penny pickles art: what we do

Lovin' big brother reading to lil'bro and lil'sis

This weekend we were a bit home bound - Ryan was working so the kids and I decided to capitalize on the home time and work on some crafts and projects we've had sitting here for a while.

We're big fans of the Olympics, winter in particular. Jon just loves it - more than the other two - he's decided he wants to be a snowboarder - we've tried to explain that we don't really live in an area that is conducive to snowboarding, but we could start off by skateboarding. He fits the skateboarding look - lanky, droopy drawers, long hair. So even if he can't balance on the board, he at least looks like he can. Blend if you will.

If you know Jon you know he asks a MILLION questions, he never quite got out of that "why?" phase. Which is a good thing for life-long learning, but can be trying when you just want to get through something. In any event, I have a friend who home schools her 8 children, yes you heard me 8. They are wonderful kids and a wonderful family, and run like a well oiled machine. She has a blog that she posts all sorts of goodies, menus, projects, homeschooling items, etc. One of her recent posts included a Olympic lapbook, that discussed the history of the Olympics through our current winter Olympics. Knowing Jon likes the background on things - I thought this would be perfect. You couldn't beat the price either - $3.75 for the .PDF file - download, print and you're ready to go. So I hopped on and purchased and we decided Saturday would be the day to start. Now, Jon had the misconception that we'd hammer out the whole thing in one day - when I explained that this could take a full month to complete he looked at me like I had two heads. After we started, he figured out that one day was not going to be enough to complete this book. Even though I knew that, I didn't know what I was getting into either.

We sat and read the directions, glued our folders together, prepping our base and then dug in. We started with a history of the Olympics. Innocent enough, but after the first sentence, we had to stop and talk about "sacred truce" and discuss the difference between sacred and secular. Then we had to discuss mythology and the Gods, an overview. Then as we read through the timeline, Jon started asking why the dates went forward and backward. So we had to take some time to discuss BC vs. AD. and explain Latin and also how the dates go forward at one point and then backward at another. At this point we're about an hour into it, he's still hanging on so we continue. Then we had to discuss roman numerals - so I found a converter online for him to see what the letters stand for and how to create numbers with them. Not easy. Who knew this one page would cause so many questions!

Eventually we got to learning about the Greek culture, which I always find fascinating since it's part of my and my family's heritage. We learned about their culture, politics and family life. It was just perfect for Jon and we then cut out our hard work and glued it to our board. One of like 12 for that particular board. This might take longer than a month.

We have our science fair today, and swimming ends this weekend, I think we'll be able to dedicate a couple of hours each day to working on our lapbook and our goal is to have it done before the next winter Olympics. Kidding. It's been fun, a learning experience for me and Jon, and I'm excited he's interested at all. What do the other two chickens do while we're working. Well Drew has become my little artist, I can hardly keep him in paper, so he was drawing Olympic events, snowboarders and the torch and such. Penny enjoyed working on her cutting skills and likes to cut confetti- which may sound silly, but she's learned to hold the scissors correctly and just about has enough hand strength to cut with one hand, which is no small feat for a new 3 year old. She's more of a color-inner, vs, her own artwork, but I am sure that will change in the next few months - Jon and Drew were around three when they started to draw people and things that actually looked like people and things.

That's it in a nutshell, a relaxing day that included a bit of learning and of course some awesome time together.