We started using a new art book called the Usborne Complete Book of Art Ideas. I've had it around here, but haven't put it into use.

So, we decided to pull out our art supplies. What a mess! I have a huge box of crayons that used to be several separate boxes. The crayons were discouraging for the kids to use because they could never find the color they needed. So, I pulled out a plastic drawer from one of our organizers, found some cardboard and cut it to make dividers in the box. Then, we sorted by color family.... kind of. Reds, pinks, oranges, browns, yellows, blues, greens, purples, grays, whites, blacks and metallics. They're much more excited about using the crayons now!
On another note, Daniel is enjoying math activities. Talley sticks, matching and order, and abacus. His reading is coming along well, too.
I'm learning that you really have to have fun with your kids if you want them to learn. Some of my greatest learning experiences were with teachers who had a love for teaching and learning and having fun with it all. I will never forget those teachers.

In other classes (which sadly was the majority of my elementary and middle school classes), the teachers did not have a heart for the children or the subjects. I often wonder what happened to them. They must have had some reason for wanting to teach, but they were always in a bad mood. They must have had to become hard shelled due to educational politics or one too many kids disrespecting them. I don't know.

As parents, we are the natural teachers for our children. We love them like no other person can.
A close friend of ours recently asked me if I thought it was right for a child to see their parent also as their teacher. I was totally confused by the question. It made no sense to me. Don't we teach our children about every other aspect of life? When children come home from the educational institution, aren't parents expected to do homework with their children? What's the difference here? It just seems more natural to me for children to learn from their parents than from anyone else as they did for thousands of years before government enforced institutionalized schools were created. I have nothing against other methods of education. If we faced the possibility of having to place our kids in public or private school, I'm sure things would turn out fine. I'd be involved as much as possible and that's what makes a difference in the education of our kids.

I'd love to read your comments on this if you'd like to post. Positive and negative perspectives are welcome.

This is one of my favorite math videos from my childhood. It was actually released in 1959 by Disney, so it was another 20+ years later when I first saw it. I managed to get my hands on the VHS.

I couldn't resist taking this picture. This is our incredible cat Solomon. He's a bit mischievous. :-)

We actually had to completely tape up our little pictures on the map because Solomon kept removing them.

This project is part of our science lessons. We are studying Zoology III: Land Creatures of the Sixth Day. We're in the final two lessons, so our map is quite full of creatures.

We recently had an opportunity to participate in a spinning class. No, it wasn't at the gym although I really could have used it. :-) This class was about the history of spinning fibers into yarn... and then learning how to do it.

The class was held at a place called Yarnivore in San Antonio, on NW Military Drive. Be sure to check out their classes and events if you check out their site. They have lots of them.

Wendy showed us many tools for spinning yarn. The one shown here is a Native American Indian spindle. The fiber is in her left hand and the yard that has been spun is on the spindle in her right hand.
This homemade spindle is called a drop spindle because the spindle continues to spin when you drop it. These are the ones we put together and used to do our own spinning.

On her left side is a bag of raw wool. It has a yellowish color and has an animal smell, obviously. This was from a very clean sheep. The bag on her right is wool that has been soaked in hot water and soap. You can still feel the lanolin in it. That's what she's spinning there.This spinning tool was developed later by the Indians (from India). Wendy had a very interesting story about this. When the British controlled India, they remained for so long because they were not able to grow their own cotton due to the climate. India was perfect. So, they would buy the cotton from the Indians for barely anything, send it to England, spin and weave it into cloth and sell it back to the Indians for a huge amount.
The ruler of India wanted Indians to be independent, so he had these neat little spinning wheels made and wanted every household in India to have one. They began making their own and were able to become independent. In 1931, they're official flag had a spinning wheel on it.

This young lady is showing us how to use the spinning wheel, the tool we're all most familiar with. Guess what we learned? There is nothing sharp on a spinning wheel. The story of Sleeping Beauty was told way before the modern spinning wheel. The spindle that she was poked with was more like the Native American Indian spindle with a sharp point at the end.

As easy as Wendy made it look, we realized that she has had a ton of practice! Spinning takes practice to build the skill! It wasn't easy to figure this out. But we did end up with a beautiful hand spun yarn.
This was a very educational and fun experience! It was a four hour class, which was well worth the money, but a little out of our budget as it would be for most homeschool families. If you plan to attend one of these classes, be sure that you understand the $15 per participant means that it's $15 per child and another $15 for mom, plus you will either have to purchase your own supplies for the spindle or pay Wendy for the supplies, which I believe is very inexpensive. We didn't have to pay for the fibers, but that may have been a break for us. I think she usually does charge extra for them.

Live Oak Park may not seem like the place to take a nature walk... until you begin to explore! There are trails all through the woods behind the disc golf course and a neat little lake with a few little hidden coves excellent for nature observation! It was a beautiful day! It had just rained in the morning, so it was nice and cool... and all the flowers were happy.

Taylor spotted a lot of these little plants. I'll have to do some research to find them. I thought they were just tree seedlings. Taylor showed me that if you press your finger into the middle of the leaves, they will close up. She believes that they are bug eating plants. If you look at the two stems of leaves on the top left, you can see where we tried this. They're closed up rather than fanned out like the rest.

Here's another little sign of spring. The camera didn't focus on that little flower like I had hoped, but you get the idea. :-) This flower is called a Prostrate Lawn Flower. How original.

Here's another yellow flower called an Englemann Daisy. Check out the shape of those leaves. Those would be fun to draw!

Ah, isn't this a welcome site? I grew up calling these buttercups, but the real name for them is
the Evening Primrose.
This is an excellent website to help you identify our local wild flowers:
http://uvalde.tamu.edu/herbarium/

This is another favorite of ours:
http://www.texaswildflowerpictures.com/wf_index.htm

Now for our tree study. We have decided to choose a tree to study for a year. We'll be back each season to observe changes to the tree and add those observations to our nature notebooks.

