This basically sums up our weekend....

Aurora and I both have cold and poor Gideon has an ear infection and a cold. He had a pretty rough night last night. :( 

We didn't do any preschool today at all, I had a newborn photo session this morning which takes a good amount of the day (it takes a LONG time for them to go to sleep so you can pose them usually) so between that and everyone feeling crummy we decided to take the day off.

We did do our last bit of worm study on Saturday though, it was a perfect rainy day so it was easy to catch a bunch of "wormies"

I had looked up ideas for worm units and seen the idea of letting the worms "paint" to see how they move. We (obviously) used non toxic paint and were carefull to get it all off the worms before letting them go again. After all, we like wormies. :)

Aurora LOVED this project. She finally got up her nerve to actually HOLD a worm (only the really small ones though)

Art Day

Yesterday we spent most of our school time doing art. We always have some coloring with each lesson but this time we went all out painting in our art journals. 

Aurora learned a bit about the color wheel and what colors shouldn't mix. 

She started with a white crayon. then a layer of watercolor to see that the watercolors resisted the crayon. 

Then added some acrylic paints, then finished with modge podged pictures she liked out of an old magazine.

 (waiting for the gesso to dry so she could start)

I didn't take any picture of it finished yet because we were so busy painting it started to get dark and I realized I better get supper going before Caleb got home! :) (He's been working pretty late this week so he hasn't gotten home before 7:15pm) 

Today Caleb is off (since he's worked four 14 hour days already this week) so we are taking the day off school and hopefully doing something fun. Perhaps taking Aurora to her first theater movie (Beauty and the Beast) if we don't do that today though we will try for Sunday probably. She's been pretty excited about it. 

In other news. I have been checking out some different artist and their techniques for art  class next year (not for Aurora for the missionary academy- see previous post about it) and I've found one that is just so interesting and really cool and he has videos of his painting (sped up) So i was checking out his website this morning and it looks like he might be a believer. I have to do a bit more digging because I don't like to just assume based on one sentence but I thought that was pretty neat. I was definitely not expecting that, it's just an added bonus!

Christmas and Art Class

Christmas has come and gone. I hope yours was wonderful. Our was pretty busy so I have to say, I am a little glad to be past it. I love Christmas but all the long days not at home were a little hard on the kids. Today Aurora was under the table and I asked her why she was hiding, then I realized she had fallen asleep!!

I have something exciting coming up, I will be teaching art at the missionary school here next year. I am pretty excited (but also a little freaked out) I taught art there for a year 8 or 9 years ago and loved it but then moved away, got married, had kids all that. The school is pretty small, it's the school I went to from 4th grade all the way through high school. The teachers are all missionaries most have been in other countries for many years before coming here. The students are all children of missionaries or of people training to be missionaries. The teachers all genuinely care about their students too, actually that kind of drove me a little crazy when I was in high school because if (more like when)  I was slacking off they would call me on it or talk to my parents.

Tomorrow is also a big day in our house. Miss Aurora is turning 3 tomorrow.!!

melty monster

I think Gideon migh be starting to teeth, he's chewing his hands a lot. 

I've been wanting to try melted crayon art with Aurora for months but haven't gotten around o it.Finally today we did.
We blocked out the shape of a monster with masking tape the picked our colors and hot glued them on the canvas

 then used the hair dryer for a while till it got really drippy

 then took off the tape and since some color had gotten under the tape we painted the monster

 she thinks he's pretty funny

it's starting to feel like Christmas!

Today Aurora did some finger painting. I've seen a ton of those hand print pictures on Pinterest so I thought we should try doing a Christmas tree one. I am sure someone has probably done this before but oh well.  Nothing new under the sun right?

So here is her hand print Christmas tree picture. The dots below it are presents.

 Yesterday we woke up to snow, so we played in it for a while.

 then Aurora and Gideon snuggled a bit.

Yes, he has a pink bumbo seat, that is what happens when you have a big sister... LOL :) He looks pretty funny sitting in it, he's still so little but he really like it.

Tuesday Lesson

We are making rock candy. We decided to make it green. This is only day 1 so we'll have to wait 3-7 days for it to be done, I am pretty excited to see how it turns out!!! (the recipe was from Science Bob)

 We made these today for learning to count money.

 And these for counting to 5 still. (This idea was from Pinterest.)

 Aurora learned about watercolors today. She was pretty into it. She really seems to like arty type stuff.

We also worked on the letter F, sewing and her verses. She's still working on Romans 6:23, I think that she has actually already memorize it but she sometimes like to be goofy and doesn't say it so we are not moving on yet. 

A

 A holding her baby brother, she really loves him.
And below is he first portrait, she drew daddy. I knew i had to take a picture of it before she erased it.

little footie prints

I think I mentioned that I like little hand prints, well I love little foot prints too, maybe even more.... And A LOVES making foot prints, and doing pretty much anything with paint actually. 

We had already primed these with Gesso a few days ago when we primed the larger canvas that we did our hand prints on, so they were all ready to go. 

A and I decided to do her's in the bathroom so there would be no fear of a mess. 

She looks grumpy but she was actually quite excited.

after it dried a bit I watered down some cinnamon brown paint (I added quite a bit of water to it) and used it to "age" the canvas a bit.

I found that using a dry spongy brush in circular motions worked best.

Then I thought, "hmm, it would probably be easier to do the "aging" before doing G's print."

Shortly after that he decided to have a nice dirty diaper so I took that opportunity to do his foot print. He was much more cooperative with his feet but still moved a bit, oh well.

Here are his cute little blue toes

And  here it is, like I said, he smudged his a bit but not enough to bother redoing the whole thing, that would be WAY too much work, and although I am a bit OCD I will just deal with a bit of smudge this time.

family prints

Now that we are a family of four and our sweet boy is here, I wanted to create something with all of our hand prints on it. I love all the different sizes of our hands right now. A's hands look so big now when they seemed so small only weeks ago.

Originally I wanted a long short canvas and do all of our prints in a row, but I couldn't find one the right size at our local art store (or anywhere else that has them) So I came up with plan B which I am quite happy with actually.

So, first off, prime the canvas (the two small ones are for another project, I have quite a few on the go at the moment) and let it dry. I primed mine a couple days ago and just finished off tonight.

One blue hand print from hubby and a burgundy one from me...
Let it dry... (doesn't take too long for acrylic paint to dry)

 Paint up A's hand, remind her to hold very still and spread her fingers and not to move until I lift her hand off. Remind her again, then push down her hand. (she obeyed quite well)

Then the tricky part, getting a newborn's handprint... ya, if you've ever tried you understand. They like to clench their little fists and are surprisingly strong. I was quite successful when A was a baby and a little less so this time but oh well.

Hubby helped by holding G, we tried while he was asleep but when the cold paint touched his hand....well he obviously woke up, but still he did pretty well. Not the best hand print ever but it will do.

(sorry for the crummy pictures, it's dark out so my natural light is gone)