Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Mystery Class ~ Final Update!
We finished last week our Journey North Mystery Class project, and I just sent our final guesses to the site. Adrienne and I are hoping we are correct! Here are our final answers for the 10 Mystery Class locations:
#1: Douala, Cameroon
#2: Lausanne, Switzerland
#3: Taichung City, Taiwan Province, China
#5: Homer, Alaska, USA#6 Melekeok, Babeldaob, Palau
#7 : Bird Island, South Georgia
#8 : Mukdahan, Thailand
#9: Adelaide, Australia
#10: Mount Pleasant, Iowa, USA
This is a wonderful yearly event, if you are interested in finding out more, visit the Journey North site by pressing the link below. There are many other interesting and free projects as well.
Sketch Tuesday ~ Playing Cards
We all participated in Sketch Tuesday this time, even Celeste! This week's assignment was to draw a playing card, any card from a 52 playing card deck.
Andre, Celeste and I each picked a card from a regular deck. Adrienne took out her old "Bratz" deck of cards and drew the 10 of spades girl!
Andre, Celeste and I each picked a card from a regular deck. Adrienne took out her old "Bratz" deck of cards and drew the 10 of spades girl!
Monday, 27 April 2009
Book Sharing Monday
One last poetry book to share with you today for April Poetry Month!
The library is one of our top favourite places to visit, so this book was great for all of us. Written by Sonya Terry and illustrated by Nicole Wong, "L is for Library" is an alphabet book that follows a cute cat through the library.
"C is for Caldecott, awarded for art that pleases the eyes.
D is for Dewey Decimal System, which helps us organize."
I would like to send a warm welcome to all the new participants at Book Sharing Monday! It is so nice to see my little idea grow, and to see everyone's choice of books to share. Thank you.
If you haven't joined yet, and are interested, please click on the picture below:
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Sketch Tuesday ~ Van Gogh Olive Trees
This past week's theme for Sketch Tuesday was to study then sketch all or part of Van Gogh's Olive Trees with Alpilles in the Background. Adrienne and I decided to only use colouring pencils for this sketch, instead of paint. We did use a little bit of wax crayons as well. We were both not quite sure about this assignment, but ended up really enjoying it!
Adrienne's the first sketch (left side), then mine.
Visit Sketch Tuesday for a link to the slideshow showcasing everyone's beautiful olive trees:
Monday, 20 April 2009
Book Sharing Monday
This week, the poem book I am sharing is called "Monumental Verses" by J. Patrick Lewis, a beautiful book by National Geographic. The book has poems for 16 well known world monuments, such as Easter Island, Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty. In the epilogue, the author shows the location of each poem on a map, and recaps each monument.
You should be able to read the poem of Machu Pichu in the photo by clicking on it, and here is another one that I enjoyed:
"Palace of Versailles
Date : 1661-1710
Location : France
Architect : Louis Le Vau and Jules Hardouin Mansart
Physical Fact : Its Hall of Mirrors is 44 yards (40m) long with 578 mirrors.
----------
A King, who thought himself the Sun,
Reclined in bed and said to Moon,
"If you look after Everynight,
Then I will be in charge of Noon."
And every day Noon came along,
According to the King's command.
His brilliance radiated far,
From peasant field to foreign land.
When later, though the King was dead,
Noon reappeared and filled the sky,
The peasants knew what glittered Noon-
It was the splendor of Versailles."
Thursday, 16 April 2009
I love colour!
A few before/during pictures:
Celeste helped with the painting!
A little paint makes a big difference! We now covered the not-so-exciting taupe in two rooms. The main bath is a very light blue/green and the girls room is green. Celeste chose the colour, and I love it. I find it is such a "happy" colour! We also replaced the carpet in the girls room with laminate flooring.
Celeste helped with the painting!
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Sketch Tuesday ~ Take a seat!