My choice was the native Huisache (pronounced 'wee sach') Tree. It is also called the Sweet Acacia Tree. These trees can be found from the Texas Hill Country down to Northern Mexico. They're easy to identify in the spring when they have their sweet smelling, ball-shaped yellow flowers.
The Huisache Tree was named by the Nahuatl Indians from Mexico. This tree was a sign that winter was over.

Upon investigating some of the branches of the tree, we discovered a lot of healthy lichens, the flat growths you see there. You know the air quality is good when it is light colored or green. It is bad when it is gray or black. I'm not sure about the leafy looking moss growing there. We haven't identified that yet.Taylor's tree was quite an impressive find! We spotted some lovely purple flowers covering a tall, but not so wide tree. My camera ran out of battery power at precisely this moment. So, I had to wait until we got home to take pictures of the flowers and leaves.
We will go back very soon to take pictures of the tree. The dark flower in the picture is not one that belongs to Taylor's tree. That is called Blue-Eyed Grass. The tree flowers have a wonderfully strong, sweet fragrance. It took me a few days to finally identify this tree.
So, do you want to know? It's not native to this country. It was imported from Asia and planted here as an ornamental tree. It does produce berries, but they are poisonous to humans if ingested. Enough clues? It's a China-Berry Tree!

We'll be back to observe these two trees in the summer, but we'll go back for some pictures during this week. The next group nature walk is planned for Warbler Woods where we'll observe an abundance (hopefully) of migratory birds!

We met at O.P. Schnabel for our nature walk on Monday afternoon. This park is one of my favorites! It's beautiful . There are trails throughout the whole property and two playscapes for the kids to play. There are paved trails and rough trails... and the occasional boy scout tee pee.
We were having a nice reunion of friendship during this walk and didn't take the time to observe too much of the nature around us. So, that's it for this post. There are at least 15 letterboxes in this park. If you're interested in that, go to www.atlasquest.com. If you need more help with this, let me know. We really have a lot of fun with this cheap hobby!

I have finally found some handiwork that Taylor really loves! This is a latch hook kit. She started on this a couple of weeks ago and is nearly half way through. I'm thrilled!

We went to the farm today for a friend's birthday party. We greatly enjoyed being able to identify the White-Crowned Sparrow. They have such a lovely song! They winter here, so we won't see them again in a few months.

We're coming along with our art skills. This is a sample of our duplication warm-up.


This is the first abstract warm-up that Taylor did. We started with level 2. The point to this exercise is to use the basic drawing elements described in Drawing for Children and follow directions for drawing the elements. It's very fun and interesting to see how the drawing turns out in the end. So, this gives practice with the elements and it also teaches that using the same ideas and rearranging the elements they can draw a recognizable piece of art.


Since we had so much fun with the first one, we followed directions for a level 3 abstract drawing a few days later. This was a little more complex. In the future, we'll have to make up our own directions for the abstract drawings. I'll share those here.



This is the first formal drawing: A bird on a branch.


Voila! It's complete. Taylor really enjoyed this. We'll be drawing Leo the Lion today from Lesson 2. See below for today's plan to start lesson 2.

- Relaxation Methods (which I've discovered is certainly needed with Daniel running around here!)
- Random Image Warm-Up (from lesson 1)
- Overlapping Exercise (Lesson 2, page 85)
- Leo the Lion


I've already summarized the introduction to Taylor. I plan to use the concepts that I read about in this lesson during her warm-ups and drawing. I don't believe that reading the text straight through to your child is beneficial particularly if they are not attentive to it. It'll tend to take the fun out of the drawing process. Instead, I treat it like I do the Handbook of Nature Study. The reading is for mom to read and think upon then to share with the child when applicable.

Yay! We finally got a great nature walk in yesterday. We arrived at Crownridge at 5pm. We figured we'd just take a short walk and ended up taking the whole outer trail. By the time we realized this, we were on the back side of the trail furthest from the entrance and the sun was just below the horizon. I suppose my friend Marcy and I were talking too much. We got a little nervous and felt that we needed to rush back before dark. We did have some great discoveries though.

I forgot to add this really cool video I took of the octopus being totally sociable. Check it out!

This was another side trip on the way back from Houston. There is a hidden treasure there that many don't know about. This place is call the Forbidden Gardens. It's kind of small, but it's really cool. Read up on ancient China before you take a trip out. Expect to take a guided tour of the place. You'll learn so much!

Okay, I'm sorry... I just had to do that for those who would actually look. I could hold that tree in my hand. Yes, it's a miniature replica of the city. But, all of this really is in China. As soon as I get a job there, would you like to come with me and help me with my kids? :-)

This is the imperial vacation home. What a lovely place.

And that's all for the pictures. There are a few more areas on the tour. One being the weapon room and another being the architecture room.

And, the final display is the Venice of China. Here's some info about that: http://www.micktravels.com/china/tongli.html It's very interesting. This was always the place where men would go to find their wives. All women here were beautiful and had those lovely cripled feet the Chinese loved so much. To this day, men still go to Little Venice or Tong Li to find a wife.

Happy Ancient China studies!!! Now, get to Katy!

One of the joys of my work is the ability to travel with my kids. I recently got a short-term job offer in Houston. I managed to con my friend into coming with me to watch the kids and stay in a hotel with a heated indoor pool. Not a bad bribe.

I wouldn't say that the Houston Aquarium is all that we thought it would be, but we still had fun. It's deceiving three-stories are for something like private parties. This is not part of the aquarium. There were some pretty good highlights though...

We rode of the carousel. You'd expect there to be all marine animals.

And so there were.