Day 32: Macro Photography

Last summer I was helping my mother clean some stuff out of her house when I came across about 4 years worth of the old National Geographic World magazine that I received when I was a kid about her age.

In about a third of those magazines they had a macro photography guessing game--nine photographs of some common item taken VERY close.

So today Maren played around with the macro setting on my little digital camera.

Unfortunately, the macro only worked at about 4 inches from the subject. Fortunately, my little camera has a feature in which you can zoom in on a smaller portion of the picture to create exactly the effect Maren was after.

She found out that focus was absolutely crucial to being able to have a chance at guessing what the object was. She also found out that she could play around with photographs that had already been taken, finding items to zoom in on and put in her guessing game.

So, here they are. I'll reveal the answers in my next post!

Day 31: Chalk Art

Today Maren decided NOT to choose an art from our jar. Instead she decided she wanted to draw with chalks. So she and her brother pulled out the paper and the chalk pastels and messed (literally, because chalk is not the cleanest medium in the world) around with color and shading and adding detail.

Simple. Fast. Self-exploration.

They drew leaves mostly. Maren, already in the Christmas Spirit, also drew a lovely Christmas wreath.

Day 30: Photography

Last Thursday, November 3rd, Maren chose photography.

Both she and my son, Ian, have been curious about photography. I was trained as a photographer in college and still have all my old SLR cameras and lenses, though I seldom use them anymore. The days of film photographer are fast coming to a close. I don't know how long we'll even be able to purchase film, let alone get that film processed. And the old days of standing for hours in the darkroom with your hands steeped in chemicals are nearly over as well. *sigh*

But we decided to pull everything out and spend an afternoon goofing around and exploring the features of film photography.

I showed them the cameras and lenses and how they work, exploring the shutter and how to adjust shutter speed, exploring the aperture of the lenses and how to adjust it, talking about what happens to the photograph when you adjust those, talking about light meter and middle gray. All those technical terms that amateur photographers need know nothing about anymore, as we snap hundreds of pictures on our digital cameras without much thought to any of those adjustments, with a simple camera that does all those adjustments for us.

But when I was learning photography, I purposefully bought a camera with NO fancy auto features. Even the light meter was a simple one. In that way, I forced myself to learn and know those adjustments and what they did. Eventually it came automatically.

We went to the store and bought some film (Fuji. Couldn't find Kodak--which I preferred.) and headed to a nice spot near our house to snap pictures.

Their assignment was to take a series of pictures exploring aperture adjustment and its effects on the photograph.

The aperture of a camera lens is a device that closes down the lens. The iris in your eye is an aperture that closes down to restrict the amount of light entering your eye. The aperture restricts the amount of light entering the camera. The smaller the number of the aperture, the larger the aperture is opened. Smaller number, greater light. The same is true of the shutter setting--the smaller the number, the greater the light. In actuality, those numbers represent fractions, and as all homeschool moms know, the larger the denominator of a fraction, the smaller the number actually is. So a shutter setting of 30 is actually a setting of 1/30th of a second, which is a much larger number than 1/250th of a second and a longer exposure, allowing in more light. The same is true for the aperture, which is an actual measurement of the diameter of the aperture opening. So an aperture of f1.4 is actually 1/1.4, slightly less than 1 inch across.

The aperture opening does some interesting things to a photograph. If the aperture is wide open (f1.4) then only thing that will be in focus is the thing the photographer focuses on and everything else in the picture will be out of focus. If the aperture is closed down to its smallest opening (aperture opening sizes can vary depending on the lens) then everything--or nearly everything--will be in focus.

Why would you want that? Because it can make for an interesting picture.

Here's a photograph that's available on the Wikipedia entry on "F-number," which is the number used to show the aperture size. F-number or F-stop.


The photo is divided diagonally in half, the upper left half showing the photograph with a narrowed aperture, the bottom right half with an opened aperture.

We have yet to get the photographs processed. I'll post some as soon as we do.

