ballet preview

I am entirely unsure what sort of seating we'll get tomorrow and what type of video clips might be possible, so I thought I'd give a little preview of J practicing his "wolf dance". Of course, this is bound to look different on a huge (and I mean HUGE!) stage with them in costume, but here is our budding ballet star and his partner, M, doing the Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf dance from the Sleeping Beauty Ballet:

If I do say so, that's not bad for only one semester of ballet.... (J, I mean. M has been dancing for years.)

On to the real thing tomorrow!

Malidoma Some, part 3

This week we combined chapters 3 and 4 of the Enki Malidoma Some sage story, during which little Malidoma is kidnapped and taken from his village to grow up amongst strangers. (This was a Jesuit community, but the story didn't detail that.) Once he is grown, he rebels and escapes and finds his way home. J chose to draw Malidoma in a dark room, when he first was taken to the new place.


Zoo Boy draw Malidoma being taken by the strange man. I left the details of the kidnapping intact, but modified the more intense details of the abuse he suffered at the hands of the Jesuits. Basically I removed the physical abuse, but left the psychological stuff, as I felt that it still made it clear that this was a great struggle for Malidoma as he grew up, without scaring them with the physical violence (which for my kids would have been an issue).

J's written summary of these chapters (I just called it all chapter 3). I combined the two chapters because the actual chapter 3 leaves us hanging too much, and I felt would be disturbing for my guys. I left them instead with his arrival back home (which is really the end of chapter 4).

A detail from J's summary -- he drew Malidoma being taken by the man inside the first letter of that part of the summary. His being taken clearly was of important to the boys. Neither of them has expressed upset about it, but it clearly came during our recall and in their artwork.

Zoo Boy's shortened summary.

My drawing, a rather violent image of Malidoma pushing one of his captors out the window, which instigated his escape. I had originally drawn it less detailed with violence, but the boys insisted that I add broken glass and an alarmed facial expression on the captor. Since I was adding emotion to the man, I also added a frown to Malidoma's face. The boys were very pleased with my drawing.

end of keva class

A little more catching up. Two Mondays ago was our final Keva class of the session (and the year!). Here's J's last class project:

And here's the class all standing on top of a Keva structure they made together to hold all of their weight!:














Then we had our "share day" activities this past Monday, which included an opportunity for us to share the joys of Keva building with others in our Monday Homeschool community. Here's Zoo Boy's final project of the semester:



And J's final project, the US Capitol:



Of course, the building still continues at home:

This one deserves special note -- J copied a maze from a Let's Find Pokemon book, then Zoo Boy added lots and lots of Pokemon throughout the maze:

end of the dance semester

J's first semester of dance classes wrapped up last week. Here he is during his last ballet class, rehearsing their dance for the Sleeping Beauty ballet they are performing during their Spring Show this coming Saturday:

Here is his final jazz/hip hop class, practicing their dance to "Hit the Road Jack" for the show (you can guess who "Jack" is!):

And here he is during his final Musical Theater Class, working on a dance to the song "Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent:

All in all, this was quite a learning experience for us. He originally started out wanting to do Broadway and hip-hop, signing up for ballet just because he felt he should have a foundation in it to help with the rest of his dancing. While he had a lot of fun in the Musical Theater class, and really enjoyed jazz/hip-hop, he surprised himself by falling madly in love with ballet. And turns out he's got a real talent for it. He was asked to perform a role in the Sleeping Beauty Ballet, sort of big deal for a 1st semester student. Here he is rehearsing his part, dancing the role of the Big Bad Wolf during his dance with Little Red Riding Hood:

Stage rehearsal was last night, and was QUITE an experience, I assure you. He was totally wowed and loved every minute of it. I was pretty close to completely overwhelmed and wondered how the heck we ever got involved with this. But it's what he wants to do, so I'll just suck it up and roll with it. Who am I to stand in the way of budding talent?

Hopefully The Map Man can get some video footage at the recital so I can post some clips. I'll be backstage helping J with his costume changes and making sure the boys use the right dressing room. (Ahem.)

Malidoma Some, part 2

I'm running a bit behind with my posting, but will just catch up when I can. We have a lot of our school year extra-curricular type activities wrapping up this week, so it's a little overwhelming to try to sort through all of the photos and get them posted!

