Weekly Wrap-Up ~ Week 16: Helen Keller, Picasso & Soup
Monday:
We started our week with Music Lesson Monday. (No Museum this time because we had some places to get Grandma to.) Jayden was pleasantly surprised to see that his spelling words this week were all states. The list gave him 17 and he got to chose 3 of his own.
Tuesday:
In continuing with our World’s Greatest Artist Study, we started an art project this week. Their assignment was to “copycat” one of Picasso’s pieces. It was interesting to see how this played out for each of them.
Chloe chose a single female portrait, and I allowed her to trace the outline of it, and then paint. Jayden chose Three Musicians and decided he would draw it free hand first. I made him a 4 square grid to help him keep the proportions in check. His is taking longer, but he is doing a great job on it. After seeing his work, Chloe decided that maybe she copped out a little by just tracing and is going to try a new one this coming week while Jayden continues to work on his.
Thursday:
Today brought our first Daisy Girl Scout meeting in about a month (we missed one right before Christmas). Ava had an assignment where she had to be told a story about a strong, courageous woman, and then she would draw a picture of her and tell the other girls the story. She ended up learning about Helen Keller. Ava really enjoyed the Helen Keller book by David A. Adler. We have been reading it every night.
Ava doing this has spurred us into doing a little more about Helen Keller and having the other children read a book or two about her. Here are some of the books we really liked. Helen Keller The Story of My Life is one that Chloe will be reading shortly for her Lightning Lit & Comp.
Friday:
Jayden was excited to start another session of his Homeschool Chess Club. The weather was snowy (finally) and thus they were down a few children but he was happy to have some new faces as opponents to play against.
We (the girls, including Gommy & Grandma) spent a good portion of the day making Italian Wedding Soup (recipe will be coming soon under From Our Kitchen) We made 6 batches of it, which meant rolling a whole lot of tiny meatballs!
January 16, 2012 @ 12:28 pm
What amazing learning opportunities! It makes my heart break for the very broken state of public education.
The Picasso project looks so entertaining. When I saw it, I immediately thought of an assignment an art teacher gave my adult college class: he had us copy a famous painting, but had us turn the painting upside down, and copy it from that perspective. I couldn’t believe how much easier that was.
If memory serves, he said it was because we weren’t encumbered by fear of not being able to copy the face when all we could see were lines to copy. It worked!
January 16, 2012 @ 1:52 pm
Kim, thanks for the tip! I will try doing that with one of the kids upcoming art projects and see if it works!
January 18, 2012 @ 7:35 pm
It is neat to see how your daughter may be spurred on to try the project again in a more challenging way. Wouldn’t have really been an option in public school. Teaching things like art is what makes me most nervous about homeschooling my girls in the future. Glad to see how it can be done. Oh and my mom said they taughe her in her bookkeeping classes that the way to forge a signature is to copy it upside down. Fun to see your mom too. She is such a cutie =)
January 23, 2012 @ 1:19 am
Love seeing what your family has been learning and thank you for the great Helen Keller resources!
~Kara @ The Chuppies/NOBH