In my opinion, that's one reason why the age of film is, perhaps, better off dead. I can take a picture and view it instantly with digital. Unfortunately, my simple little everything-is-automatic digital camera doesn't have settings to manually change my aperture. I have to take what it gives me. Someday I'll have a lot of money to blow on a digital camera that WILL have manual aperture and shutter settings.

Day 29: Exploring Questions

Today Maren drew out Architecture, and we asked ourselves the question, just exactly what is architecture?

We found this short little video that explains the basics of architecture pretty well, using a cup as a reference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=GffUqxftkGo

We then talked about that definition in relation to buildings. First I asked Maren to define a what a building is--a structure used by humans to cover up the different things they do. We then looked at the key components of a building--walls, roof, foundation.

Then we looked around on the internet for some pictures of some cool buildings and considered them in terms of their use and the presence of those key components, and how their architects created something marvelous using them.

We found a particularly nice collection of architectural examples on this Youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK0OVNq8DLo&feature=related

Or this fine example:

Day 28: Masterworks--Monet

Today Maren chose Masterworks.

We logged onto the website for the Art Institute of Chicago and searched under the 'Collections' tab for Claude Monet.


We could have learned in greater detail about Claude Monet's life and training, but that's for another section--Masters. Instead we just looked at his art and talked a little bit about the style of art that he painted and how his art changed through his life.

We also found out that when Monet was a teen, he liked to draw Caricatures of people--another great idea for a future JSWA.


We looked at a number of his early Caricatures and twenty or so of his paintings. We looked at how, especially as Monet got older, his paintings concentrated on the 'impression' of light, dark, and color--the very definition of the Impressionist style. How his paintings are less about subject matter than they are a recording of light. Monet painted whole series of paintings the same subject painted at different times of the day, and different times of the year, under different weather conditions, etc. We saw how his age and growing blindness had an impact on that perception, and how his painting became more and more about those ethereal effects of light, dark, and atmosphere.

Maren has good vision. I do not. I had her put my glasses on to look at some of the paintings, to show her what the landscape might have looked like to Monet.

Day 27: Cartooning

Today for drawing, we decided to explore the wonderful world of comics.

We looked at the newspaper comics and a few graphic novels to look at the wide range of possibilities in drawing comics--from the very realistic to the very simplified.

We thought about lines and shapes, we talked about using simple lines to create expression, we explored different ways to create eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair, heads.

And then Maren created!

This is her original comic book character, Na-nu-Na-nu:

Day 26: Edible Architecture

Today's challenge was to create a structure using pretzel sticks and frosting.

Fortunately for Maren we not only had frosting, we had frosting with SPRINKLES!! Which made this project MUCH more exciting.

It was a quick and easy one, just a simple log cabin:

My 17-year-old son thought he'd join in today, too. His lofty aspirations, however, just weren't particularly suited to the materials:

Yes, they were yummy!

Day 25: One LAZY week!

OK. Not exactly lazy.

You see, we're a marching band family.

We've been homeschooling for eight years now, but our children have also taken advantage of a state statute that requires the public schools to allow us to participate in classes and activities that we can't or don't provide for ourselves. This rule also applies to students who attend any school (public or private) that doesn't provide a class or activity they are interested in. So if the high school across town, for example, doesn't have a girls water polo team, but our local school does, the girls from the across-town school who want to play water polo have to be allowed to try out for the local-school team.

So my kids have taken band and orchestra through our local jr. high and high school. My oldest daughter went the orchestra route because of an interest in string instruments. She now plays some classical on her viola and plenty of Irish/Scottish traditional music on her violin, teaches Irish fiddle, and plays in her own Irish band.

My son was attracted to the band side of things and chose the clarinet, with which he has done very well and is now in a leadership position in the local high school bands program, including his first and true love--marching band.

My youngest, Maren, is jr. high age now and just started learning the trumpet, with the goal to play in the high school marching band as soon as she is old enough to qualify.

But having a kid in marching band is no easy thing. High school marching bands require a BUTTLOAD of parent support--from fundraising, to building props, to helping maintain instruments and uniforms, to chaperoning, to helping stage and set up the field show. The list goes on and on.

