Nevelson Creation

Kathy over at Art Projects for Kids has an amazing art blog. I've been reading it for a few months and have wanted to try a lot of her projects. Well, we finally did one!

Last weekend, we went to an art class at the Amon Carter Art Museum. I LOVE these classes. They are 2 hours long and the parents get their own class. It's amazing! Anyway, one of the pieces we viewed and discussed was Lunar Landscape Wall (on left). This is a sculpture by Louise Nevelson, a female artist. It is made of painted wood. A lot of Nevelson's art are wood sculptures which are painted in one color - often black or white. Wikiepedia says Nevelson is "known for her abstract expressionist 'crates' grouped together to form a new creation. She used found objects or everyday discarded things in her 'assemblages' or assemblies."

After returning from our class this weekend, I saw Kathy had posted a project she did about Nevelson! I had to do this project and Alexandra and I have really enjoyed it. And, I love the finished projects!

Above is Alexandra's "before" project. (You can look at Kathy's post for more information.)

And her finished project. Isn't it neat!!! We just bought a $1 can of black spray paint instead of trying to paint it with a paint brush.

And, my "before" and "after" spraypaint. These will definitely be on display at our house!

(And, ugh!!! I don't know what blogger is doing tonight. Sorry for where the words are "landing" - this is not how I designed it!)

Lots of Projects!

We are having lots of fun... with projects! Here our some of the things we're working on:

Journey North Mystery Class - I've been posting about it here.

A neat art project we started last night - I'll tell you more SOON! (This is Alexandra's)

(And mine)

Our cultural project - CANADA! We are participating in a Cultural Fair on Saturday.


And, we will be setting up 4 container gardens next week. All of the "stuff" was FREE! This project has lots of sponsors and is given out to local schools - included homeschools! It came with lesson plans, seeds, fertilizer, containers, games, worksheets - I just need to buy some soil. We'll be planting 2 containers of vegetables and 2 containers for butterflies!

A Person's a Person No Matter How Small

Lia is a 12-year-old seventh grader that recently decided to make a courageous stand in her school by giving a persuasive speech on the topic of abortion. Even when her teachers strongly encouraged her to choose a different topic, she decided to stick with what she felt passionate about.

Lia made an incredible pro-life speech that ended with the words of Horton, the elephant: "a person's a person, no matter how small."

Please watch her speech by clicking here. (I tried to post the YouTube video, but haven't been able to.)

Longitude & Latitude Tattoo

I don't know why the "geography all the way" link from my post last night is not working now. The site says it is down for maintenance, so I hope it is back up soon. We thought it was a good site.

And, as far as the tattoo lady... while trying to figure out why the link was broke I googled "longitude latitude tattoo" and came up with the answer. The lady with the latitudes & longitudes tattooed on her arm is Angelina Jolie. And, why the 4 tattoos? They mark each of the places where her children were born! In fact, she now has twins so she's added 2 more tattoos on her arm! I guess this is one way to learn more about geography!

Latitude & Longitude

Yesterday, we continued working on our Journey North Mystery Class. To save time, I had calculated the photoperiods of our 10 mystery locations this weekend. Alexandra calculated the photoperiod for our location. Then, we graphed our results (see below) and filled out our journal page for the week.

One of the journal questions asked about why you thought some of the lines went up while some of them went down. Alexandra hypothesized (correctly) that it is because we're in different parts of the world. I am so excited about Journey North and this mystery class as I know we'll both learn a lot!

We also worked on longitude and latitude using geography all the way. First, we listened to a song they have about longitude and latitude. Then, we did the "activities." Basically, this walks you through what both of those terms mean and then have you plot several points on a map.

I had planned on doing the Challenge activity at the bottom of the page (of the lady with the tattoo), but I couldn't figure it out. I was hoping to find a site where you could plug in those coordinates and it would tell you where you were, but I didn't find a site like that. And, I was wondering how we'd figure out who the mystery lady was even with those places identified! So, if you have any ideas.... we'd love to hear them!

I also have a few other activities planned for this week involving latitude and longitude. But, we are also getting ready for a Cultural Fair (like a science fair but we are doing different countries) and we have only 1 1/2 weeks to complete our project! So, that will be taking up most of our time for awhile.

