Hospitality Room

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One of the things that make LTC such a family fun event is that the kids compete on Friday night; the families spend the night at the hotel because they will compete again first thing Saturday morning. Our congregation hosts a hospitality suite for the families to hang out between events, get a snack etc. This year’s room had an awesome balcony where the kids could run off some energy between events. Our congregation had 81 kids competing in various events.

Leadership Training for Christ

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Woo Hoo!! LTC is finally here! Our first event was Bible Bowl, a personal favorite :)! Our congregation had 30 youth competeing. Everyone seem to have fun, there were only a couple of question that their coach missed! My favorite part about Bible Bowl is that when they work together as teams, they really build great friendships. LTC is held at 3 hotels in Dallas this weekend, each hosting 2,000+ kids. For Bible Bowl there were 158 teams consisting of 4 players each competeing, so that's 632 kids! It is so cool to see all the kids that have all been studing the same information come together!

Casa Manana's Cinderella

Casa Manana's performance today of Cinderella was fabulous. The performance was Rogers and Hammerstein's classical version. Great humor, amazing singing, even a carriage coming thru the audience! The step sisters were so funny!

We were joined by 30 or so homeschool friends from our homeschool group, that always make these events more fun! If your anywhere near Ft. Worth, Casa Manana's plays are always a hit!

National Bible Bowl

National Bible Bowl is a youth event designed to encourage the study of God’s Word. Youth are brought together for fellowship and testing of their knowledge over the selected Bible text. This is our families third year to participate. Nationals were designed for youth 9th-12th to earn scholarship money to various Christian Colleges. In the past the competition has been held at Oklahoma Christian University and Abilene Christian University. This year the competition was held during the Tulsa Workshop, and sponsored by York College. I have been coaching 16 amazing young people for a little over five months in preparation. The test consists of six separate timed rounds:

Power Round (Closed Bible) 25 minutes/90 Questions
Find the Verse (Open Bible) 25 minutes/40 Questions
Fact Finder (Open Bible) 20 minutes/40 Questions
Identification (Open Bible) 20 minutes/40 Questions
Know the Chapter-Quotations (Closed Bible) 15 minutes/40 Questions
Know the Chapter-Chapter Events (Closed Bible) 10 minutes/40 Questions

In the Elementary Team Division (3rd-6th grade) my three teams took First, Second & Third Place. And in the Elementary Individual Division, my teams took 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, & 10th place. Abigail took first place for the second year in a row.

In the Junior Team Division (7th-9th) my team took First Place and in the Junior Team Division the kids took 1st, 2nd & 3rd place. Caleb took first place in this division for the third year in a row.

Winning is always fun, but the fact that these kids think it is fun to work this hard, and that they enjoy studying the Bible absolutely amazes me.

Snow in Dallas . . . again!

Can you believe it?! There is snow, and lots of it in Dallas again. What a beautiful site. The roads are clear, but everything looks like a beautiful white fluffy blanket has been laid over it by the hand of God! The funny thing is, this is the first day of Spring Break for us!!

Old Red Museum - Order in the Court

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Today’s adventures took us to the Old Red Courthouse. This building is one of the prettiest buildings in the West End. Located across from Dealy Plaza it is a tourist favorite. Caleb and Abigail, along with other homeschool participated in a Mock Trial. Caleb was selected as the Lead Defense Attorney and Abigail was the Prosecuting Attorney. All the way to the courthouse they threw out Perry Mason-isms like, “I object your honor,” and “it is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.”

The Gungans were with us. Richard was the Jury Foreman, Roy was a juror and Ryan was the one bring the charges. Very fun and comical, the cases centered around an artifact that resides in the museum portion of the courthouse

Abigail won the case, if Hamilton Burger could have ‘manufactured’ evidence like Abigail did, he would have won a lot more cases.

Also in an effort to appear impartial, during jury deliberations Richard pleaded Abigail’s case, leaving Roy to support Caleb. Abigail also had federal law on her side (if her manufactured evidence was correct), where Caleb’s was only supported by state law!