This week we're approaching the end of the marching band season, and it just keeps getting busier and busier. BUT IT IS WORTH IT!!!

That cuts into JSWA, so as far as JSWA is concerned, we've been lazy this week.

Monday, Maren worked more on her architectural rabbit house.

Tuesday (yesterday), we spent the entire day at a marching band competition, leaving the house at 9:30 AM and not getting back home until 7:00 PM.

Today, we get a normal day, which means we actually got around to doing JSWA! YAY!!

Maren chose crafts today. She wasn't hugely excited about that.

Well, let me rephrase. She would probably have been SUPER excited if I had gotten all our craft stuff out and let her spend 30 minutes deciding what to do and then doing a big project that would have taken 2 hours to complete.

I didn't let her do that today. Instead, I said, "Hey! Let's make something for Halloween!"

That piqued her interest.

"But it needs to be something quick and easy."

"Oh." Not so interesting.

I showed her my three-dimensional paper pumpkin

--a craft I'd learned many years ago--and asked her how we could make it different. Not a pumpkin. Something else. We talked about how anything that was roughly ball-shaped would work. We looked around at our Halloween decorations and decided a bat could maybe work. So could a skull.

Skulls are interesting.

We we talked about how the top of a skull is pretty much a ball. I showed her a small ceramic skull we have, and showed her that if we could remove the facial bones from it, it would be pretty much a baseball in size and shape.

She said, "It wouldn't hit like a baseball."

No. It wouldn't, would it?

Toss....WHAM!!! SHATTER!!!!!!! It might be kind of exciting in a ghoulish, creepy sort of way.

At any rate, making the observation about the rounded top of a skull helped us design our skulls. We simply traced a round object--in this case a lidded bowl--on white card stock, then added a shape at the bottom to suggest a jaw, then traced and cut them out.

OK, let's take a minute here. Whatever the shape is, it DOES need to be vertically symmetrical. You need to be able to fold it in half vertically, mirror image on both sides.

You need eight of them--whether they be skulls or circles for pumpkins, hearts for valentines, white circles for snowballs--the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. You also need a ninth circle (just a circle) for the base.


DO NOT FOLD THE BASE CIRCLE.

BUT, DO FOLD the skulls in half from top to bottom.


Now, at about the middle of the round top of the skull, cut a slit that is perpendicular to the fold and extends about 2/3 of the distance from the fold to the unfolded edge. Be careful not to cut too far or the figure will be weakened and may not hold up. Use a ruler and a pencil to draw guidelines on them if that's helpful.


Next, using a black marker, make skeleton faces on each skeleton piece. Skeleton faces aren't hard. Just two large black circles just below your cut, two long thin vertical ovals that meet in the middle, and lines for the mouth and teeth, as shown:

You can even make cute faces by adding tongue or bucktooth lines, and leaving white spots inside the black eyeholes to make cross-eyed skulls or other goofy looks.

Next, slide the eight slitted skulls onto the single circle, inserting the edge of the circle into the slits you made. Space them evenly and open them out so their edges touch each other.


Voila!!

Your skull should sit upright, and can be used to decorate a table or desk. You can also attach a string or fishing line to the center of the central circle to make it a hanging ornament for a fun crafty Halloween decoration that, if you take care of it, can be re-used for several years. If you have the pieces laminated, they can last even longer! And think of the possibilities for other holidays! Christmas ornaments made from shiny scrapbook papers, covered with glitter or stickers! Valentines gifts! Even red, white, and blue squares for Independence Day!

Yes, basically we were being lazy today. Taking an easy way out on a hectic week.

But such is the beauty of homeschool--to have the time to take it easy when YOUR family needs it.

Day 24: Bunny Torture

Today Maren chose Textiles.

And being the bunny-loving girl that she is she decided to involve her bunny again. I suspect we'll have quite a few projects involving her bunny this year. Here he is. His name is Thumper. I think you've met him before and you'll probably see him again.


Poor Thumper puts up with a lot. Today he gets to put up with being costumed for Halloween. Yes, you read correctly. Maren decided to make a costume for him.