Monday, 13 April 2009
Mystery Class Update #10
Journey North Mystery Class Update Sunrise/Sunset data up to April 6, 2009
Here are our guesses so far for each location:
#1: Cameroon, Africa
#2: Vaud Canton, Switzerland
#3: ?, Taiwan
#4: Mozambique, Africa
#5: Alaska, USA
#6: Koror State, Paula
#7: King Edward Point or Bird Island, South Georgia Islands
#8: Udon Thani Province, Thailand
#9: Adelaide, Australia
#10: Wisconsin, Michigan
Adrienne and I calculated the longitude clues this morning and found many mistakes with our guesses of last week, but we did find a few correct guesses too!
Here are the order of our mystery classes charts this week, as seen on the photo:
The 3 at the bottom of the picture represent the locations west of Greewich, England, farthest away is #5, then #10, and #7
The remainder 7 classes starting closest to Greenwich: #2, 1, 4, 8, 3, 6, and 9.
There is only one more set of clues next week!
Visit Journey North Mystery Class if you are interested in this project, we will participate again next year.
Deep Space Sparkle
Deep Space Sparkle...Out of this World Art Lessons is the name of a blog, created by an art teacher from California.
She has lessons listed by grade level from kindergarden to grade 6. She also has lessons inspired by famous painters and ceramic lessons. The instructions are clear and include lots of photos. This could be a wonderful resource and give lots of project ideas! I know that we will be using it to find ideas for projects, as I can see that Adrienne loves creating art, but she still needs some guidance and some focus. She isn't the type to just pick up a piece of paper and start drawing something.
You can click on the banner above or follow this link : Deep Space Sparkle .
I do have a few other links bookmarked for art, I will try to organize them into another post soon.
A morning in nature
We spent a few hours at a local conservation area, observing the first signs of spring, the birds, looking for shells...we love being surrounded by nature!
Adrienne stayed home this time, she wanted to help her dad rip out the carpet out of her and Celeste's bedroom! I will post an after picture once I paint their room...since this will end up being Celeste's room only once Adrienne moves to the basement, she chose the colour. It is called "celery bunch". I am just glad it's not pink!
Adrienne stayed home this time, she wanted to help her dad rip out the carpet out of her and Celeste's bedroom! I will post an after picture once I paint their room...since this will end up being Celeste's room only once Adrienne moves to the basement, she chose the colour. It is called "celery bunch". I am just glad it's not pink!
Book Sharing Monday
This week I am sharing a really fun and colourful book, part poetry, part riddles, and all about science! It is called Scien-trickery: riddles in science written by J.Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Frank Remkiewicz. You can click on the photo to read the poem/riddle "Go, Moon, Glow!" and here is another cute short one called "The Old Switcheroo":
"My father's the arc,
My mother's the spark.
Without them you would
Be left in the dark."
Can you guess the answer? It's electricity!
If you like to join us for Book Sharing Monday, please click on the graphic below:
I am so excited to announce that there are now 5 participants in Book Sharing Monday!! If you enjoy children books, make sure to follow the links below.
and you can see all my book sharing posts here.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
DQS6 finished!
This small doll quilt will be mailed out tomorrow to my secret swap partner! It has been so much fun participating in this project. I really hope my partner will like what I made for her.
The finished quilt measures about 15 x 17 inches, was pieced and quilted by machine, binding by hand. I added the label by hand as well.
Sketch Tuesday ~ Money
The theme for this Sketch Tuesday is money! The kids and I did our sketches over the weekend, while watching "The Music Man" movie. Adrienne wanted to do a sketch of Celeste's cash register along with some play money. 
Andre sketched one of his Olympic quarters:
I asked Celeste if she wanted to participate, but she told me "not this time Mom, I just want to cuddle while you sketch", I couldn't say anything to that! Here is my sketch, we have a Disney Dollar in our vacation scrapbook, and I wanted to try to sketch it.
I just read that next week's assignment is "to sketch some kind of chair"...should be interesting!If you would like to see more of this week's sketches, be sure to visit this flickr page: sketch tuesday $$$.