In any case, I'll start with the end of last week, and our 2nd part of the Malidoma Some story. In this chapter, Malidoma's grandfather passes away, but not before conferring the wisdom of the ancestors upon little Malidoma. J chose to draw Malidoma's attempts to listen to animals like Grandfather.

Zoo Boy drew a scene where Malidoma accidentally left the gate to the family compound open and allowed the livestock in to ransack the place. In his drawing, Malidoma is herding the chickens back out of the compound. (You can see a basket of millet that they upset in the lower left corner.) This is definitely a case of him drawing from his own experience to match the story -- he regularly herds our ducks out to their daytime pasture! A pretty cool moment for me to see him make that connection!

Our summary of this part of our story, written out here by J.

Zoo Boy's simplified summary. Note how many lower case letters he used! He capitalized all of the first letters of each word, but still, this is SUCH an improvement! And it was entirely his own idea. Patience certainly does pay off eventually when it comes to these things!

My drawing of Grandfather just before passing away and becoming a spirit, discussing the meaning of Malidoma's name with him inside Grandfather's quarters.

morning walks

Since we're in such an intensely time-consuming period for both our homeschooling and our outside activities (I feel like I live at that dance studio....), and our cultural dancing is filling our exercise needs nicely (and then some!), we've been taking shorter walks in our neighborhood rather than spending as much time in the state forest. We'll move back to the forest once things settle down a bit, but in the meantime we're finding plenty to keep us feeling connected to Spring right on our own street.

This little vernal pool has both salamander eggs and frog eggs, as well as a bevy of adult frogs. No fish and plenty of spring rains assure that those eggs are going to hatch just fine. We're keeping an eye on them:

Malidoma Some, part 1

This week we began working with an Enki Education story about Malidoma Some. In the first chapter, we became familiar with the life in his village in Burkina Faso as it was when he was 4 years old. His Grandfather was a very significant figure in his life. J's drawing is of a time when Grandfather told him that the chickens were plotting to upset a millet basket, and sure enough, that's what happened!


Zoo boy drew the same theme. For some reason he's been coloring in the background of all of his drawings with a black stick crayon before starting his drawing. I asked him about this, and he told me it was gray, not black, but couldn't give me a reason why. I'm interested to see where this might be going, so I'll keep an eye on it.



Our chapter summary, written by J.








Zoo Boy's abbreviated chapter summary. He's finally starting to inject a few lower-case letters into his writing.







The boys work on mashing some millet so we could make millet cakes like Malidoma's mother made in the first chapter.








Munching on millet cakes. Neither of them were particularly thrilled with them (and I don't blame them, they're pretty bland), but both of them ate more than one bite. They were both very interested in eating what Malidoma ate.

This week we also began learning a cultural dance -- in this case the "Gahu", which originated in Benin. We are using an instructional DVD called "Traditional Dances of Ghana", by Nana Yaw Koranteng and the Aziza Music and Dance Ensemble. J and I are loving it, Zoo Boy is choosing alternate exercise during that time frame, although he enjoys watching the group dance with us. There are 4 dances on the DVD, we're going to switch dances every 2 weeks so that we can learn them all. We're just getting the hang of the "Gahu" after a week's work with it, so next week we'll just enjoy actually knowing what we're doing while we dance!

My story drawing, of Malidoma waiting outside of his Grandfather's quarters while he is counseling another village member.

We did run into one speed bump during our work this week. J suddenly realized that Malidoma Some is a real person (he saw the photo of him on the back of the book that I am reading, Of Water and the Spirit, written by Malidoma Patrice Some), and for some reason he found this very upsetting. Best as I can figure, based on how he tried to explain it to me, he assumed that all of the stories we read are fiction and was just shocked to find out that some are real-er than others. We talked about St. Francis and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and he seems to have adjusted to it now. But we had some moments of distress over this initially. It made me a little uneasy about reading some of the further chapters in the Malidoma Some story, as there is quite a bit of strife and struggling there, but so far he's been OK with it (sad where appropriate, but not that over-the-top reaction that concerned me).

We're finishing up work with the 2nd chapter today and will be continuing our work with this sage story next week.