed this easy activity.

We started with a boring sentence.  The one pictured above is -- The dragon went to the tea party.  We then dressed it up with a couple quality adjectives, a stronger verb, and an adverb and had our first sentence with a subject opener.  Then we began to modify and rewrite the sentence based on the following openers.  The second opener is prepositional, so I had my children thinking through when or where this event might have taken place in order to open their sentence with a prepositional phrase. The third one opens the sentence with an adverb.  The fourth (which I find the trickiest) is opening the sentence with an -ing verbal phrase.  This requires the subject to be completing two different actions and does require some thinking on the child's part.  The fifth one is a clausal opener (beginning with a subordinating conjunction -- when, while, where, etc.) so another subject and verb are needed in the dependent clause of the sentence.  Again, more thinking required.  You can see my son's work above, and my daughter's posted below.

Another tip that I have learned from my years in the program is that in order for a child to quickly come up with a preposition or an adverb or a subordinating conjunction, it helps to have a plethora of words in front of them.  Giving them the right tools makes the job so much more manageable.  And, like everything else, repetition is key.  The more I complete this activity with my children, the more naturally they write this way.

 

Day 32 / 103 - Picture Day

I just love being able to include these in my portfolio each year.

Day 31 / 103 - The Unattended Pickle

                         The Unattended Pickle 

Hello. My name is Yafhat Bazdid and let me tell you what happened to me today.

This day began when I went to the market place a little hungry. There, in front of me, an unattended pickle appeared. Looking around myself to see if anyone dropped this tasty pickle, I realized that no one was claiming it. I picked it up and took a bite. It was delicious! All of a sudden, the most frightening voice behind me screamed, “You ate my pickle! I will kill you!” Immediately, I regretted eating that scrumptious, tasty, delicious, juicy, wonderful unattended pickle. 

 

What did I do next, you might be asking yourself. Well, I tore through the crowded market place as quickly as my chubby little legs could carry me all while arrows whizzed past my head. I feared for my life. I ran and ran for what seemed like hours and days, when in fact it was only ten short minutes. I headed out of town toward the desert. Suddenly, I fell face first into the sand. Spluttering and looking for what tripped me, I was shocked to to discover a bottle-nosed dolphin right in the middle of the desert! “What is THAT doing here?” I thought to myself.

“I will kill you for eating my pickle!!!” I heard from behind me. There he was, the nasty pickle vendor, along with the entire pickle brute squad only 100 yards away. They were racing to behead me, all for eating that scrumptious, tasty, delicious, juicy, wonderful unattended pickle.

“It was only a pickle!” I shouted back as I sprinted away from them as fast as I could. There was no time to question the absurdity of the dolphin in the desert.

Miraculously, as I looked to my right, a magical cave appeared. “I'm going in!” I muttered out loud.

I entered the cave and crossed my fingers that my pursuers would not locate me. My wish was granted as they quickly blasted past my little hiding spot. Checking my surroundings, I instantly thought of making a permanent hideout in this miraculous cave. There was a cool spring and a nice bed of moss. Who knew that such a cave existed in our hot, oppressive desert.

All of a sudden, a glint of gold caught my eye. “What's this?” I asked. “A lamp? A real genie lamp? Boy oh boy has my day improved immensely!” Sprinting to the lamp, I grasped it from its stand. I rubbed the side as I had seen in that Disney movie. You know, that one that has a princess and a villain and a talking animal sidekick. 

A genuine genie materialized in front of me. Problem was though, this genie wasn't blueish-purple, it was a horrendous shade of blood red. 

“Thank you,” this genie bellowed, “for releasing me from my jail. Three thousand years ago I was imprisoned by the Babylonian servant Abznar. And today, I have been released, BY YOU!”

The genie continued. “You must be expecting the usual three wishes like every other genie would offer.” He said this as if I've met other blood red genies in my life. He grumbled, “Well guess what, Bucko! Clearly, I'm different than most other genies. Look at me. I'm red. I have no desire to grant you three wishes. You're lucky I even let you live.”