Just a simple costume.

Thumper will be Super Bunny!

Which means making a cape for him.

We have some more scraps of the dark blue satin hanging around that Maren used for the simple stuffed toy in a previous JSWA (which still needs to be finished, by the way). She brought the bunny in, measured him to see how long and wide his cape should be, cut a rectangle of fabric, then sewed one end of it closed to make a casing for some 1/4" elastic.

She then used a scrap of light blue satin to cut out a capital letter B which she glued to the cape using spray adhesive.



After that she put the elastic in and bunched the fabric in the center of the elastic and sewed it securely in place, then remeasured the elastic around Thumper's neck and stitched the elastic closed.


Voila! Super Bunny cape. As you can see from this picture I have devolved into one of THOSE homeschool moms who let their kids hang around all morning in their pajamas. *sigh*

I'm not sure how Thumper will react to wearing his costume. That remains to be seen. He isn't too thrilled about wearing his bunny walking harness (yes, you read that right). So I have my doubts that he'll tolerate his cape. Maybe if we distract him with enough carrots and other yummies.

Day 23: The Fly

Today Maren was lucky enough to choose Film again.

Remember Charlie Chaplin?

Well for JSWA Maren wrote, directed, and shot a short silent film titled "The Fly," starring yours truly with her big brother Ian on props.

Unfortunately it takes FAR too much computer power than Google allows to download the video onto Blogger, so you'll just have to be content with a synopsis:

A bum (me) is peacefully sleeping on a park bench, only to be disturbed by a pesky fly (a small black pom-pom attached to the end of some fishing line on a fishing rod, operated by Ian).

After several attempts to get the fly to buzz off (pun intended), the bum grows increasingly frustrated until she rolls up a piece of newspaper and attempts to swat the fly. The fly lands on the wall behind the bench, on the bums forehead, and finally on the camera lens where the bum finally succeeds in swatting it.

THE END!

It took Maren several takes and some creative adjustments and additions along the way, but we ended up with a 2 minute 52 second long silent film. OK. It's not technically silent, unless you watch it with the sound turned down on the TV.

Our next step will be to find some music to go with it, then we'll play it for the family on Monday night for Family Home Evening.

Ta-Da!

Day 22: Going Crazy With Crafts

Today Maren chose crafts.

I knew this one would take longer than our goal of 15 or 20 minutes, so I just let go and let it happen. It turned into almost 2 hours, but it was fun.

The goal was to use whatever crafty supplies or other odds and ends we could find around the house to make a creature, real or imaginary.

My oldest daughter, off school today, decided to join in.

After searching the house and finding a few craft supplies (google eyes, small pom-poms, felt, hot glue) we searched further and pulled out our beading stuff for wire, found some soldering wire and sparkly paints and yarn balls, and then they began to create.

The results?

Behold, the Pom-pom Dragon (complete with treasure chest) and the Bumblecorn!

Day 21: What a Rube!

What's a rube?

A Rube Goldberg machine, of course!

Named for early 20th century cartoonist of the same name, a Rube Golberg machine is a complicated and often ridiculous machine constructed to perform a very simple task.

As in this Rube Goldberg original:



The explanation from Wikipedia:

"The "Self-Operating Napkin" is activated when soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C), which throws cracker (D) past parrot (E). Parrot jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and lights automatic cigar lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K) which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M) and allow pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin."

What, do you ask, does this have to do with Jump-Start With Art?

Oh, my. I had hoped you would have learned enough already to not need to ask that question.

Rube Goldberg machines are ALL about creativity! There is even an annual Rube Goldberg competition that is entered by college science departments from all over the country. So there's crossover there--science meets art.

We categorize this type of creativity under 'Design,' which is what Maren chose today. She wasn't too thrilled about that choice at first. But when we decided to explore the wonderful and entertaining world of the Rube Goldberg machine, her interest piqued.

We began by viewing one of THE most amazing (and large) Rube Goldberg machines I have ever seen. It's in a music video by the music group OK Go, titled This Too Shall Pass. Here it is:

THIS TOO SHALL PASS

Holy cow!!