Downtown Aquarium

We went on a field trip with our homeschool group today to the Downtown Aquarium. Tickets are usually pretty expensinve. Alexandra and I have been twice before and with parking and lunch it has cost us around $70! But, we got a great deal today for just $8 per person plus $6 for parking! And, that included a lunch of a sandwich, large bag of chips, Caprisun, fruit (apple or banana) and delicious homemade cookie! You can't beat that!!! We even got the rides for free.

I actually took about 100 photos, but decided to only post a few. I love giant clams like the one in the first photo. And, the second photo of the eel - well, you can't tell from the picture, but he is about 6 foot long!

We spent quite a bit of time watching this beautiful octopus. They are usually so still, but this one was being very active for us! I love his color and he looked velvety soft!

Presidents' Song

We are getting ready to memorize the entire list of presidents - in order - for Classical Conversations. Whew! Someone sent me a link to this song which goes through each president (through Obama) with pictures and interesting facts. I thought it was great and wanted to share it! We've already watched it several times. Each time, we have discussed different facts about the presidents. Enjoy!

The Periodic Table of Videos

The University of Nottingham has a cool site where they've posted what they call The Periodic Table of Videos. This morning, I watched the Hydrogen video (see below). I grinned through the entire video. It even includes a "big" explosion! With older kids, this could lead to a study of some of they Hydrogen explosions the scientists mentioned like the Chernobyl disaster.



In the helium video, they cool a helium filled balloon with liquid nitrogen. It has a neat affect on the gas and the balloon! They also explain that liquid Helium is a vital coolant in Magnetic Resonance Imagine, or MRI. I just had an MRI on Monday, so this was neat to hear! (By the way, I got the results from my MRI Friday evening and everything was "normal." Praise God!)

Where in the World? Eiffel Tower

This week, Alexandra solved clues #2 & #3 of Where in the World is Mrs. Waffenshmidt? I was happy that she solved both of them (King Tut in Egypt and Eiffel Tower in Paris, France) without even having to use the internet!

Besides finding the tower and the country for clue #3, you were supposed to find the name of the famous science fiction author who has a restaurant named after him on the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower. We had to look that up and found out it was Jules Verne.

(Above is a photo my brother, "the world traveler", took in 2008.)

We looked up Jules Verne to find out what famous books he has written. Among other things, he wrote Around the World in Eighty Days and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. We were so amazed as we had just started reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea the night before! This was also a reminder to me that we need to be discussing the authors as we read. When Alexandra was younger, we always read the title and author and illustrator names. This helped with her reading skills, but it also helped us to find some favorite authors and illustrators.

Sudden Hearing Loss

It's been kind of a rough month or so, but things are looking better. It started when I got sick about 5 weeks ago with some kind of upper respiratory virus. After dealing with it for about 2 weeks, I experienced a sudden loss of hearing in my right ear. Idon't think I could hear anything out of that ear for about 4 hours. When I could suddenly hear again, my ear was ringing. It was pretty annoying.

I went to a nurse practitioner twice that week and finally got into my ENT about 1.5 weeks after this started. She ran some tests and found that besides the ringing in my ear, I'd also lost some hearing abilities. I knew I was having trouble hearing, but I really thought it was just from the ringing.

She decided to run more tests - blood & an MRI of my brain - and send me back to my hematologist... just in case it was another blood clot. But, she thought I probably had experienced something called Sudden Hearing Loss. This is usually caused by a virus inflamming your 8th nerve and then it causes abrupt hearing loss. When it returns, 2/3rds of people experience ringing in their ear. And, to be considered Sudden Hearing Loss, you must have lost a certain percentage of your hearing.

So, this week I had an MRI early Monday morning (I left the house at 5:45 am), went to my hematologist Wednesday (he ran more blood tests, but thinks I have not had another clot) , and went to a neurologist today. The neurologist was able to read my MRI and told me it was normal. Praise God! And, she agreed with my ENT saying it sounded like a classic case of Sudden Hearing Loss. But, she said it could continue to get better as the nerve heals, where my ENT had told me I would not improve. So, I will pray for the best but be prepared for the worst!

I go back to my ENT on Wednesday to have my hearing rechecked. My left ear has started ringing since I first saw this doctor, but it is not as bad as my right. The hearing loss is more of an annoyance than a disability. And, the ringing has either gotten better or I'm adjusting to it. It is non-stop, but I only hear it when things get pretty quiet. It was hard to go to sleep the first few nights, but I'm used to it now. I just would love some total quiet!!!

I would appreciate prayers for complete healing! And, I hope to post more "fun" posts next week. We have been doing a lot this week, but I've been preoccupied with my health lately.