We recently participated in the local homeschool trackmeet. B10 had a successful and enjoyable day as did the girls. The track isn’t quite up to the standard of the tracks A14 has been training on but it did the job. The meet includes several sprints, long jump, standing broad jump and shotput followed by 4×100 relays and an all age 800m. All the children did all the events and were a little weary at the end.
Today the girls set off for Iceland with Stellae Boreales for a ten day, 6 performance tour. They were heading to Toronto by bus and then flying direct to Reykjavik. Hopefully the members of the ensemble will be blogging about their activities each day. We have been watching the weather reports and the daily high hasn’t risen above 15°C in the last month but I think there is a 17°C forecast over the next few days. While they are there they will experience 22 hours of daylight which is going to be strange I’m sure.
While they are gone B10 and I are painting his room. Today’s task was to clear it completely and move all the contents into A14′s room, where he will live for the next little while. Tomorrow we tackle the wall paper removal.
I haven’t written about my art class since last June but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been doing art. When we resumed in September it was a smaller class, just 3½ members. We started off with some drawing and sketching exercises and then moved into an acrylics unit. I am not very comfortable with acrylics and despite my reading and practising I didn’t feel that I was able to guide my students very well. We continued doing some sketching each week and worked on two landscapes in acrylic: one realistic and the other with a monochrome colour scheme plus a black silhouette image.
Just before Christmas we signed up for a pottery class and created quite a selection of gifts as well as a few pieces to keep ourselves. During our first lesson we created bowls and platters, large and small. Our teacher showed us how to make mugs the second week and we created some candle holders as well. During the final week we glazed all the pieces that had survived the kiln; there were a few casualties. Everyone enjoyed doing pottery so we hope to do it again and include some lessons on the wheel.
After Christmas we returned to drawing exercises, both still life and faces. We had been drawing before Christmas as we always began with a warm up exercise of one sort or another. One of our first still life subjects was a classic one given to me by every art teacher I ever had and which I see again and again in books: the humble capsicum, or, as they say here, pepper. I expected complaints from my class at being asked to draw vegetables but everyone enjoyed the exercise as we did them in pencil, charcoal, watercolour pencil and fine tip marker. Over several weeks we also did lemons, shoes and toy cars before the artists chose a few fruit or vegetables to create their own still life arrangement to draw.
Practising drawing faces turned out to be difficult but quite amusing at times. We used the guidelines given in various books to get our proportions right but also used each other as models. It is safe to say that most of our sketches were hardly flattering. It was a very good exercise however and we now know more the relative positions and sizes of all the facial features.
After completing our faces unit each of the three girls in the class embarked on a project of their own choice to be entered in the Young at Art competition held by the City of Ottawa. The competition is open to 12-19 yearolds. A14 chose to do some digital art using the Bamboo we gave her for Christmas. She took a photograph of the canal in winter, desaturated it and turned it into a spring or summer scene at dusk.
P16 chose to paint a watercolour of a Peruvian child bundled in a traditional blanket.
H13 tried several ideas before settling on one of the projects we had done in class: capsicums drawn using charcoal, watercolour pencil and graphite pencil.
All three submissions were very well done but unfortunately only a selection are picked for display and winners are chose from those displayed. A14′s digital print Reflections at Dusk was chosen as the winner this year in the junior level of the “Other Media’ category.
Our last unit for the year was abstract art. The first task required everyone to choose a colour scheme, either cold or warm, and a shape to be repeated throughout the abstract design. Most of us tried several different approaches to this task. The second abstract project required a mass of liquid coloured paint, again in a cool or warm colour scheme, into which imprinted different textures.
The first two games of the season were cancelled due to wet weather and soggy fields but B10 and our friend P11 are now playing soccer twice a week. As they both loved the Percy Jackson books, being in the Olympians team is a bonus. So far they have won once, lost once and tied twice.
Both ways involve chocolate!
The girls and I have recently been involved in two very different fundraising efforts. Both were raising funds for the same cause: the Stellae Boreales tour to Iceland in June/July of this year. Nobody loves fundraising, but our ensemble does get creative at times. Our yearly November concert is always followed by a silent auction and last November one of the parents generously offered to host “An Evening of Fine Food and Fine Music”. It was bid for and bought by four couples. L16 was enlisted to provide musical entertainment between courses along with another senior musician in the ensemble. I volunteered to be sous chef and A14 was called on to serve at the table. Vicky, the chef, hosted it at her house and prepared nine superb courses in her tiny kitchen!