After watching this, and a few other Youtube videos, we began the process of designing our own Rube Goldberg machine that will crack a hard-boiled egg. How very ridiculously unnecessary a task is that? In future days we'll work on that machine, probably designing from the end backwards. I imagine we'll be cracking a lot of eggs before we're through.

Day 20: More Charlie Chaplin anyone?

Today Maren chose 'Drawing and Painting.'

To ride along with her new love of Charlie Chaplin, she decided to paint Chaplin in black and white.

She got online and found a few images of him, chose one, photoshopped it, printed it, and painted it.

As we played around with photoshopping it (mainly playing around with what it looks like in different colors, what it looks like blurred or sharpened or with enhanced contrast), we talked about light and shadow, reviewed what we've learned in the past about drawing being little more than copying lines and shapes, and that to most successfully paint Charlie Chaplin, she should start looking at him not as a person, but as a blob made up of different shaped blobs of white, gray, and black. So she painted white, gray, and black blobs to get this:



As you can see, she did pretty darn good, with the exception of the face. That's not unusual. We, as humans, have such a close connection to the human face that even the best of us have a hard time separating ourselves from it to the point that we can simply view it as a series of lines and shapes of color.

Day 19: SILENCE!

Today Maren chose Film.

We haven't yet done film, so I thought we'd start our study of film at the beginning--silent movies!

We found a series of Charlie Chaplin films on Netflix and watched one called "The Rink."

It was hilarious! And CLEAN! And apparently people at the beginning of the 20th century didn't read very quickly, because the word placards (You know, when they stop the film to show what someone is saying or give some narration on a beautifully decorated placard that was set up in front of the camera?) were kept on the screen long enough to read them 5 or 6 times.

As we watched we also talked about how the music would usually be played live by a band or an organist or a pianist while the movie played.

When I was a kid there was a restaurant near my home in Salt Lake City called Pipes and Pizza. You'd order your pizza, sit down, and watch silent movies while a live organist played this amazing old-fashioned organ that was set up on a big pedestal at one end of the room. Very cool. Here's a picture of the restaurant at Flicker: Pipes and Pizza Photo. Notice the added feature of the windows through which to view the organ pipes, and the old-fashioned belt-driven ceiling fans.

We also talked about how the first silent films were an offshoot of the Vaudeville stage tradition, so the acting was very gregarious, the makeup gaudy, the sets simple and straightforward. Early films were really nothing more than stage productions on film.

Buster Keaton, on the other hand, made some huge strides in changing that. In his film The General, Keaton takes his crew on location and plants the camera on a moving train.

The history of the early filmmakers is fascinating. Charlie Chaplin and others were instrumental in the formation of United Artists that began as a group of independent filmmakers who, in 1919, wanted to support greater freedom in their art rather than be swallowed up by the controls of the Studio system, which was already growing very early in the century. In fact, the term "The inmates are taking over the asylum," came from the head of Metro Pictures who said it of Chaplin's group and UA.

United Artists today is a subsidiary of MGM. Sad.

But that's all boring if you're a 7-year-old.

It's boring if you're 12, too, apparently. *sigh*

But we do have a new fan of Charlie Chaplin in the house.

Day 18: Building Things

Today Maren chose Architecture again and decided to build a structure using sticks and electrical tape.

That's just up her alley. She's always loved doing that sort of thing and has, since she was a small child, begged to have access to hammers, nails, and spare wood. When she was small the prospect frightened me. Now that she's older, the prospect still frightens me, simply because she's bigger and stronger now and capable of making a much larger mess and using more dangerous tools than she did when she was small. Plus, we have a lot more spare wood in our yard than we did back then. She could, if she put her mind to it, build a whole house back there.

Which is what she's doing today. Except it's a house for her bunny.

We talked about the strongest shape in architecture and found out it's a triangle. So she's building a triangular pyramid of sticks with grapevine thatch.




The bunny seems to like it--eating it, that is.



