Finishing up Italy

We finished our study on Italy. We wrapped it up with a trip to the museum to see an exhibit that had Italian landscapes. I would show you pictures of that, but we learned that pictures were not permitted (me). Neither were cell phones (David). Or leaning against the wall (Riley). Or breathing. But I did get some pictures in the rest of the Art Museum of Oklahoma City! The glass art was definitely my favorite!

Pop art was a close second.

Riley looking at a painting of the Grand Canal in Venice. Just like in Papa Piccolo! Even the reflections were similar.

Glass art in the ceiling.

Garrett pretending to be introspective.
I love love LOVE big canvases.

One of the things we learned about when studying Italy and the Renaissance was how masks were very important. It was a time of a rebirth of art and masks were used as art and in drama. We each made our own "life masks." These are masks covered with pictures and words that represent the person.

We started by putting paper mache over half of a gallon jug turned upside down.

They took forever to dry...

After the newspaper dried we put one more layer of white paper over the top. When that was dry, we painted the background, then mod podged all of the words and pictures we had found in magazines to represent our personalities.

Tyler's...

Riley's...

Garrett's...

Cole's...

Mine...

Like my sushi nose? Thank you.

This was a really fun project! On to France!

Italy

We are going to be studying different countries and cultures at our house this year. For the month of September we chose Italy. We aren't quite finished, so it's going to spill into October a bit, too.

We have used the book Another Trip Around the World to learn facts about the country, Italian expressions, and culture.

We are doing a lot of Geography as we explore the different areas of the country.

Riley and Cole have done the Five In a Row books Papa Piccolo, and The Clown of God, both which take place in Italy. These books are so great for learning about the Renaissance time period and seeing clothes and scenes in Italy.

We even checked out some Italy travel books so we could look through and see all of the amazing tourist spots and different culture.

Garrett and Tyler have read biographies on Michelangelo and DaVinci and written papers.

We have really enjoyed the "Get to know the worlds greatest artists" series as we have studied Italian artists.

We learned about DaVinci's childhood and how he spent most of it roaming the land, sketching everything he could. One of the reasons his angels are so realistic is because of his extensive study and sketching of birds' wings. We spent some time outside observing and sketching.

Garrett read a biography on Michelangelo and presented it to us after writing a paper. It was so interesting learning all of the details and getting a glimpse into his life through a biography as opposed to reading facts about him in a textbook.

One thing Garrett learned is that Michelangelo possibly stood during a lot of his time as he painted the Sistine Chapel. He even wrote some poems and drew some sketches about how painful it was. We had always heard he was on his back on the scaffolding, so we did some research and found out that there are conflicting theories on this. Who knew!

We got this HUGE amazing book with close-ups of his work on the Sistine Chapel, then we tried to experience what it may have been like for him to paint upside down.

Another book we got from the library was an authentic Italian cookbook. We planned out and cooked a REAL LIVE Italian feast. We had Spaghetti Carbonara, homemade mozzerella breadsticks, and Italian Cassata. It was sooooo good!

This was the first time I had used pancetta. It's Italian bacon. Amazing.

Spaghetti Carbonara!

The Italian Cassata was fun to make too.

We set the table with all things fancy and even listened to Italian Opera while we cooked and ate. So not us, but a cool experience!

Cole and Riley singing along with the opera. Nice Italian chocolate mustache, no? (That's moo-stahsh)

Riley and Cole were so inspired by the feast and music they asked David to read The Clown of God to them at the table.

We have more Italy planned for the coming week, so stay tuned!

It happened again.

We love books.

We have gazillions of them. I just believe that if we need to learn about Thomas Edison, we can do that so much better with a biography of his life than anything else. I want my kids surrounded by great literature. But last week something happened that just about put me over the edge. It has happened before, and it happened again.

I once again bought a book I already owned.

This experience sent me on a crazed organizational venture.

Yesterday Riley and I pulled hundreds of books off of their shelves. We separated them into piles according to subject. We had piles for Historical events and people, Artists, Animals, Science, Five in a Row, and Geography.

Some time ago, some brilliant homeschool mom gave me the idea of color-coding books. And that's what we did. On all of the books about geography- countries, states, etc. we stuck a yellow label at the bottom of the spine. We did a different color for each subject.

As we put the labels on, I quickly typed the title onto a list.

Now I have a list of every reference type book that we own. Every biography, every space book, every whale book, all of it.

I put each subject list in a page protector and I hung them all next to the shelf. At a glance I can see what we have! And I put extra labels in the page protector so I can easily stick them on new books.


