Art on the Patio


I've always wanted to get a big roll of paper, unroll a big huge section, and let the kids go to town with paint. So I did. I got the paper and paints through Rainbow Resource.

The drawing was so long I didn't have a wall to hang it on. We had to tear off one end to make room! Somehow I didn't get a picture of that. But you can imagine the color.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Math for the Reluctant Artist

Image
My daughter, currently eleven years old, believes she is "bad at math" because computation steps don't stick in her head. We've gone over long division and adding fractions repeatedly, and it just doesn't stick. It doesn't make sense to her, and she's the kind of learner who wants to understand the Why of something before she'll understand the How or What. In most areas of our homeschooling journey, we unschool. This means I keep a gentle pulse on what my children are learning through experience and play. But like many unschooling mamas, I wonder about math. How much is "enough"? When we sit down to "do a little math," it often ends (at least with my daughter) in tears, anger, and frustration. It doesn't matter that I explain that she actually is skilled at math - her numeracy skills are fabulous and her ability to see patterns and relationships is quite advanced. It doesn't matter that I point out the math she uses in Min...
Read more

Big Kids Need to Play with Clay

Image
My kids are currently 9 and 13, and some of their favorite activities are making playdough, building forts, playing in the mud, and making blanket forts. All sorts of questions and discoveries arise through this sensory play that is often considered more appropriate for much younger children. Like why does Oobleck work the way it does? Why does the ratio of 4:1 make this substance but not that? What is the point of cream of tartar in playdough? Why is this mud grittier than that mud, and why does it smell like this? What makes clay from the ground turn into art class clay or stucco? You get the idea. You don't even have to come up with any sort of lesson plan - in fact, when I get all teachy, they lose interest. They don't listen. Play is important for all ages, even and maybe especially play that you think they are too old to engage in. What will you play today? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For more ideas on natural parenting,  check ou...
Read more

Kinesthetic math: Regrouping

Image
Today we worked on regrouping using Math-U-See manipulatives. We used just the 100s, 10s, and unit pieces.  I drew a large grid for spaces for each of the numerals, and used problems in our Brainquest workbook. We added the units together, trading them out for tens if we had more than 10, then placing that ten above the two other rows, just as you would when writing it out. Then we did the same with the tens bars, pulling out groups of ten tens and then placing the new 100 plate above the 100s place of our rows. We then wrote out what we did in the workbook. Subtracting with regrouping was a little different. We took away the number of units in the second row from the units in the top row, and moved the remaining units to the bottom (answer) row. If there weren't enough units in the top row, we converted a tens bar into 10 units cubes and put them in that upper right square. We then subtracted how many we had un the middle right square and put the remaining units cubes in...
Read more