Maori Clothing

As a fun way to get the clothing study for New Zealand in the boys got to design some.  The only thing that I made was the dolls to get them started.  Then each of the boys designed the patterns and made the pieces.  Once they sewed it together they added any extra embellishments that they wanted.  Sam made the girl on the right and Gabe made the boy on the left.

Learning through art...

The boys are doing a lot of art based projects to learn with.  Here are just a few from the past week.

This is Sam's Science lesson.  Other than learning about animals we are working on learning health/body science.  Inspired by an idea I saw on pinterest he drew out the digestive track and how a certain type of food would effect the body when it went through.  He has an obsession with New Zealand so he choose the kiwi as his food.  All the white spots are flaps that tell how it will effect that part of the body.

They even had art projects this week.  This is the scribble art lesson from the 52 art lab book that I got from the library.  Gabe's is on the top it is his favorite animal, the orangutan.  Sam's is on the bottom.  I was really impressed with the pops of color he put in, very unlike him to let go like that.  His is the Scottish terrier.

A final project that I had them do was to make a tourism poster for the New Zealand study.  Sam's is on the top and Gabe's is on the bottom.  I thought that they were both good but needed a little more so I am going to have them do it again soon.

A day about New Zealand art and money

Our day was so jam packed with projects that I split this into two different posts.  Our Civil War study is in the next entry.  This one is all about New Zealand and what we covered today. 

I started out by having them learn about the money.  I made them some play money so that they could see what it all looked like.  I just found some images on google printed them out and laminated them.  When the lesson was done we put the money in our continent bins.

 

The boys looked up things such as what was on the money, the history of it, value, and to what it was made from.  Did you know it is made from a special type of plastic polymer. 

After they started working on art projects.  This is their Koru design.  It is used in a lot of Maori design, as well as some other cultures.  If you want to learn the meaning behind it check it out here.  Gabe's design is on the top and Sam's is on the bottom.

After they made totem poles because they are very popular in the Maori culture.  Sam's is on the left and Gabe's is on the right.

Finally what I personally felt was the best project of all, Maori Warriors.  The warriors have lots of tattoos all over the body (especially the face). Well I was not about to let the boys actually tattoo themselves so we took pictures so they could draw tattoos on themselves that way.

First up Sam.  His before on the top of course.  His tongue is sticking out because that is supposed to be a threatening look to his opponents.  I love how his after one came out.  We thought after that we should have taken his glasses off.  oops

Gabe wanted to do his whole body.  The top of course is the before and the bottom is the after.  My boys, so threatening, LOL

I feel that the first week back was a success.  We had lots of fun which was nice.  Make sure to check back and see what I have in store for week two. 

Civil War with a side of Nachos

 This is about the civil war lessons that the kids did yesterday.  We have started of our studies by reading and doing the projects from the civil war for kids book.  We only read 1 chapter and the boys did the 3 projects at the end of the chapter.  First up they made the Freedom Star Quilt. The directions were to make an actual size one, we did not need that though so I just had them draw out one.

Gabe's Quilt is on the left and Sam's is on the right.

After Designing the quilts the second project was to write a message in secret code they used during the war.  They each wrote a special message to their dad.

The third project they where supposed to dress themselves to look like the soldiers of each side.  I however do not have a whole lot of clothes from the 1860's lying around so I had to come up with a different idea.  I had the little wooden people shapes so I had them design them to look the soldiers.  The North is of course on the top and south on the bottom.  In each photo Gabe's is on the left and Sam's is on the right.

Finally our budding little chef  Gabe made us some nachos for lunch.  He was so proud of them because he did the whole meal himself.  He thought that they looked like a sun exploding.

Some Graphing and art....

I am so pleased with how well this week is flowing along. In the past the kids have usually fallen behind and I am stressing how to get them caught up.  Well they have already gotten lessons done from tomorrows plan.  The only one that is falling behind is me.  The kids are moving along so quickly I am having a hard time getting to my stuff.    Now I just have to figure out how to get them to get their work done and get mine done at the same time. Well that is a problem this momma can deal with.

Todays lesson was about math.  Sam's lesson was not that exciting to show, it was just a worksheet.  However he was excited to do it because he is learning about the metric system, something he really wants to do. I will share his lesson on it next week because it involves food.  Yummy. 

