It's been an up and down kinda week his week. The first part of the week was UP ... Monday we had our group classes for Art, French & Science. The art classes have been cycling through art from other cultures... some age groups did Mexican suns out of clay, one week Frodo's group did African style masks done by using pastels on black paper, and then scratching patterns into the pastels using a special stick, and this week it was China week. Frodo did a most EXCELLENT Chinese dragon, which is definitely going to get framed!
Ok, blogger and I are gonna go 'round! This picture, in MY files.. is upright... for some stupid reason blogger refuses to show it that way and no matter how I save it rotated, it magically appears tipped over like THAT *sigh*. But there you have it, the finished product! We've decided we'd like to make these regular, either monthly or bi-monthly, events... next time we are doing a larger robot that coordinates with the little paper robot on Frodo's frame.
The down side of the week is that Frodo & I had a bit of a blow up... he was not wanting to do anything (except of course on the computer, then he'd try to do as little actual schoolwork on there as possible and then try to go play games). This resulted in a very crappy couple of days, but we have done some reevaluating of our methods & I think we're going to go with the very laid back distance ed school we were with a few years ago, again next year. Their reporting requirements are much different, and 'fit' us better. We'll see how that goes. But... we're ending the week on a positive come hell or high water! We have math fun, history pockets and Greek Myths on tap for tomorrow!
And then Tuesday, we had a craft workshop at Kaiser Craft...holy moly, I did NOT need to know this place existed LOL! It's a woodcraft shop with all those excellent particle board crafty bits, neat papers etc. I'm SO going back there! The kids were making the simplest project to start with, a picture frame. They had girly ones with pink polka dots, and boyish ones with robots and computer printed paper.
Frodo got right into it and really enjoyed himself. I helped with a couple of fiddly bits because he was getting a little annoyed with it.. but mostly I window shopped around he store. (they have these AWESOME freestanding trees that are as tall as I am.. LOVE! and shorter, but very ornate, wooden christmas style trees)
If you ever see those gorgeous craftwood things that have scrapbooking paper applied to one face and it's PERFECT and neat? Here's how they did it... glue it on... trim it to about half an inch from the edge... and use a heavy duty emery board pulling it in a strong downward motion on the edge of the wood. It 'cuts' straight through the paper :) Very cool & very clever!
Here's Frodo with his paper on, and ribbon edging (hides where you put the back of the frame onto the front peice) in place.. and his blingy bits on (he was SO chomping to get those on lol) The little robot dude is on 3d sticky pads to add a little more dimension to it.
The down side of the week is that Frodo & I had a bit of a blow up... he was not wanting to do anything (except of course on the computer, then he'd try to do as little actual schoolwork on there as possible and then try to go play games). This resulted in a very crappy couple of days, but we have done some reevaluating of our methods & I think we're going to go with the very laid back distance ed school we were with a few years ago, again next year. Their reporting requirements are much different, and 'fit' us better. We'll see how that goes. But... we're ending the week on a positive come hell or high water! We have math fun, history pockets and Greek Myths on tap for tomorrow!
