Odds and Ends

We wrapped up another unit in the HOD Creation to Christ study.  So far, so good-the boy seems to like it.

We have done a few projects covering poetry (which I am sadly not real keen on-I dunno why poetry is not my thing but it isn't).  Thankfully, HOD's C to C covers Robert Frost who is one of my favorite poets (well just about only poet I truly like) so I am glad we're covering him. We have done a couple copywork lessons from some of his poems, to which my son is required to paint a page to paste it one.  The boy has done this without complaint and that makes me happy b/cuz he is not really my artsy child. Now personally, I would like to see some variance on the techniques and mediums used for these projects (but seeing how we've only done 2 of these I can guess I have to wait and see if other ones change up a bit) because too many similar styles will lead to boredom and I don't want that for my son...so I will get back to you on that...but here are the two we did...

The glare from the flash makes it hard to read...but the goal was accomplished.  Those are suppose to be sticks in a stream (blue one) b/cuz the poem talks about cleaning one out.

Maybe we should have glued a bunch of sticks on it instead to give it a more realistic feel...maybe we will still do that. :)

In the history section, we have had a project involving salt dough.  Now thankfully, this recipe didn't require baking it (you can read my salt dough fiasco post here) so that was good. What we failed to do is read ahead and clarify the directions because we messed up a bit.  But hey-that is what makes it truly our project!  LOL...

So we were suppose to make a cylinder shaped thing that had our names on it in Cuneiform. What we misread/misunderstood was that it was suppose to be in reverse relief. That means that whatever we wanted to have impress images onto something else, we had to cut away from to make those images stand out-we did the opposite instead. Our cylinders are marked into and cannot leave an impression. 

these are kind of blurry but I tried to get close so you can see the Cuneiform writing on them.

Son's on left, mine on right.   

The Cuneiform cylinders on left, building on right

We also had extra dough (yes, there is a story for this too). Now I should have read ahead to see what we'd be doing with it, but the boy was enamored with brick building parts of the stories we were reading and begged to make his own. So we did.  We got quite a few and then once they were dry, he created a small foundation of a building (like we'd find in an area of ruins)...we glued them together with flour/water paste and he happily built an old house.  What we were suppose to make was a clay tablet with writing and then use our cylinders to impress our name stamp on (like they would have done back then). So again-we proved ourselves to be rebels.  

View from the side, you can see the "mortar" that was used to hold these together. It is kind of fragile but I have a picture of it now, so if it collapses or ends up in the trash [which it will], I still have a photographic record of it. Helpful tip: taking pictures of all those projects your kids make is easier to store and keep than actually holding on to every single thing they create. Save the best ones and take a pic of the rest.

That said [that we're rebels], it also is my point. We took something and made it more personal to us (my son had much more fun and learned more by creating his project than if he had done the one assigned)...and since the brick making/building went hand in hand with what we had been reading about (tower of Babel, jobs of some people, etc.) I let him do it. That is the beauty of homeschooling-the project fit him, not the other way around. Years ago I would not have dared to overstep the guide's assignment. I am so over that now because life has taught me to adjust, personalize and focus on the child's learning style/interest, not what any particular lesson/program says they should/must complete. We learned, we laughed and we didn't burn any projects. Life is good.