It's All Egypt

I might have mentioned a time or two how obsessed my 7-year-old son is with Egypt.

A few weeks ago his clay teacher completely adjusted the schedule to include an Egyptian theme for the week. I think she did it more to not have to hear Jack ask when they were going to do something related to Egypt. HA!

She had the coolest set of Egyptian heiroglyphic stamps that she purchased many years ago from the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York during her own son's Egyptian phase.

I don't know why it never dawned on me to check out their online gift shop before. It is an art lover's paradise. Not only did I get a set of similar stamps for Jack for Easter, but I also came across some educational resource materials.

We started our Egyptian study this morning, and if all continues to go well, I'm considering purchasing their other collections down the road.

We kept it simple today. We talked about the land and people of early Egypt. Then we worked on our own project using Play-Doh.

Taking the map located in our resource guide, we created our version of ancient Egypt, complete with the Nile River, palaces, pyramids, the eye of Horus and an Egyptian army (the brown dots represent people).

The clumps on the left side were my three-year-old daughter's contribution!

Trucks

Did you know trucks were considered fine art?

A collage of truck paintings

It appears the artist John Himmelfarb has always known this.

Today we visited his exhibit at our local art museum. We've been to a lot of museums all over and have seen some great exhibits, and this one ranks with the best of them.

Himmelfarb's works are exhibited in large museums in cities like Chicago, London and New York, which makes our small-town museum pale in comparison. He works in so many mediums: watercolor, acrylic, clay, bronze, wood and the list goes on and on.

The artist, a native of the midwest, completed this painting during several Saturday sessions at the museum. The finishing signature date is less than a month old. Watching him work would have been remarkable to see, and I hate we missed out on it.

And we took in a few of the other works of art in the other gallery while there.

The Whale

The Goddess

Notice anything particularly different about this last piece? It's a sculpture made completely out of shoes!!!

Space Explorations

We've been studying a lot about outer space during our science Friday lessons, so much so that science Friday isn't occurring only on Fridays.

I found some lectures on Open Yale that I used to supplement our first few lessons. From those we were able to discuss exoplanets and the geocentric model in-depth.

These last few weeks we've been working from a book studying the sun, Mercury and Venus.

We've even thrown in a few experiments. The purpose of this one was to use the butter as the representation of the rock (a solid), melt it on the stove (to form the liquid) and then pour it over a cup onto flour to represent the lava running onto the surface of Venus.

After letting it sit a while, we came back to feel the surface once the "lava" had cooled.

And because Jack is so into planets at the moment, I'm trying to plan some cool daily or weekend trips in March or April. There's a planetarium nearby. I've heard great things about the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, GA and want to include that on our list. There's also a Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL that would be great to visit at some point along the way.

Life's Stages

Several years ago I came to the realization that life is often made up of bi-polar opposites competing with each other on a daily basis. Most periods of my life can't be defined as all bad or all good. It's always a combination of the two in every particular season and time period.

And ever since having children it seems like life gets compartmentalized into things we like to refer to as stages. There's the baby stage, the crawling stage, the tantrum stage and on and on it goes.

We currently seem to be in the midst of two stages:

1. Aggravation Mode - I grew up with two brothers and know all too well that boys like to aggravate. I also know that this stage is likely to last the next 20 years, at least, for Jack. The problem is that aggravation stages are annoying to parents and little sisters. At first Matt got a kick out of Jack's aggravating habits. Now we're all a bit short tempered, especially when it's your time to be on the receiving end of the aggravating.

2. Resisting Training Mode - Mattie's nature has always meant she initially resists any correction or instruction. She likes to quickly change the subject or pretend you're not talking if she's getting in trouble. But even Jack, the one who typically minds very well, has been grumbling, complaining and eye-rolling a lot these days. How happy I was to come across a blog that spoke to this very subject earlier this week. Sally Clarkson is my go-to resource for encouragement and advice, and her gentle reminder that all children resist training - that it's part of their nature - allowed me to breath a sigh of relief and carry on in my motherly duties of training a child in the way he/she should go.

No matter what the season or stage, I know another one is just around the corner. With it will come the good, the bad and a whole lot of in between.

Discovering New Trails

I love finding new paths to travel. Especially when those paths are less than a quarter mile from my home.

So with plentiful sunshine on a cold winter's day, yesterday found us on a short hike.

A biker passing through stopped to fill us in on the 3-mile trail as we began the walk. He was nice enough to offer to take a family picture because, as he said, "this is what memories are made of."

We didn't attempt to walk the entire trail. I doubt we made it a mile before turning back, but unlike the trails we often take at the local ecology preserve, we were able to bring our dog on this one.

We found mushrooms:

We found awe-inspiring trees:

We found remains that got phrases like "holy moly" from Jack:

And because winter is my favorite time to be in the woods, I don't think it will take us long to make it back to this trail to see what else it holds.

Sunday Funday

What is it about Sunday afternoon that perpetually invites adventure and leisure?

Looking back, I think the nostalgia related to the longevity that only a Sunday afternoon seems to offer is where many of my childhood memories come from. 

And hoping to make more memories for my own children to add to their store, this Sunday, a 60 degree day in January no less, brought back that sentimental feeling of old.

We've had the same Sunday afternoon for three weeks straight: bike riding and basketball playing.  Seeing as our driveway veers straight down, it's not the best place for either. So our adventure takes place in a local school parking lot.

Add to that some shadow capturing.

And some acorn finding to coincide with someone's current Chip and Dale fetish.

And that about rounds out our Sunday Funday adventures!

Painting with Salt

Last week we discovered something new: adding salt to a painting.

The technique works only with watercolors, and we've experimented with it a few times attempting to get it right.

Our first attempt occurred while doing our abstract painting of Humpty-Dumpty.

We didn't quite get the effect we hoped to see, and I was thinking it was because I rubbed the salt off too quickly. There should be splotchy patches in the places where the salt adheres to the paint.

Yesterday was a second attempt with our snowmen portraits. We were going for the effect of the paint looking like snow, but since the kids wanted to paint the background the color of their choice, not so sure this attempt could be considered a success either. I left the salt on overnight and did notice more of the appearance of the splotches, though they aren't visible in these pictures.

Today was the third attempt. Not trying for effect. The kids just love throwing salt onto their paintings. Maybe that was what we were seeking all along!