Gabe as you can see from the following pictures he really enjoyed the lesson for him today.  We started working with graphs.  We focused on making different types.  First I read The Tally O'Malley book to him.  It was a cute little book that showed about tally graphing.

Then he was so excited to get started.  My silly little boy just really wanted to eat the Willy Wonka Randoms.  He started out by grouping into all the different colors.  There was five groups including a group of multi-colored ones.

He then started taking each color and breaking it down to be easier to count.

After he got his totals he started making the graphs.  He made a tally, bar, and line graphs.

Well then the fun really happened.  He got to have a snack and be silly of course.  The top one incase you can not tell is a monkey head.  Then he tried to be so sophisticated with a mustache.  Yup we do laugh a lot with this little guy around here.

This was the lesson that they did that was for tomorrow.  We got the book 52 art lab for kids from the library.  The first lab was about conture drawing.  They did not really follow the lesson to well but I love the end results.  Sam is on the top and Gabe is on the bottom.

A new start.....

I have been so busy and burning out quickly with everything going on in life I knew that something had to change.  I started looking back at the older entries and realized how much fun we use to have.  They activities were creative and playful.  It was time to get back to that.  I needed to get back to blogging because I would only want to post fun things so school will have to be fun.  Right?  It has to be right, makes sense to me.  We started back to school today so time to start testing that theory.

It started out kind of slow.  Each boy worked on learning about animal habitats.  Sam was assigned to design habitats for three different animals.  He needed to make sure that it had everything that the animal would need to survive.  For Gabe I found an adorable set on Teachers pay Teachers called Habitat for Sale.  It had some really great worksheets plus an adorable memory game.

I played the memory game with Gabe.  He was so excited to have gotten the first match against me.  Unfortunately his luck did not last and I beat him pretty bad at the game.  Look at how cute those cards were though.

I got time in with Gabe reading today.  Favorite thing of mine is snuggling with him while he reads.  I also wanted to make sure and share Sam's drawings with you. 

The Giraffe habitat

The Alligator habitat

The Green Tree Frog Habitat

So Check back to see what else we are doing.  The boys are looking forward to the rest of the fun we have scheduled.  Here is to a better School year then we have had in a long time.

Animal art

Today I thought that I would share the new book I got from the library.  This book takes major art pieces from world famous artist.  Then they break them down into easy to do lessons for kids to create there own art pieces. 

The first lesson that the boys did was called wax elephant.  It is based around the style of Franz Marc.  They outline the drawing with crayon (the wax) and then paint the rest in with water color paints.

Sam followed the directions and made the wax elephant.  I think that it turned out great.  I love the bright colors that he choose.

Sweet little Gabe.  First off he is trying to give him self bunny ears.  When I asked him why he is giving himself bunny ears he says "I want to give some one bunny ears"  LOL this kid cracks me up on a regular basis.  Second this kid NEVER wants to do the actual assignment.  In this case he did not want to make the animal.  So I of course I allowed him to do what he wanted as long he used the technique.  So in true Gabe style he did his favorite superhero Iron man with the superhero that Sam created, World Man.  I think that is final project is just as amazing as Sam's.

So I have two amazing little artist on my hands.  I can not wait to try out the other projects in this book.  Have a great night everyone.  See you tomorrow with "what I love" school editions. 

Avengers Mansion

Gabe has become obsessed with the Avengers over the last few months.  Well for you that have seen the Avenger's on Disney XD know that they have a mansion as their headquarters.  For Christmas we got an unfinished doll house from Michael's.  We painted it up for him to have the mansion.  He even got a bunch of the little action figures to put in it.  Some were from us but he used his Christmas money to get the rest.

Here are some shots of the inside of the mansion.  We still have not decorated the inside up yet.  It is really hard finding the furniture that is not all pastels.  We are still on the look out for some though.  I think some paintings might be neccessary to.  We will see. 

For the outside I painted a big window on each end.  Then as you can see the back has windows and a door on it.

With some of the christmas money he did also buy the Shield Ship.  Sam took an old box and decorated it up to have storage for him.

The house itself is not being used as much any more.  I think that he is getting tired of moving it around.  It is almost the same size as him,LOL.  I am going to work at setting up a special area for it and I think that it will draw his attention back to it.

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