Ŏ-Ŏ-Octopus

Well, we finally have gotten back into school.  (We haven't done school in a little over 2 months, I'm embarrassed to say.) So, while the rest of the world had snow days this week, we were snowed into school.  It's been good for us.

Giving Diego 2 months off from school apparently has somehow enabled him to blend letter sounds into words with much more ease... I'm not sure if that's because he's older now and it just clicks for him or if he's seen enough Word World in the past two months that he now understands.  Either way, I'll take it.  But he's no dumby and is not going to work any harder than necessary.  Why spell the word "dot" by listening to the sounds in the word when he can easily locate it on the other page and just see how it is spelled? Whatever works.  It was the end of the school day and I wasn't going to argue with him and drag the day out any longer.

This week we've been learning about Octopi. "Even the octopus praises the Lord." We've been learning about Psalms and how David wrote many of them and that unlike animals, humans have a choice whether or not they will praise God.  We've been practicing praise songs and discovering so many amazing facts about these incredible creatures. For instance, did you know the  huge Giant Pacific Octopus can squeeze itself through a crevice the size of a quarter?  Isn't God amazing that He can think of creating such a huge variety of incredible creatures?

Our ocean creatures collage -we had fun going through old National Geographics for this!

In the mean time we've been working away on painting.  It seems that if I pull the watercolors out to do an art project they'll work on it longer than they will if I pull out the crayons.  I decided that if I worked on one of my own, that I could teach the kids some techniques without taking over their work... and plus, it's just plain fun!  We traced our hands with our thumbs folded under to create our eight-legged creatures. We also used Crayola Marker and Watercolor Paper... which we discovered is not really suited for watercolors.

 

Here's Diego's Octopus- he painted longer than any of us, he wants his to be just so.  I like it that he tries so hard to do his best while painting.

Here's Eliana's... I always wonder if she'll go through a goth phase when she's older, her paintings are always so dark. Anyone have any suggestions on how to get a 2-year-olds paintings to be a bit brighter?

Here's my little guy... I tried to show Eliana how to paint water, but of course she chose to use browns.

And just for fun... have you guys seen Dan Hillier's stuff? It's pretty curious stuff!