1 gallon of paint, a 9 year old & 150lb dog . . .

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The heading pretty much says it all! Today I allowed Abigail to work on the props for LTC drama. The 7th & 8th grade drama has a game show theme, our props include three garment boxes to be used as contestant stands. Abigail, my little artist, gleefully painted the boxes in the kitchen. Padme', the 150 pound English Mastiff simply watched her. . . . that is until Jon rang the door bell when he came home! At which point, Padme' jumped up stepped on all three boxes on the way to the front door! The next part of my day was spent cleaning paint off carpet and puppy paws! The upside is, the boxes are painted!

My Daily Focus

Every morning I look forward to opening my inbox. There are always more message than I will ever read! A lot of times I do have the time to look at the ‘one day only’ sales, and endless sales pitches. Generally, I go through and delete all the junk emails, and read only the ‘personal’ emails. One email I look forward to every day and is usually the first one I read comes from Alpha Omega Publications, called DailyFocus.

DailyFocus is a daily devotional that offers encouragement to homeschool moms. It usually begins by describing a situation that has occurred, one I can always relate to, and then the lesson learned, with a scripture reference and a prayer. I love that this sets my day with a proper mind set and the encouragement daily, to do a better job as a mom. Check it out, maybe your inbox could use a little sunshine, if you click on the RSS feed to send the DailyFocus to your inbox!

Nasher Sculpture Center Home School Class

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The homeschool classes at the Nasher Sculpture Center have become so popular that this year they have doubled the number of class offerings and still have waiting lists! Anna, the Assistant Curator of Education is absolutely wonderful with the children.

Today’s class was The Language of Art, looking at the latest exhibit by Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa. We looked at several exhibitions featuring large-scale sculptures completed by Plensa between 2004 and 2009.

The main gallery featured a curtain of metal letters forming excerpts from various renowned authors. Alone the letters hang cold and silent, but once you interact with them they make noise, they move, they become warmer.

Another gallery featured Twins I and II, it is Plensa’s latest work and features figures composed of letters from seven distinct alphabets: Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi and Latin. The letters are randomly juxtaposed, illustrating that letters lead to words, leading to sentences then paragraphs, next stories and eventually an idea.

The downstairs gallery featured the Where Are You? I, II and III exhibition. Each of these translucent, polyester resin figures are marked with words indicating geographical locations: one details the earth’s poles and critical longitudes, another names the continents and the other is marked with the oceans.

After looking at the connections between words, letters, sculptures and spaces in the art of Jaume Plensa, the kids then create an artwork based on their favorite stories. Caleb chose the phrase, “For a few seconds Voldemort was visible only as a dark, rippling, faceless figure, shimmering and indistinct upon the plinth, clearly struggling to throw off the suffocating mass.“ from Harry Potter’s Order of the Phoenix. Abigail selected, “’Sorry it took me so long Katie-Cat’” sad her Father,“ from the Mysterious Benedict Society. After selecting their inspiration the used torn paper to depict the scene that the words invoked.

Very cool, the sculptures encourage critical thinking and creativity.

Still Life in School

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Dallas Museum of Art began their homeschool classes sometime last year. Each class focuses on different genres or artists. Today in the Museum galleries and in the studio we spent time focusing on still life paintings. We looked at different still life paintings to learn about how artists depict various still life subjects and how still life paintings differ from other genres.

This is J.C., the DMA’s Coordinator of Family Programs, giving us a little background on the1620's Still Life and Landscape by Dutch artist Abraham Hendricksz van Byeren. Following group discussions, the students journaled their thoughts on what took place just prior to the still life. Strangely, Abigail's story had a Percy Jackson /Poseidon twist to it!

Later they took a look at a Picasso and how his still lifes were very different than your traditional stills. The kids sketched one of the sculptures from various angles, and then J.C. put it together in a cubist style similar to Picasso.

In the studio, we set up our own still life arrangements and used oil pastels to draw it. I could not pass up blank paper and oil pastels! If you get a chance visit the DMA’s interactive website Arturo’s Art Stories.