I trembled in fear. This day had gotten even worse. And all because of that scrumptious, tasty, delicious, juicy, wonderful unattended pickle. 

 

The genie was clearly aware of my fear. Strangely, he had a change of heart. “Since you freed me from 3,000 years of captivity,” he elaborated, “I suppose I could grant you one wish.”

“My one wish,” I hopelessly thought “would be to go back to the market and start this entire day over.”

“Consider it granted!” the genie quickly announced as he snapped his fingers.

Looking around I realized I was standing in the middle of the crowded market place a little hungry. “Oh look. There on the ground. An unattended pickle …..”

Day 30 / 103 - That Apple

One of the IEW creative writing units that we revisit each year is appropriately titled Writing From Pictures.  (You can read my post last year here).  This year, both my children completed the assignment, and I love their finished works.  What I found interesting is that they both came up with a similar theme (the man had stolen food from a market) even though they worked on the assignment separately.  I also enjoyed that they both added some humor into their papers.  I'm positive that I did not know that writing could be funny, nor how to make it funny, when I was almost 10 and 12. 

Here is my daughter's paper.  You can see my son's paper on the Day 31 post.

                                       That Apple
Once upon a time there was a young vagrant named Aladdin. One sunny afternoon, he was walking in the market and saw a beautiful, juicy apple for sale. He had no money. He could not resist. He had to take a bite. Right as the apple touched his mouth, a feisty ferret jumped out from behind the market place cart. This ferret made a very strange noise. “Snarf, snarf, snarf, snarf!” he squeaked while waving his finger at Aladdin. Immediately, this feisty ferret whipped out a bow and arrow and began shooting at this young vagrant.
 

To get away from the ferret, Aladdin left the market place with the apple, sprinting at top speeds into the scorching hot desert. As he entered the desert, his speed began to decrease because of the weight of the hot weather. He trudged along until he stumbled upon a cave. “Oh. What's this?” he thought to himself. Quickly he bolted into the cave to escape the arrows and the desert heat.

Once inside the cave, Aladdin saw a massive golden podium surrounded with multi-colored, sparkling gems. Sitting of top of this podium was a fairly small golden lamp. “I better not let my curiousity get the better of me” he thought to himself. He tried to count to ten, but just like with the apple, he could not resist and wound up grabbing the lamp around count eight. As he snatched the lamp from the podium, glowing sparks began to explode from this treasure. In amazement, the lamp firmly attached itself to Aladdin's hands. Out of the top of the lamp, another ferret appeared. Instead of a bow and arrows, this one was wearing a genie hat. 

 

“Thank you for freeing me from this lamp!” the ferret excitedly exclaimed. “I will now grant you one wish.”

“Before I wish for anything,” Aladdin responded, “would you remove this thing from my hands?”

“Your wish is my command,” the genie ferret replied. As quickly as the genie ferret appeared, he disappeared with Aladdin's half-eaten apple.

“Awwwww, man!!” Aladdin mumbled to himself with his hands still stuck to the lamp. “I really wanted that apple.”

Day 29 / 103 - "I'm 12. This is how I spend my days."

I was away from my son for the better part of Monday.  He completed a paper that I asked him to write and spent some time practicing piano.  However, upon my return, I also discovered this fabulous tripod which was constructed in my driveway, and a dental floss zip-line for his Lego Minifigures which stretched from his loft bed to the Police Station on his book shelves.

Day 28 / 103 - How Great Thou Art

My children (and I) spent three days last week in the Barry Stebbing's How Great Thou Art Workshop for homeschoolers.  This workshop is designed to inspire, educate, and encourage homeschoolers in the Fine Arts.  We covered quite a bit in three day's time including art appreciation, beginning drawing and painting, along with simple techniques and methods using colored markers and pencils.

One of the most fascinating discoveries I made in the class was the knowledge of Lyra Colored Pencils.  These were the highest quality colored pencils I've ever used, and we've been using them around our house all week.  Now, I won't use anything else!