Bunnies like to chew, in case you didn't already know that. Her bunny house will end up being more a chew toy than a form of shelter, so she's being sure to build it with woods that won't poison him. Did you know that cherry bark is toxic?

As it turns out, rabbits LOVE grape leaves. Thumper, here, is no exception. But then, Thumper loves anything that's remotely edible.

Day 17: Off to the Theatah!

Today Maren picked Theater.

You know, the kid loves Shakespeare.

Why? I can't figure. I'm not that big a fan.

At any rate, I thought she'd be super excited about picking Theater today. But, being the constant skeptic and being like my other children who have tended to be slow to inherit my love of learning, she wasn't so sure today's theater lesson was going to be as exciting as she wanted it to be.

And it wasn't. But it was her fault.

I pulled out a copy of one of MY favorite plays--Cyrano de Bergerac. I told her about the play, what it was about, how the storyline went (leaving out the big finish, of course) and we chose a scene to read. She played Cyrano, I played Roxanne, and my son played Christian. We read through the amazingly sweet and funny scene in which Christian fails at wooing Roxanne in the garden because his in-person speech doesn't compare to his beautiful written words and she can't understand why. Christian then meets up with Cyrano and Cyrano comes up with the plan to coach Christian from beneath Roxanne's balcony, which doesn't work very well either, because Christian is too slow-witted to keep up with Cyrano's whispered words; at which point Cyrano tells Christian to shut his mouth and he delivers (in Christian's voice) a beautiful speech in which his (Cyrano's) true feelings for Roxanne are expressed.

It's enough to make one weep for poor Cyrano. I LOVE this play!!

Try as I might to get Maren to 'act,' she refused. Apparently it's just too embarrassing.

*sigh*

For this activity, smaller children could be coached in saying and delivering simple lines. I'd avoid Shakespeare for small children. Find something they can understand. There should be books of plays for children at your local library, or you can spend time with your child making up one of your own--maybe a short adaptation of an Aesop Fable or a Grimm Fairy Tale. This site, Lazybeescripts.com, has quite a lot of scripts for simple plays, including some Aesop.

Day 16: Ah, Internet, How I Hate Thee!

We recently made the official switch (which was inevitable anyway) from Qwest to Century-Link.

For the past two days my internet has been DRAGGING! It's like having dial-up again! Coincidence? Hmm.....

At any rate, the flu has made its departure and we are back in action. Slow action, because it takes a few minutes for the New Post page to appear. I can practically HEAR the little internet gear grinding away, their little wheels and cogs squealing due to the need for virtual grease. It's painful to watch.

Today, Monday, (even though I'm not getting around to posting it until Wednesday) Maren picked Textiles.

As her project, she chose to make a simple stuffed toy out of fabric, thread, and a needle--and stuffing, of course. This is not one of those projects that can be finished in 15 or twenty minutes, so she did a little research, picked a design, drew it on the fabric, and cut it out. She'll sew and stuff it later.

Because she is a horse-crazy girl, she chose to make a horse out of a couple of scraps of blue satin fabric I had lying around from a previous Hallowe'en costume venture. She also decided she would use strips of the fabric to make the mane and tail. Now THAT'S creative thinking!

Here are some SUPER simple stuffed toys that a child of any age could do by first drawing an animal or doll on white fabric, coloring it with permanent markers or acrylic paints, cutting it out with a large edge, and sewing around.



Remember to turn the design to the inside before sewing, and remember to leave an opening at least an inch long to invert the cloth and to insert the stuffing. After that, a simple stitch can be used to close it up. It won't be perfect, but does it need to be? NO!!

For younger children, use felt for the fabric, yarn for the thread, and a very large blunt-ish needle. You can buy 9 X 12 sheets of felt at craft stores for very cheap (around 50 cents), and a skein of yarn can be had for less than $2, and you'll have TONS of yarn left over for other projects.

Being Flexible

Remember the Common Cold? No more. Now it's the flu--all out.

Her fever hit about a half hour after we finished with JSWA this morning and climbed quickly to 102 degrees. Needless to say we won't be doing JSWA tomorrow.