Now whenever we finish a book, it gets stuck back on the shelf with it's coordinating color. You can easily glance at the books and notice if a book is in the wrong place because the color will not match the rest. Even if they happen to get mixed up, it will be a breeze to put them back where they belong.

So no more trying to search through a sea of book spines to see if we have any books on Helen Keller. Or weather.

No more reserving Five in a Row books at the library because I forgot I had it on my shelf.

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Isn't it pretty?

And it's easy enough that even a preschooler could get the books back where they belong.

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Ahhhhh...color-coding.

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Color-coding=peace.

Lentil

Riley and Cole did Lentil by Robert McCloskey for Five In A Row this week. We had fun with this book!

We learned how to whittle, like Old Sneep in the book. Garrett and Tyler joined us for that.

I surprised Riley and Cole with toy harmonicas. They had fun playing with them and we used them to learn about acoustics by comparing the sound in the room, then in the shower.

All of the illustrations in the book were done with charcoal, so we did some experimenting with charcoal and smearing.

Of course we had to have some fun with lemons, since they are a big part of the book! We had a lemon tasting. Only rule? You have to take a big bite and slurp. No wussin' out. Here's how that played out...

Again, what's with the aversion to shirts? We have them. Lots of them.

Then we made lemon slushes with our lemon juice and a LOT of sugar...

Much betta...

Man! Sideways picture. And I'm not changing it now. I'm just not.

One of the themes of this book is practicing and becoming an expert at something. Riley and Cole have wanted a recorder since last year when my niece learned to play one in school. I bought these at Walmart for $10 each. They came with a step-by-step book on how to play. They are so excited! It's going to be fun to learn.

It was a fun week of learning about geography, social studies, human relationships, elements of a story, art, music, taste buds, patriotism and sound waves and falling in love with a new book.

Our first day 2009

Today was our first day of school for the year. We had a great time, and it was so much fun to get huddled back together and spend the day focused on what our year holds.

Garrett and I started American history. We are so excited about this! We are reading biographies and working our way through important events and people, starting with Columbus.

Riley and Cole are starting Astronomy, which is going to be so much fun with the Apologia book. Lots of cool experiments and projects in there! They are also doing Lentil from Five in a Row this week.

Tyler started some "How stuff works" type science and was typing away on his computer about some discoveries he made. He is also reading a George Washington Carver biography and doing a Beyond Five in a Row unit with that.

We are all going to be doing "Around the World" together this year. We are starting with Italy, and looked at some travel books today. Tomorrow we will explore the life of Leonardo Da Vinci. We will also be reading some Michelangelo and Galileo biographies, doing some authentic Italian cooking, and studying Italian art, history, and architecture. Stay tuned for more on Italy!

And, as always, we did our diet Coke/Mentos experiment. It has become tradition to do this every year on the first day. I guess it's kinda like our version of first day fireworks or something. Honestly, I don't see the getting-doused-with-Diet-Coke thing wearing out anytime soon. Being in the middle of a huge mess just never goes out of style for these particular kids. We did it 6 times.

We don't gots to wear no shirts or shoes in our homeschool. Ain't no dress code here.

Here's what Cole wrote in his journal today. He's right. We do always "Coke experiment."

Grammy and Grandpa had a cookie made to ring in the new school year...

And because clearly we are fans of the traditions, we ended our day by meeting David at Incredible Pizza. Just like our very first year. And second year. And third year.

I seriously can not even believe I get to do this with these kids. I am so very blessed.

Bat Caves!

Our final Planet Earth field trip! We finished studying caves a while ago, but just last weekend were able to do our field trip. This one was great fun because we not only got to go with friends, but most of our extended family went as well.
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This was on property that is owned by friends of David's parents. David explored these caves as a child. David's dad grew up just down the road from the property and spent his childhood exploring them as well. We did a lot of wading through creeks to get to our destinations!

The caves were long and narrow in some places!

Here we are after getting all the way through the first cave.

To say this was not a clean field trip would be a huge understatement.

Grace's OU headlamp.

Deciding where to go next...

Taking a roasted hot dog and s'more break!

The water cave...

It was a perfect day! We saw only a few bats, which was ok with me. We had so much fun exploring and experiencing REAL caves.

Fresh Water!

We are still wrapping up our Planet Earth studies. We wanted to wait until it was really warm to go to Turner Falls, a 70 foot natural water fall in the Arbuckle Mountains, to end our Fresh Water study. It was fun!