two boys, one rope

What happens when you give two boys a length of rope?

That rope becomes a measuring tape...




...a fishing line...













...a life line...









...a paint brush...













...and just about anything else the imagination can drum up.

the party scene

Ok, here are the pictures from my niece's birthday party Saturday. It was a carnival theme, with many stations with typical carnival games for typical carnival prizes. VERY cute!












My brother, Big J, dressed up like a clown. (It was type casting all the way....) I did his make-up!


So, the question is, what happens when you take a dorky looking clown...







And give a crowd of party-loving kids each a cream pie?









This.


























The kids all doing the "Cha Cha Slide" dance (don't ask me, I've never seen it before!) --that's J on the far left. He didn't seem to have too much trouble keeping up with the moves, though I was totally lost when I gave it a try. (I've burned those photos....)

face painting

I am getting so far behind on blogging, it's not even funny. With rain in the forecast every day this week, hopefully I'll have time to catch up.

As I mentioned in my last post, I did some face painting at my niece's birthday party this past weekend. Here's a little gallery of some samples of what I did. I had a seriously fun time doing this, so would definitely consider anyone that wants to hire me to come do this at their kid's party!

my guys

We were at a super-fun party today, celebrating my niece's 9th birthday. I'll post a couple times tomorrow with more party details, but just wanted to toss up a few shots of my handsome guys from today. All were good sports as I tried my hand at face-painting before the party kids showed up (LOTS more photos of that venture tomorrow):


J looking debonair, despite a painted bumble bee on his cheek.












Zoo Boy agreed to wear a duck, which actually turned out to be a very popular request from the other kids once they saw how adorable it was on him.

















I got a little silly with my Man, who not only got his face painted, but I also snuck my jar of paint over to the carnival game he was supervising to paint on a traditional tattoo....

3-D art

This week the kids took a museum class about sculpting with various media. Here's J's clay sculpture, which he says is Nim on the volcano (a scene from the movie "Nim's Island").





Zoo Boy shows off his clay sculpture, which is more of an exploration with the media (and various and assorted additional items) than a depiction of anything in particular. He was pretty proud of his creation regardless.









J's mobile sculpture, which he says depicts a person playing a board game -- in his words, the dice (on the left tyne) are rolled, and the board is divided up into night (middle tyne, with stars and moons) and day (right tyne, with brightly colored beads). Zoo Boy chose not to make a mobile (he wasn't interested in working with the twisted metal of the coat hanger for some reason, or so his teacher said).




Another sculpture by J, this one he says tells a Navajo story of how the Spider Woman taught the Navajo people to weave. Here is his discription: the rods in the middle are the loom, the Spider Woman is on one side, and she has four arms and four legs but only two eyes. I can't remember what he said the heroine's name was, but she's there too, being shown how to weave after having fallen into the Spider Woman's burrow. J says this all takes place in her underground cave, and eventually the girl leaves the burrow and goes back to her people, teaching them all the Spider Woman taught her.

I asked J where he heard this story -- it's a real Navajo story that I am quite familiar with, but I'm also fairly certain I haven't told it to him yet. He said that he read it at the library. The amazing thing to me is that we've not been to the library to read since the fall, possibly even longer than that. Yet his recall of the story -- which to my knowledge he's only read once -- was adequate enough for him to not only tell the story (with fairly decent clarity) to me, but also to sculpt a very representative scene from it.

(On a similar note, last week I overheard him telling a friend the folk tale "Milk and Eggs" that I read to the boys more than a year ago. Not only did he accurately tell the story, he also acted out key components from it. A quick, yet interesting, aside....)

Zoo Boy's sculpture in the same media type -- his is a mythical being of his own creation. He pointed out various body parts to me, but by the end I still couldn't tell head from tail (quite literally). But again, he was very proud of his creation.

I was pretty impressed that they had so much room for creative expression in so many different ways in just an hour long class!

king dominic divide

As King, I give you this command:

An equal share for every hand.

And when to each has come his share

Then Spring can bloom so sweet and fair.

-from The Four Friends, an Enki Education 1st Grade Math story

This week we worked on division, via King Dominic Divide's verses from the Four Friends math story. We recited Dominic's verses and drew the King with his scepter (which makes up the division sign, as you can see here in J's picture).



Zoo Boy's drawing.

Then we worked out a few word problems. ("King Dominic collected all the packages from Minnie, Paddy, and Max. He had 12 packages in all. He then divided the packages up so that each friend had the same number. How many friends were there? How many packages did each friend get?") J quickly worked out the problem with his gemstones, but Zoo Boy became a little stressed trying to do the same, as he didn't "get it" right away with the first story problem. So I had J do a couple of word problems with division while he watched, then let it drop for the day.

The next day, I dropped a plate with 18 M&Ms on it between the boys. They got excited about the treat, then I told them that they had to divide them up so that we each had our fair share. At first Zoo Boy said nervously "I think J needs to do it!" I reassured him, "That's OK, I don't care who does it, so long as we each end up with the same number of M&Ms." Zoo boy thought about it (J waited patiently, bless his little soul!), then said "Wait, I think I can do it..." and proceeded to divvy up the M&Ms, pointing out that we each got 6. Then, of course, we ate them.

My Dominic picture.


Next week is the last week of this math block. We'll work with some more story problems, and I'll introduce the manipulative bridge work sheet (you'll see what I'm talking about next week). We'll also start learning the Four Friends Math Play, although we won't do more than just read through it once a day at this point. I'm saving memorization and performance of the play until our last math block at the end of June -- seems like a nice way to wrap up the year.

shades of white

FINALLY things are starting to bloom in earnest around here. There is a bit of color, with the purple Violets and the yellow Forsythia, but what we noticed most acutely on our morning walks this week were the many varieties of white blossoms in our neighborhood. Like there's Narcissus.


And this delicate carpet of Blood Root (which I believe is also called Canada Mayflower), our earliest spring wildflower.










A display of various Daffodils in a yard we pass every day.












Ah! Apple Blossoms!!


And the Cherries are right behind them, I'm sure I'll have some photos of our backyard, brightened by a swath of white Cherry Blossoms, at some point.









All these flowers are certainly brightening up our morning walks. The leaves can't be far behind!