But the cool thing about homeschool is that we can be flexible, right?

So flex for a few days. You probably won't see us until Monday.

But hopefully you don't actually need us. Hopefully you can do this on your own. Remember to use Google and other lovely search engines for ideas and information. Honestly, I don't know how I'd do this without the internet!

Day 15: Frank Lloyd Wright to Guide Us

Today Maren chose architecture.

We did a little searching, Googling "architecture interactive activities" and found this site: Architecture Studio 3D.

The site first talks about Wright's concept of good architecture, which is that a building should reflect both the person(s) who uses it and the setting it is placed in. With that in mind, Architecture Studio 3D takes you through a step by step process (in a very easy to use and simplified form) of choosing a client, a location, and designing a house to suit both.

When finished, you can take a virtual tour of your house, actually 'walking' through it and looking into all the rooms. It's pretty cool.

Great little activity. It DOES require the download of the software that is used to create the 3D tour effects.

Day 14: The Tempest!

Today, Maren chose theater.

OK, we cheated a little. She's still suffering greatly from her cold and will most likely miss a second day of band class, so we wanted to do something that she could do while chilling on the couch. Not literally chilling. I'm not that cruel of a taskmaster.

At first she chose textile arts. What can you do in textile arts while huddled up in blankets? Not much. I suppose I could have given her a crochet lesson or we could have looked up images of textile arts on the internet, or we could have decided that the simple fact that she is wrapped in textile design was enough to suffice. But we decided to try again anyway and drew THEATER!!

We recently read Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories version of "The Tempest," so we decided to take a look at some video clips of the play.

We watched several interpretations, including one done by a bunch of high school kids acting out their simplified version of Act 1 Scene 1, and a "Shakespeare in a Minute" animation, the former utilizing the taking of God's name in vain too frequently and the latter being pretty lame.

We also watched two or three clips of the play being performed on various stages, and a clip of the film version that came out late last year. I don't know. It looks pretty interesting to me. I'll have to see if it's available on Netflix Instant.....

Nope. Not even out on DVD yet and will come out first in BlueRay. DVD release date unknown. *sigh*

There IS a BBC version of "The Tempest" available on InstantPlay, but I have a hunch it may need some previewing.

Day 13: Curses! The Common Cold!

Maren's cuddled under a heap of blankets with a near-empty box of tissues beside her and a heap of used ones in the trash can.

I'll let her off...today. We'll probably just sit around and do some reading. I'm not sure her brain can function well enough to do math or grammar--apparently it's too congested.

Instead, I'll take a minute to brainstorm some ideas for one of the areas of art that you might explore with JSWA.

Hmm. Randomly drawing.......MUSIC!!

Yay! Music is big in my house. I counted a little while ago and found that we have 16 instruments in our house (and our house is by NO means large--quite the opposite) that are used regularly. Plus another dozen that aren't currently being used much or not at all. When we open our front door, instruments fall out. ;-) Seriously, my house is not a quiet place. There is almost always music going on here or one sort or another.

But YOU don't need to spend all your retirement savings away to have music in your home. In fact, you don't have to spend much at all--if anything. Music is everywhere for FREE!

So, for JSWA, how about:

*Play something on a simple musical instrument—a slide whistle, recorder, penny whistle, harmonica, etc.

*Find objects around the house that can be used to make rhythm or sound--pan lids and wooden spoons, ice cream buckets or oatmeal boxes, a shoebox and rubber bands, a piece of 1/2 inch or larger hosing, pieces of PVC pipe cut to different lengths. Experiment making sounds through them with your voice, with the air from your lungs, by drumming on them or strumming them. Try making the rubber bands different lengths to see how the sound changes when you strum them.

*Make up a song using either a musical instrument or your voice.

*Make up new words for an old song you know.

*Make up a tune for a favorite poem.

*Search for and listen to a piece of Baroque music.

*Search for and listen to music from Africa or some other continent or culture, maybe from a country you are studying in school or a country from which a character in a book you're reading comes.