The dinner was a huge success. The musicians played a duet after the guests had enjoyed their amuse-bouche. Guests were then seated for the next two courses before enjoying the first sonata of the evening. The main course of Arabian Nights Stuffed Quail followed, then L16 played her sonata with our fabulous accompanist Judith Ginsburg.
There were several more courses and two more fine performances from the musicians before guests, chefs, musicians and serving staff adjourned to the living room more than satisfied with the fabulous food, music and company.
I had a ball assisting Vicky in the kitchen. She had prepared almost everything in advance so my main task was plating up. For dessert this involved a little “chocolate artwork” with of course a musical theme.
I decorated the plates in advanced and whisked them away to be retrieved later so I could add slices of chocolate terrine with balls of mango and raspberry artisanal sorbets.
All the courses were delicious; Vicky had prepared enough for her staff as well! The event was deemed a huge success by all and will hopefully be repeated next year.
After reading about B10 & J10 covering themselves in snow up to the shoulders my dad sent me this picture of both of us at the beach. I look very serious about the whole buried in sand concept!
Snow, thaw, pour, slush, freeze is the current weather sequence round here.
We have had a couple of big snowfalls in the last few weeks that I have attempted to photograph with my new camera. I am slowly getting to know what some of the buttons and settings do.
Of course the real purpose of a good snowfall is to provide somewhere to play and something to play with..
B10 and J10 across the road, with some help from J’s dad buried themselves up to their shoulders in snow. It reminded me of burying people in sand at the beach.
Today I happen to be celebrating my birthday, while half way around the world my parents are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. My birthday is actually the day before their anniversary but with the time difference we can make one phone call and cover all the congratulations and best wishes! Last week I managed to send off a little parcel to them with cards, a drawing, a poem, a book and a dvd slideshow of pictures of our family from 1990 until now. We all contributed something and the postal service co-operated making it possible for them to open the package before they left to join my brothers’ families, their brothers and sisters, and some friends for a party on Saturday night.
The dvd slideshow was fun to put together because I started with Andrew’s and my wedding photo and then picked a few photos from each year since. I found such cute photos of the children. An absolute favourite of all three has to be this one:
I am very thankful for these three children, my wonderful husband and my dear parents. I hope that Andrew and I can celebrate one day, as my parents are this weekend, a happy marriage of fifty years.
When I first taught Ancient History to the girls B9 was but a baby or toddler so did not get involved. I remember when we were making a model of a Roman villa he helped with a few things but his first real memories of history studies are from our medieval lessons. He found the whole knights and castles thing very enjoyable, every battle, siege and weapon intrigued him whereas the girls wanted to know if there was more to history than kings and battles.
After we completed our Canadian history studies I felt it was time to take B9 back to the ancient world. I teamed up with a friend and we did ancient history together with our nine year-olds once a week. We began at the very beginning with some review from Genesis and then moved onto all things Egyptian.
That took us half way through last year and then we moved into Ancient Greece. Our activities included recreating the Nile River in a baking dish, mummifying a doll, building pyramids, cooking both Egyptian and Greek feasts, creating and modeling costumes or crowns from Egypt and Greece, a mini olympic games, building the Parthenon and making papier mache Greek vases
We do our history lessons when all the older children are at their writing classes and it was funny to hear them exclaim about B & P’s activities when they returned to the house. According to them we did far better activities this time around than when we did it with them years ago. I think they might be right.
This year our little history class has doubled we now have two girls and two boys embarking on a study of Ancient Rome. Early on they spent some time browsing through a stack of library books looking for topics and activities they would like included in the lessons. It was an even split between lifestyle and craft activities on one side of the table and technology and construction on the other side. Already we have created Roman roads from sand, pebbles and concrete, Roman soldiers with bendy limbs so they can be displayed in battle positions and a continually expanding illustrated timeline.
My true love said to me, “Happy Anniversary”
Today we are celebrating 21 happy years, lived together in two countries, five houses, with (eventually) three delightful children.
