Busy, Busy Spring!

What can I say. It's Spring, and we've been busy!

We finished up our math block by building and exploring multiplication tables with the math board. We traced around our largest mixing bowl, hammered in ten nails, wrote in the numbers, and started wrapping out some number patterns with different colored yarns. Below is counting by 1's, 2's, and 3's. Math is a beautiful, magical thing!



And then we trucked right on into a Saint's and Heroes block. I'm pulling resources for this block from several places-- singular library books (for example The Man Who Loved Books, Brother Sun and Sister Moon, and some Tomie dePaola books,) collections (The Giant at the Ford, and The Lady of Ten Thousand Names) and a bit of curriculum-in-a-box (Christopherus Saints and Heroes.) So far, so good. Rather than just pull these stories out of the air, I decided to ground them with our story heroine Clara. These are the stories Clara treasures, and she wrote them all in a purple book which she carries in her satchel at all times. Right now she's sharing them with Beremiz, and hence, Sunburst as well.

Sunburst has been knee-deep in the embroidery zone since I picked up a charming Japanese book that I saw over at SouleMama's blog. Oh, how easily I can convince myself to spend money when I'm thinking in terms of homeschooling resources! Sunburst hungrily combined two designs from the book, and because she was so smitten with it, as a joke I suggested she embroider her entire Saints and Heroes block rather than making a book. She thought it was a great idea, but still wants to make a book, too. A purple one, of course, just like Clara's! So we're doing both.

Here's how we're doing the embroidery. I tell a story. She tells me what representational picture she would like to embroider. I cut the 6x6 square of linen and freehand the design for her with a #2 pencil. She sticks it in her tambour frame, selects her colors, and goes to work. So far she's just doing plain backstitch. Here are the representational images of St. Francis (the bird singing praises to God) and Elizabeth of the Roses:



I'm thinking at the end we'll sew them all together into a wall hanging. Perhaps a ready reminder of folks who chose a higher path isn't such a bad idea for wall art for a child dipping her feet in the waters of the nine-year-change.

In the last two weeks we've also been throwing belated birthday parties (check out Moonshine's cupcakes, both regular and gluten-free varieties, replete with faux sweetheart roses,) hiking/biking, letterboxing, and trying to suck up every ounce of sunlight we can-- weeding the yard and planting flowerbeds.



We've also been doing a ton of clay modeling and wet-on-wet painting now that I've FINALLY found a resource that speaks to me-- but that's worth another post on its own.

But for now, the vegetable garden needs planting, the grass needs mowing, and the children want to go outside! Ah, busy, busy Spring.