Ways to Say "Said"

Probably most that have been following along realize that writing isn't my kids' favorite thing to do. :-)  The last few weeks we've been doing some "fun" writing activities...not big writing assignments.  We'll get back into that, but for right now...let's get the fun back in!

They enjoy "Word Clouds".  The two older have dry erase boards and I have a word at the top for them to add to for a week or two.  It's great what they come up with!  

This word cloud was

"Other ways to say said."  :-)

When my printer is fixed...we'll print them and put them into a binder, for future use.

Snowflake Angles!

My kids do a few minutes of Khan Academy Math, each day.  The other day my 4th grade was like, "I don't get decomposing angles."  I went and did my weekly check of their Khan Academy progress and sure enough it stated "struggling with decomposing angles".  I was like "huh?"  It really should have been a review.  But that's okay...it allowed me the chance to pull in some of the Pinterest ideas.  Ha!

That's a Schooling at Home Mom for you...I pin so so much, even if my kids are past that skill or haven't reached it.  It usually comes in handy, sometime along the road. 

 Excuse these snapshots (though they really aren't any different then the others I post, probably). However, I wasn't planning on typing up a blog post...

I wasn't really trying to get decent pics. 

 I take snapshots all day long so I remember some of what we've done. :-)  

We included T., the kinder, because he wasn't taking a nap and we are waiting for his Math1 curriculum materials to arrive.  :-)  He really enjoyed this and picked up the idea of angles really quickly!

You know what, I learned something today!  LOL  The K'Nex set has pieces to create right, acute and obtuse angles.  I was exclaiming over this realization and A., 6th grader, was like, "Well, yeah mom."  :-D  

Kinder actually used those 3 angles to help him with the snowflakes.  He did really really well!  He found angles that I didn't notice until he pointed them out!  Older kids used a protractor to check those really close angles they weren't sure about. Or, like the 4th grader, just use the protractor to see how many degrees all the angles are because that's just fun.  :-D

 

 Click here for this snowflake sheet.

What's nice about this snowflake is that each child's snowflakes are going to look different because there are umpteen different options for angles!

A. decided to create a craft stick snowflake also.  We used it to look for right, acute, and obtuse for kinder.  

What I didn't get a picture of was our little dry erase board lesson on decomposing angles.  LOL  4th grader and I sat down and I used stickers on K'nex to show various angles and how we can figure out one angle if we know other angle measurements and how to combine smaller angles to make a bigger angle, and so on.   Really, he DID know this stuff.  The problem was he was stuck on the word "decompose".  LOL  That's him for ya!  Definitely something that happens frequently.  It was a fun review anyway!  He got back on and flew through the problems in Khan. 

Renaissance Artist: Pieter Bruegel

So, next on our timeline....

is Pieter Bruegel or Brueghel.  
This is thought to be a self-portrait.  Kind of scary, if you ask us!  :-D

I never heard of the artist myself, except for having used the K12 art curriculum for 3 years.  :-)  They introduce these pieces of art.

pics from Wikipedia

A stop at the library helped branch out our mini study.

We focused on Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists: Pieter Bruegel.  However, I always get multiple because my kids love to browse through nonfiction books.  They seldom check them out on their own though, nonfiction books that is.

I decided we were going to do a bit with the "Hunters in the Snow" again.  Here is an art documentary that we watched part of.  I think this is the first art critic/documentary the boys have ever watched.  :-)  I recommend the clip for older kids as the younger ones probably just wouldn't be all that interested.  :-D  It's good for my boys to see things from different perspectives and learn to think more like a "critic".  It's something I'd like them to do more with....look at a piece of art work and discuss it.

I found an art lesson shared online regarding atmospheric perspective and we did it.  You can find it at ArTree.

K-2 art lesson power point final products

grades 3-6 art lesson power point final products

We also watched a couple clips just before the power point lesson, refreshing their memory about the Renaissance (Pieter Bruegel was a Renaissance Artist)

The Renaissance:  Was it  a Thing?

FYI:  this is VERY fast paced.  For older kids for sure.  We had already went through the Renaissance time period with both the 4th and 6th grader so it was more of a review.

and in the middle of it.  :-)

Arc of the Arts: Atmospheric Perspective
Almost TOO slow, after the last clip.  LOL

We also spent some time  on "Netherlands Proverbs".

An interesting piece of art, to say the least.  Ha!

It's been said that Bruegel painted this to go along with his typical theme of "absurdity, wickedness and foolishness of humans".  :-D  Someone so kindly put together a table with the 112 proverbs and idioms that could be identified in the piece of art.  :-)  It's found here.  Quite interesting, to say the least.  :-)  Just a FYI:  it could be be considered crude in some regards.  I skipped over a few of them.  :-D Got us talking about what a proverb was....a short saying, typically well-known, that teaches a lesson.  This conversation also brought up the book in the bible Proverbs.  A little definition I liked: 

A proverb was used to make the reader listen, think about, remember, and then practice.

Of course, we ended with an acronym with his name.  :-D  This time, however, I wrote his name up on the board and we added characteristics as we went along.  This was suppose to  allow us to do an abbreviated study of Bruegel as we were having an abbreviated school week.  Didn't happen though.  We worked into the next week.  Oops!  :-D  Oh well, quality vs. quantity, a wise person told me, is the key!  

"Word Clouds" to Help with Writing

I find that my children often use the "same ol'" basic words in their writing.  So, I decided we are going to work together to come up with "word cloud" themes.  The first one they did was "movement".  What are different words we could use to describe movement.  They both had a dry erase board that they added to throughout the week and then we combined them into this piece of "artwork".  :-D  I'll be placing these into a binder so that they have an appealing resource to go back to when they are revising their writing.

Next up, other words for....

SAID