When I think about summer, I think of the sudden increase is dirt and mud everywhere! Baths are a frequent necessity. Strawberry and Kitty love to dig, apparently only encouraged by their brother, who is on a new emphatic hunt for “rocks” hiding beneath our lawn and play set.
The only way to get by is to embrace it, I know! I knew the perfect picture book to go along with dirt: I’m a Dirty Dinosaur! by Janeen Brian and Ann James.
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One thing I love about I’m a Dirty Dinosaur is that as the dinosaur gets progressively dirtier, he spends time relishing in the mess: first his messy feet, then his messy hands, and then his messy tummy, and so forth. Strawberry loves to act out the simple rhythmic pages for each messy part of the Dino.
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The most clever part of the simple art in this book is that the dirty brown that covers this adorable dinosaur in each picture is actually mud! To extend the fun, we decided to make our own mud paintings.
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Tag Archives: art class
Zoo Flakes: Symmetrical STEAM Snowflake Craft

Learning about snowflakes is a perfect lesson for learning about symmetry. When we read Zoo Flakes ABC by Will C. Howell, we got a unique alphabet of zoo animals as well as instructions for making our own symmetrical STEAM snowflake craft. Continue reading
Quill Painting to Learn about Then and Now
My daughter and I have been having fun together since my seven-year-old son has been at day camp for two weeks. (More on this to come!)
One fun thing we discovered as we dropped him off at the beach for his Beach Day was a large feather. Strawberry was delighted when I showed her how we can “tickle” each other with the feather. She proceeded to tickle herself all the way home. I mentioned, in passing, that in the past people would use a feather or “quill” as a pen, by dipping the tip into ink and writing with it. She was so excited by the idea that she wanted to try it! Hence, we had a morning of quill painting.

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Dinner is Art Class with a Scribble Tablecloth
It was a tired night for me. The kids were cranky, but we still had dinner to go before I could send them to bed! To make matters worse, it was a leftovers night (spaghetti) and I knew that my kids would whine about that too. My husband would not be home for quite some time.
It was up to me to change the mood of the evening. It was up to me to not go crazy as I did so.
It’s a good thing I have been reading The Giant Book of Creativity for Kids. I don’t see myself as a very creative person, but the author of the book certainly is. On a whim, I took up Bobbi Conner’s brief suggestion: I unrolled butcher paper on the table and grabbed some crayons. This was our tablecloth for the night.

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Hands-On LDS Devotional: Painting Lehi’s Dream
I love to start our school day with a simple devotional but I’m struggling with how to make it memorable for my young son when he has a sister dancing around distracting him. My son is seven now, so I know he can do more than simply listen to the words of scriptures. I know he understands.
The past few weeks we were revisiting General Conference talks but now we are back to our (very slow) study of The Book of Mormon.
This week I decided to ask Raisin respond to what we read (1 Nephi 8) by painting it. Continue reading
Music Appreciation in Our Homeschool

This week I decided it was definitely time to pull out the books and do something for more detailed music appreciation.
Last week, Raisin gave a very brief report about Mozart for his co-op Culture day. (The country was Austria). As we prepared for it, we found some favorite music to play after his presentation. He loved it!
Raisin recognized songs from his computer curricula (it is called “learning music”). He recognized songs from his bedtime CD of classical music we made for him. In fact, he wanted more music.
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