Thursday, April 21, 2016

Artist Study: Rembrandt

 Rembrandt was one of the artists we studied this year!

 Books we used:
 
 We practiced drawing proportional portraits!



 Fancy collars were very popular in Rembrandt's time, so we made our own from coffee filters!

 See the directions here!

 The finished product!

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Artist Study: Michelangelo

 Lately we have been learning about Michelangelo!

 Books we used:
The Sistine Chapel--no link, because I got it at the Sistine Chapel!
Color Your Own Italian Renaissance Paintings (local people, this is $2 cheaper at Philbrook)

 The kids painted on a "ceiling" just like Michelangelo did!


 Boris was very interested!

 We went on a Sistine Chapel field trip at the planetarium.

 There are quite a few different shows you can see there!

 The kids also made their own copies from the Sistine Chapel.  They started by tracing in pencil...

 ...then outlining in Sharpie...

 ...and then used watercolors.

 I think they turned out so nicely!

 Alice gave hers a caption!  (That's supposed to be Who? God!, not Whoo! God!)

 We tried making cookie sculptures.

 Ummm.....yeah.  But they were pretty yummy.

 We had better success with carving soap sculptures.


A train (Jack). a butterfly (Alice), and a heart (me).

I have several artist studies I need to catch up on with blog posts and we're about to start our last artist for the year!

Monday, April 11, 2016

Busy Again

 It seems like we had a brief week or so of down time and now it's picked up again, so here are a few pictures from last week!  They're moving along on the house, and hopefully we will be moving in before too long.  It really can't be soon enough!

 Alice learned to ride without training wheels!

 Jack learned how to do a goofy stunt!

 We spent one morning visiting friends--the people kind...

 ...and the animal kind!

 Jay and I went to the Mumford and Sons concert Wednesday.



 Thursday the kids and I participated in a trash pick up for 4H.  This picture pretty much sums it up.  It was hot and windy and my allergies were in overdrive.  If I see you throw trash on that mile I will cut you.

 Thursday was also Bobey's 15th birthday.  Between the late night Wednesday and a busy Thursday he didn't get a party, but I did make him some homemade cat treats.

 Friday morning we went to a play!

 And after taking my grandma to lunch, we hit the skating rink!

And sewing....a big chunk of our time right now is taken with sewing for the 4H Fashion Revue.  The kids are making some *really* cute things I can't wait to show you!

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Zoo Snooze

 After spending the day at the Medieval Fair, we spent the night at the zoo!

 During the evening program, Jack was a gorilla.

 Alice was a sea turtle!

 We got to see several animals up close, like this possum...

 ...and a chinchilla...

 ...and an armadillo!


When it got dark, we went on a hike around the zoo!
 
 Owls!

 Can you see the gorilla sleeping?

 It was fun to be out in the zoo in the dark!

 Ready for the late movie!

 Jack and I had pretty padded sleeping bags, so we slept on the floor.  Alice decided to sleep in the wagon!

 When we got up this morning, we went on another hike around the zoo.

 This lion likes to sit in the sun in the mornings--just like another big cat I know!

 When we reached the barn for the nocturnal animals, they still had their lights on!  We could see the owls a lot better this way!

We had a lot of fun!