Relaxing with reflections

Over our Christmas and New Years holidays, it has been a great chance to hang out with Ben, family and friends. 2009 was a very big, productive year for him and on reflection of our school year, we’ve accomplished a lot and proud of what we have done, ready to tackle 2010.

Ben having a bit of fun with Kobi

During this relaxing time I have been reading through my 2009 goals and am encouraged how much we have done. We haven’t achieved all the goals written down, but as I have heard often enough, “If you aim at nothing, you hit nothing” – I feel like at least we hit quite a few of our goals.  Now as I am reviewing, I am writing down new ones ready for 2010.

It has been three years this February since we came back to Australia after living in Laos for 5 years. It has been a huge adjustment and it is only now that we feel we are beginning to put our roots down and becoming established.

We were hoping to be in our built house by this time but things have not turned out as anticipated but two days before christmas we found out from the bank the evaluation came through and we are given the go ahead to build which should begin start of February and hopefully in our house by July this year. Yay.

Ben and I see “building” as this years theme.

• building of our home
• building of the church we will be pioneering in February
• the building of the next stage of Bens work as he manages ACC Relief International
• the building on to the good year of homeschooling we had last year

“Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” – Psalm 90:12

Christmas Reads

During the month of December another tradition that has seemed to form in our family is to read a couple of Christmas books in the evenings. Here are some that I hunted down in our library that we found quite delightful.

Click on the pictures below to see more information on that book.

Learning about Ned Kelly

To continue our bushranger theme with our weekly social studies homeschooling group, we looked at the infamous Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly. Click on the picture below to find out more about this outlaw – or was he a hero?

This Friday was also our last get together and it was a good closure for the year.

For todays lesson, while the kids were completing their notebook page on Ned Kelly, I read from a book, explaining who this bushranger was and his exploits and of course asking the question, was he an outlaw or a hero?

After this, the kids then had a choice of different mediums to use for their Ned Kelly picture. Below is Jediah and Kobi’s work.

Jediah's Ned Kelly picture using oil pastel and markers

Kobi's Ned Kelly picture using water colors and black fine liner

Leonardo da Vinci Picture books

As part of our Leonardo da Vinci study, I’ve borrowed from the library a whole heap of books about him. Here are three picture books that we thoroughly enjoyed sitting down to read together. Well written and beautiful illustration in all of them. 

Our Art Revision Party

To put a closure to our art for the year, we made frosting/icing pictures on cake and brownie pieces . The aim was to make a picture on their piece of cake in relating to one of our art lessons we have done.  Before we began this I reviewed with the kids the artists we learnt about this year. I am blown away with just how much they have retained and their responses to our art lessons. After this review Linda began our time showing everyone color mixing with icing sugar. The fun begins.

Here is Linda teaching about colors and their different combinations with food dye and icing sugar.

Jediah's art work. Left cake picture is a Van Gogh Scene. Right cake is a Picasso portrait.

Kobi's art work. Left cake is inspired by Paul Klee. Right cake is inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright on our lesson focused on 'Limitations'.

Rose's artwork. Left cake is inspired by Lloyd Wright and the right cake is inspired by Wassily Kandinsky.

Indi's artwork. Left cake is inspired by E C Escher with his tesselations. Right cake is inspired by Matisse's Goldfish.

Jesse's artwork. Left cake inspired by Van Gogh and Right cake own inspiration.

Joe's artwork. Both cakes inspired by warm and cool colors. Fantastic for a just turned 5 fella.

Jaidon's artwork. He has just joined the group so his artwork was inspired by what he did in school.

Alex's artwork. She has just joined the group as well so work inspired by what she has done at school. Right Cake is inspired by Van Gogh.

Candy cane-chip cookies

This is what I made today for the first time. They came out fine and the kids thoroughly enjoyed licking the bowl. I always wonder how come what I cook doesn’t look as fantastic as the picture in the magazine. The kids love them anyway and that is a good indicator.

