Tuesday's Treasures {19}

This week ...

This week has been a rather busy one and as a result Tuesday's Treasures is a day late my apologies. This morning my order from The Book Depository arrived.  I confess I am impressed.

I was over at Confessions of a Homeschooler and Erica has put together a unit study titled: The World's Greatest Artists Vol 1 (and the best part is it's FREE). I have been watching her children's adventures and thought that Sir N might enjoy doing some of those things. I downloaded the FREE instructors guide which contains: Lesson plans for each, week Lap Book printables, Artist Notebooking page, Art Puzzles and Artist Flashcards.



All I had to do was invest in the source books which were AU$6-75 each including postage.  The source books are from the series: Getting to Know the worlds Greatest Artists by Mike Venezia. Six of the eight books arrived in the mail today and I spent a while looking through them and I confess I am impressed.  One or two of the pictures I don't want to show Sir N but I will simply cover them with a sheet of paper, however the information about the artist and their style is excellent.  What I know about the art community and art appreciation is minimal so I will be learning alongside Sir N on this journey.

The eight artist you will meet in the series are:

• Pablo Picasso
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Jackson Pollock
• Claude Monet
• Henry Matisse
• Georgia O’keefe
• Michelangelo
• Leonardo Da Vinci

These are NOT affiliate links.

The books are available from Amazon where you can take a sneak peak inside each one as well as from The Book Depository.

To see the study in action take a look at what Erica and her family have done so far:

• Picasso Study
• Van Gogh Study

I shall be starting this adventure with Sir N next week.

What have you been using for art and the study of artists ?

Blessings

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!

There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library and add your post in the linky below. 

Homeschool Mother's Journal {2}

The Home school Mother’s Journal began as a single post on a Friday morning over at The Homeschool Chick, and turned into a link-up for homeschool mothers across the blog-O-sphere to share a piece of their journey with one another each week. The link party is open from Friday to Monday so join me in The Homeschool Journal and lets encourage one another on our homeschool journey.

In my life this week…

 
In our homeschool this week…

• This week our rhythm started to fall into place and Sir N  (Can you see my smile?)
• 
• We took out our timeline book and coloured in some time line figures and added them to the book.  I love Amy Pak's drawings and thanks to Sonlight the figures are pre gummed so all we had to do was colour in, peel and stick.
• We worked on skip counting by 10's and we are practicing our numbers between 10 and 20. 
• There are many little kits available at Spotlight at the moment, as a treat after each days completed work we have made something.

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…

• Find a few things that work really well for you and stick with those.  It is far better to do two or three things with excellence than ten things with mediocrity.

I am inspired by…

• Some really simple home made decorations and craft ideas for Christmas 

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

• We went to a friends to celebrate his 7th birthday yesterday.
• Visited Granny and had lunch with her.
• Catching up with a new friend and her son today after lunch.
• Tonight we are going with a friend to see Medimime presentation of The Grinch who Stole Christmas.(update: This was super Fantastic We enjoyed it so much. photo and video to come)
• Tomorrow we will be going to a surprise birthday party for a cousin / nephew.  Can't wait to see his face !

We made some pink, green and purple cupcakes and went to visit a friend to celebrate the children achieving their swimming certificates and progressing to the next level.  Well done E for getting your Maxi Pink, great job L for achieving your Maxi Green and well done to Sir N for achieving your Swordy Green.  Proud of you three !


My favorite thing this week was…

• Watching Sir N's excitement about going camping with his Dad and some friends for a Father Son night away at Mount Franklin Reserve.  It's been wonderful watching his enthusiasm and joy at helping to pack and prepare.

What’s working/not working for us…

• Using our five finger mission AM / PM chart is working well and Sir N is thriving on having his own list to work from.

Questions/thoughts I have…

• I have been pondering the structure of my days and thinking about character training, instilling excellent values and how to make this a natural part of our day.

Things I’m working on…

• First Time Obedience for Sir N and training myself to stop being a repeating parent.  I am quite surprised at how often I repeat requests / instructions. I think I am the one in need of more training rather than my children.
• I also want to redo the chore list and make one with pictures that Sir N can use by himself.
• I would also like to have a regular time each week when the two of us can invest in a Nature Journal.  I have been looking around Handbook of Nature Study Blog and have been inspired to make this a regular part of our homeschooling.

I’m reading…

• Have not managed to read much this week.  I have been playing with my latest gift from Paul.  He has blessed me with a Kindle. I have been putting off purchasing one of these as I really love the feel and smell of a real book especially a brand new book.  I love the weight of a book in my hand when I read. I must confess though that I am impressed with my Kindle and loving the free books on Amazon.

I’m cooking…

• Gluten Free Pizza.
• Kransky Potato Bake

I’m grateful for…

• The faithfulness of friends.  
• The joy of giving and sharing new knowledge.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…
I love this photo because of the pleasure Sir N took in drawing in his nature journal.

Blessings

This post is linking to:

Five Finger Charts

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I heard about and saw these charts in action in New Zealand about 10 years ago.  I think the idea is originally from the book What Every Child Should Know Along the Way by Gail Martin

The idea is that you chose five things that your child can do unsupervised every morning and evening. You make a visual chart to help them accomplish these tasks. The goal is supervised Independence.  It also frees you up from having to repeat every morning go get dressed, go brush your teeth etc.

The next step is to find pictures that represent the five things you would like your child to do by themselves.  You can use the net, Microsoft clip art (this is what we used), photographs or words if your child can read.

• We used two A4 sheets of paper.
• Next trace around each hand. One on each sheet. (or both on one sheet)
• In the one hand place a sun to represent the morning chart.
• Next place in order the things you would like your child to do.
• On the second hand place a moon to represent evening things.

Place the chart in a spot where your child can easily refer to it.

Sir N calls them his missions.  So this evening while I was busy in the kitchen and it was time for the evening routine I simply called him and said it's time to do your missions.  He took himself off to his room and went through the list and waited for me in bed when he was done.  He so enjoyed doing his jobs.









Blessings