*Search for and listen to music played on a didgeridoo. Look up didgeridoo and learn about the instrument.

*Search for and listen to an Irish fiddle tune, like “Drowsy Maggie.”

*Find out something interesting about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

*Find and watch a video of “The Queen of the Night Aria” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

*Learn to trumpet like an elephant by tightly pursing the lips and blowing through them. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTeKmPhequQ

*Find and watch a video on Youtube of a Drum Corps International performance

*Find and watch a video on Youtube of Bobby McFerrin.

*Learn about the five classes of instruments and why 60 years ago there were only four classes of instruments.

*Find and watch a video on Youtube of someone playing a particular instrument. You can cycle through lots of different instruments throughout the year. You may find one your child is interested in playing someday. There are some amazing videos of a Beat Box Flutist playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" and a pair of Cellists playing Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal."

Do you have something to add? I'd LOVE for you to share it with us!

Day 12: DANCE!

Yesterday just wasn't a good day all around.

After the dentist appointment, Maren was too sore and numb to be able to go to her band class. She took a two hour nap and then we did some school.

Then dear hubby came home from work early. Which was awesome.

He and I started on getting the beets pickled and canned. 21 quarts of pickled beets from our garden! Yum!

While we were out in the garden picking we decided to just take a quick peek at the bees who looked like they'd been disturbed. We smoked them and lifted the lid and just looked inside. The hive wasn't full enough to warrant putting on a new super, so we closed it all back up and were just getting ready to leave them when one of them dive-bombed my face and stung me right on the lip.

Right now, 16 hours later, I look like a new woman--and not in a good way. My entire face is swollen beyond recognition. My upper lip looks like a duck bill. The swelling is approaching my eye and my nostrils are a little bit restricted, but I CAN still breathe fine. I have ice packs on my face and I'm taking Benadryl and Aspirin to try to bring the swelling down at least a little. But I'm destined to look like a sideshow freak for a few days--which I DO NOT need.

At any rate, we're going ahead with school this morning and Maren jumped into the day by choosing Dance for today's JSWA lesson.

There are tons of things you can do with dance in just a few minutes. This is a great opportunity to just put on some music and let the kids GROOVE! But I'm not up to grooving this morning and Maren's still a little sore, so we opted to WATCH dance instead of DO dance.

Today we watched Gene Kelly dance on roller skates! Amazing! Kelly was an incredibly athletic and creative dancer. Most American adults have seen the dance scene from Singing in the Rain. This clip is just as incredible as he soars over the streets on roller skates.

Watch it HERE!

Day 11: Dentist Appointment Instead

Maren has a dentist appointment this morning. If we find time later, we'll do a Booster Shot With Art in the middle of the day.

Day 10: Architectural Design

When Maren first chose Architecture from the jar she was a little bummed. Architecture? What could possibly be cool about architecture.

But then I told what she'd be doing.

Maren likes to play a game called Minecraft. It's an in-process game that people are playing as it's being designed. A freeware version is available online, or you can purchase the full version, which includes any and all updates that come down the pike, plus a full copy of the completed version when (and if) it ever IS completed.




My son purchased the full version several months ago and he and Maren have been playing it frequently since.

Basically, it's a world-building game in which you search for materials, gather materials, and build with those materials, all while trying to avoid the evil zombies that come out at night. It's graphics are pretty basic. It has a look similar to a Lego video game--all kind of chunky and blocky.

So I gave her the assignment to build a house--any kind of house she wanted--with the single exception that it had to be the kind of house you might find in the clouds.

I wish I could post a picture of it. It was pretty darn creative! Her entrance is a vertical shaft that you literally climb into the clouds through, and the building is made entirely of glass. It's really a beautiful thing! This project--and this game--were a good fit for her. She's a very spacial kid, so manipulating the game's blocks is a snap for her. In her brain it becomes 3-D and she can mentally rocket through the spaces with ease.

My son was so jealous that his little sister got to play Minecraft for school that he begged to join in too. I let him. His building was a huge gold and glass dome with a spire. It looked almost like a temple. Lovely.