• 10 mini candy canes, unwrapped (I had only 7 and that was good)
• 125g butter
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup plain flour
• 2 Tablespoon cocoa powder, sifted (if you want it lighter put less in)
• 1/3 cup desicated coconut

1. Preheat oven to 160C or 140C fan. Line two large baking trays with non-stick baking paper.  Place candy canes in a snap-lock bag. Lay bag on a folded tea towel on a hard surface (a cememnt path is good) and hit with a hammer to break up the candy canes.
2. Using an electric beater, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until light and creamy. Add the egg and beat well.  Mix in flour, cocoa powder and coconut using a flat-bladed knife. Mix in only 2/3 of the crushed candy canes. Refrigerate for 30 mins, until firm.
3. Roll heaped tablespoons of the mixture into balls. Place onto the prepared trays, leaving room for spreading.  Press out until about 1cm thick.  Bake for 15 mins, swapping the position of the trays halfway through cooking, so they cook evenly.
4. As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, sprinkle witht he remaining candy-cane pieces and press in gently.  Leave on trays for 5 mins, then lift onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 12.   Preparation – 20 mins.   Cooking 15 mins

From Coles Christmas Magazine 2009 – pg 51

Christmas Traditions

My heart has always been to create good warm memories for our boys. I really believe having good family traditions is an important element in a families life. It was during our 5 year stay in Laos that we found this to be the case and slowly built into our lives family traditions. Some examples were on Saturday (when Dad was home and not travelling) he would get Vietnamese takeaway and we would watch AFL footy on t.v. (get our Aussie fix), another was the boys waking up to balloons at the end of their bed on their birthdays with a pancake breakfast. Now it is Christmas and the fun begins.

On the evening of 1st December on goes the Christmas music then we put the Christmas tree up with Dad putting the angel on top to finalise our accomplishment. We then celebrate the beginning of the season with a warm hot chocolate with some cookies and end with a book to read.  After years of doing this we are finally getting it down pat and is becoming a very special evening for all us.  

You’ll notice with our Christmas tree it definately isn’t a formal looking tree but has lots of decorations on it that hold special memories for us. There are decorations that have travelled to Laos and Back, from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand.  It is very special. Excuse the fuzziness of the photo – I was laughing with the boys -it was a bit hard to try and get a decent photo.

Linear Perspective with Leonardo da Vinci

Linear perspective is a mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. The system originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s. The artist and architect Brunelleschi demonstrated its principles, but another architect and writer, Leon Battista Alberti was first to write down rules of linear perspective for artists to follow. Leonardo da Vinci probably learned Alberti’s system while serving as an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio in Florence.

Leonardo was an amazing mathematician. He exemplified in his paintings linear perspective and so many other rules associated with perspective, even coming up with new thoughts as found in his copious notebooks.

In todays lesson, reading from “Who was Leonardo da Vinci?” by Roberta Edwards, we read chapter 3 of his time at Verrocchio’s studio in Florence till he moved to Milan. We looked at linear perspective and with the help of “The Artist’s Toolkit” we learnt visually what terminology such as ‘linear perspective’, ‘vanishing point’ and ‘Aerial perspective’ meant.  During Leonardo’s time in Florence he also completed one of his thirteen paintings – The Annunciation, as pictured above.

After our reading and copywork, the boys drew a perspective lesson from “Art Attack”. Here are the results which I think they did a fantastic job.

Jediah's Perspective picture

Kobi's perspective picture

Kobi's perspective picture that he did at his own leasure.

Whose Modigliani?

In todays weekly group art lesson, we looked at the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920).

Modigliani is known as a modern figurative artist,  featuring portraits that are elongated and his nudes.  He moved to Paris when he was 21years old, living a turbulant life and died at 26 years of age of tubercular meningitis.  It wasn’t till after his death Modigliani’s work became popular, like Vincent Van Gogh.

Today we focused on Modigliani’s elongated portraits, using “Art Projects for Kids” lesson. We used black A4 paper and gridded into 8 sections. I stepped the kids through how to draw the face, and they then colored their portrait using oil pastels.  It was a quick, very effective lesson , the results great and the kids enjoyed it.

Jediah's Modigliani work

Kobi's Modigliani work

Bushrangers lesson

While the kids put together their bushranger information into their "Australia - the wide brown land for Me" Notebooks, I explained to them what each of the below bushrangers were known for and their antics. Everyone was very intrigued and we all learnt so much.

For our weekly social studies gathering with other homeschooling families we began looking at Bushrangers today. As I was doing my research and putting together the lesson I just couldn’t believe how many well known bushrangers we used to have, of course Ned Kelly been the most well known on peoples lips. In todays lesson we looked at three bushrangers.

CLICK ON THE PICTURES BELOW TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THESE BUSHRANGERS.

John Donohoe (Bold Jack Donohoe)

Ben Hall

Mad Dan Morgan

During our lesson, I played the song “The Wild Colonial Boy” along with the kids favorite “Botany Bay” which they had learnt earlier on in the year.  I borrowed from our local library (I love our library), a music cd called “Favourite Downunder Songs & Rhymes”. A good cd but the kids were a little confused when the lyrics were a slightly different version.