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.

NASA Space Lessons

This week in Geography and History Abigail is learning about the NASA space program. We downloaded several lessons from the NASA web site to supplement. We watched Apollo 13 today, just to give her an idea of what those astronauts experienced. She was pleased to find out that my Nana (Eunice (Bean) Pratt) was a cousin of Alan Bean.

Navy veteran Alan Bean was a Group 3 1963 astronaut selection. In 1969 he was the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 12. This was the second successful lunar landing of the Apollo program. The crew consisted of Commander Pete Conrad (deceased), Command Module Pilot Dick Gordon, and Bean. Conrad and Bean became the third and fourth men to walk on the moon, an elite fraternity that would eventually include 12 men. Conrad and Bean conducted two successful lunar EVA's and greatly contributed to the knowledge of the moon's geologic history. Bean would also serve as commander of Skylab 3, the second manned mission to the space station and spent 59 days in space with astronauts Jack Lousma and Owen Garriott. Today he is a successful artist in Houston

The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has an Alan Bean Gallery where they display many of his NASA artifacts and his artwork. There is even a DVD entitled Alan Bean Artist ~ Astronaut.

Casa Manana's Alamo: The Musical

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If you've followed the blog at all, you know you will find endless baseball, softball and church posts, along with several posts per year to the Dallas Museum of Art and Casa Manana. Casa Manana is a theater in Fort Worth, that has a wonderful children's program. Generally they do unique spins on classical tales. One of their most popular performances is the one we saw today, Alamo: the Musical. Being February 23, and the significance that has in the events at the Alamo, it was especially moving. We took 51 of our homeschool friends from Plano and Denton and had a wonderful time. In these rough political times it was a sobering reminder of a time when 'Faith of Our Fathers' and the fight for freedom meant extreme measures. Brilliant!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Valentines Day . . . I have vague memories of that meaning time alone with Jon, you know, exchanging sentimental cards or even fun suggestive card. Then there was usually dinner, and sometimes a play or opera we would dress up for, hold hands . . . again, just memories . . .

Valentines Day this year fell on Sunday, which during Leadership Training for Christ season is anything but a day of rest! Following morning church services we headed over to Studio Movie Grill to watch The Lightning Thief and enjoy some Greek Pizza. The movie wasn't like the book, but the kids enjoyed it. Following lunch, it was a mad dash over to the high school for Majors try-outs for Caleb. His weekly trips with Jon to Extra Innings was very helpful! Caleb took 5 machine practice balls and 5 pitches, he hit all but one pitch! He then did running, catching fly balls and grounders. We should hear later this week about his placement.

Following baseball tryouts, we made the mad dash back to the church building for Nationals Bible Bowl practice. Fortunately Ms. Gungan was my back up. She got everyone started. My Nationals practice consist of 16 amazing children making up four teams that will compete in Tulsa, Oklahoma the last weekend in March.

Both of the kids are participating in LTC Drama. Caleb is play a 'Thurston Howell III' type character in his Rockin' Rocks skit. Abigail will be an Army soldier in pink fatigues in her play. This week I am working on props for Caleb's skit.
The children quickly move from Drama to their next LTC event. For Abigail that would be chorus with Ms. Vyneta and for Caleb it is Speech with Mr. Cooner. These are two beautiful people that have no children in these events but are still willing to donate their time!

The next thing on our agenda is evening worship and my LTC Bible Bowl class. I am preparing eight team of four students each to compete at LTC on Easter weekend. Again these are just wonderful children. I email their parents 'homework' each week, and I'm talking homework with 7-8 pages, and no one complains.

You would think that should be enough for one day, but we still have one more activity, LTC Sign Language. Ms. Gungan is preparing the children for Sign Language. She is very patient with the children as she is teaching them to sign 3 verses in II Samuel. Usually by this point, Frankie and I have found a comfy chair in the church lobby and crashed!!! I guess I should say at this time, that Frankie has been with me this whole time, carrying drama props, making copies and running kids back and forth to the restroom! And not to leave Jon out, he was with us thru Caleb's baseball practice, at which point he had to heave for work.
I know way to soon these busy days will be behind us sooner than I think. It seems only yesterday we were rushing Frankie to LTC and Camp Fire and cheer leading and then all of the sudden she was turning 25! I will enjoy these days with the kids, but boy could I use a nap!

Valentine's Day Party

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Roses are red and violets are blue,

Today we hung out with friends who homeschool too!

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Frankie and Abigail removed the snow off my car,

8" in Dallas, now that's bizarre!

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Over to the Terry's we drove for the party,

Complete with a lunch that was quite hearty!

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Ms. Gungan brought broccoli that sure did smell,

The kids chased a dog named Blue Bell!

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Everyone exchanged their Valentines,

Some with chocolates, some with rhymes.

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There was a Charlie Brown video,

and marshmallows and cocoa!

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Ms. Stacy was there with the boys and the twins,

Everything was laughs, hugs and grins!

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Now my holiday poem, I must end,

But never fear, President's Day is around the bend!

Definitely a Snow Day

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Plano with 8” to 10” of snow!!! We began this morning with math, until someone let Padme’ outside and realized there was glorious snow everywhere. We turned on the news to check the forecast. Abigail wrote “Kirkwood Academy” and passed it at the bottom of the TV screen. How could mom say no to that? Ok, so I did make them do four more subjects until the sun was out and it wasn’t quite so frigid!

There was plenty of time to play in the snow, make snow angels and snow ice cream! Caleb and Abigail made a snow man for the front and backyard. Frankie took pictures but she doesn’t like the cold and had no part in going outside.

At one point, I found the kids in the laundry room drinking hot cocoa and warming up their coats, gloves and scarves in the dryer! Too cute!

Scatch n' Sniff Valentine Cards

Valentine’s Day is quickly approaching and on Friday we will exchange cards with our friends. Today each of the children designed their cards in Publisher and we printed them on white cardstock. Next we mixed one package of Kool-Aid to two tablespoons of warm water. Using our ‘paint’ we accented various items on the cards. This works best on items printed off a laser jet not an ink jet.

When the paint dries it makes wonderful scratch n’ sniff cards! Caleb painted the hearts on his cards with cherry flavored Kool-Aid. Abigail created Lemon scented pearls on her valentine day pig and Frankie painted orange scented flowers on her cards.

It will take a little bit of time of the cards to dry, so try to prepare them at least a day ahead of time. With the left over ‘paint’ the girls painted scratch n’ sniff pictures!