It's been a while...

Wow, I haven't touched my blog in a long long time it seems. But here I am again, and I will try my best to keep it up. We have started our third year of homeschooling, 2nd grade for D. I was going to start "serious" pre-school for C., but since she's not due to start K until 2014 anyway I decided to let her grow like a weed for maybe another year or so :) Somehow I  want to keep her "a baby" a little bit longer. Especially since she picks so much up from our lessons with D. anyway. So far our school year (all 2 months of it) was pretty busy. We went for a few hikes, D. and I saw a ballet and Denver Young Artists Orchestra performance for the first time, it seems that classical music becomes much bigger part of our life. D. finished his first hip=hop dance class and is asking to let him take it again. He's also preparing for his second science fair along with other homeschool students in our co-op. It's so beautiful outside, we can't get enough of these crisp, autumn days, when there's so much gold outside....

Last fall artwork for this year

We are done with fall. We had been so blessed with prolonged "season of golden trees" this year, but the wind the other night blew the last of the leaves away. I know the winter is not coming for people here is US until December 22, but for us December 1st is the official beginning. So this will be our last fall craft this year.
We wanted to do a leaf rubbing craft with crayons and watercolors. However our paper turned out to be too thick for that, and thin paper could not support amounts of watercolor without breaking apart. So, we just covered the whole sheet of failed leaves rubbings with colors of the fall, and cut trees out of the scrapbook paper. We made each tree out of two different pages, glued it on, traced with oil pastels and voila! I think it's very pretty.

Goodbye fall!

We are now looking forward to the festivities of holiday season :)

Soundtrack for today:  November Woods - Live to Dance

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

So many things to be thankful for this year- family, friends, we are truly blessed! Delightful meal is ready and we will sit down to it in a few minutes.

 We had a lovely peaceful day, warm and sunny. D. took a bike ride-he's getting so good at it! We read


And made a Thanksgiving collage-D. pasted a little note of what he's thankful for, a little thanksgiving song, some fall leaves on brighly painted background. We sealed the whole thing with the mod podge and it made a lovely centerpiece for our table. :)

Blessings to all friends and visitors!

change of seasons

As much as we miss California we really appreciate the change of seasons here.

Yesterday was a gorgeous late autumn day- clear skies with a few fluffy clouds, warm breeze...It's hard to believe that it could change overnight (having had a couple of heavy snowfalls this year already we are prepared:)), and yet the snow on the ground will be welcome.
Today -slightly colder, but still bright sun and fairly warm outside. We decided to talk again about seasons changing and what it means for plants and animals.
The book that helped us do it is Four Seasons:Uncovering Nature by Annie Jones - a beautiful present from friends. The book contains loads of information and is beautifully illustrated.

Another book we enjoyed is Autumn Story ( Brambly Hedge) by Jill Barklem. Sweet story and gorgeous illustrations.

After reading we did an art project , inspired by this picture I found on pinterest. This project took us two days to finish.
Day one: We sketched a forest scene on a large sheet of paper- some trees, animals. Second step was separating sheet vertically into four equal parts- one for each season (initially it was done in pencil, when D. was ready to color I erased pencil and traced a line with a white crayon). Day Two: D. traced outlines with crayons using appropriate colors for each season (bright green for fresh grass, gray-blue for snowy ground, dark brownish-green for autumn grass, etc.). The forth step is painting each part with watercolors. Add some outlining with oil pastels and glitter accents and voila!

Happy Weekend to All!

Autumn...

Our autumn was especially beautiful this year. Now all the gold is almost gone from the trees, but I still want to share it here.

We did a window display again. Last year we did the most beautiful watercolor leaves out of coffee filters for our window. This year we decided to use tracing paper and wax crayons for more "cartoonish" effect. The result is a very cheerful window :)

Happy Friday to friends and visitors!

Golden season

"...A melancholy time! So charming to the eye!
Your beauty in its parting pleases me -
I love the lavish withering of nature,
The gold and scarlet raiment of the woods....."

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin "Autumn"