While he was sketching, B and I decided to do some art with crayons. We’ve thought of making our own crayons or gluing them to canvas and melting them so they drip down- we’ve  seen some excellent examples of both. Today instead we decided to paint with melting crayons. We have a huge bin of crayons – three kids and years of taking the free ones from restaurants (why waste them after they’ve only used them for five minutes?), gifts of art supplies and super cheap back to school sales add up to a whole lot of waxy colored goodness.

So we dug through to look for broken crayons and then the freebies from places. And we were all ready to make art. First, however, you have to get the paper off. Uggh. Some slip relatively easily off and others are almost glued on. Finally went to the web and looked up how to remove them. Soak in warm water. Not too hot, they’ll start to melt. We may have figured that out the hard way. So we peeledand peeled and peeled. Finally we took a big piece of poster board and cut it in half. Then we set it on a piece of aluminum foil larger than the poster board; I folded the edges over a few times to make something to grab. Then we placed our crayons on the board and put in a preheated 250F degree oven for 5 minutes.

Some of our crayons just refused to melt. Not sure if it was the generics or if some colors are just stubborn. Carefully, oh so carefully, I took the rolling,
melted wax covered paper out of the oven. B then drug qtips through the melted puddles, swirling and mixing. It hardened much quicker than we expected so we had to put it back in the oven for a remelt.

I decided to try a picture. Not sure how successful it was since it just sorta rolls where it wants to, but it was fun. We’ll have to get more poster board for this. B wants to spend more time trying to mix colors. I have a few more crayon art ideas to try but I think we’ll leave peeling to sitting in the evening or when we’re bored. Spending 30-45 minutes prepping when you want to be making art is hard.

But the results were so much fun :)

Today started with everyone waking before mom and eating. C read Caravan, which is a chose your own adventure book, by R.A. Montgomery. He’s been reading it all week since he can change it every time. D was playing minecraft and B was playing.

Once I was up to help, B read The Van by Holly Keller because she wants to work on her reading. D spent some more time reading The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. While they were reading C played minecraft.

Then both the boys wanted to do some math. D really likes Khan Academy for math. If you aren’t firmiliar with the site, check it out. Brilliant free site that covers everything from single digit addition to vector calculus for math and also is adding science and social studies.(Watch Salman Khan talk at TED) I think his favorite part is the huge map of math skills. Areas change color as you complete them so you can see where you’ve been and where you can go. C played TimezAttack. It is a free or paid game to teach multiplication and division. Because if anything ever really needed to be learned by memorization, multiplication is it. Plus who doesn’t want to be some dragon type monster throwing math balls at trolls?

After doing a bit of math, the boys started watching videos. D did the basic youtube ramble finding ridiculousness to laugh at. C watched animal videos. His favorite was of a peregrine falcon flying with a camera on its back. While they were watching videos the cast list came in. Then the kids looked up clips from the Jungle Book on youtube, from the Disney movie and some live action films and plays.

Somehow that led to them getting out their pvc pipe swords and bow and arrows to be knights. B wanted to be a princess but a fully armed one. They ended up taking their weaponry to our homeschool group’s park day.

What was I doing while all of this took place? Well helping read, helping spell for searches, making lunch, and trying to figure out how to make a feed for this website. I had someone request an rss feed. I tried to make one but it didn’t work. So after taking that down I tried to put in an internet feed. If this doesn’t work for anyone, can you let me know in comments? My next step is asking one of the teenagers in our homeschool group for help!

All of this took place from waking up until 1 PM. Give us a couple of free hours between play practice, homeschool co-op activities, akido and who knows where we’ll end up.

For the spring show they are performing The Jungle Book, which makes it easier for the littler ones to get involved too. Auditions were fun and no pressure and chaotic. The director managed to wrangle 40 homeschoolers into auditioning for numerous rolls in just over two hours. We just got the cast list today. D is going to be King Louie, C is a wolf and B is the baby elephant. Should be lots of fun.

The best part of this theater group is that, other than the director, it is all homeschoolers. The assistant director, the stage manager, the script writer, the light and sound technicians – all homeschoolers. Very, very cool.

After auditions we headed to dungeons and dragons. The boys are really enjoying playing and there are usually several younger siblings around for B to play with. We’d all brought something, so afterward we had dinner – elves, dwarves,wizards, and little and big humans. Then running and freeze tag and I’m not sure what else in the backyard. The family that has been hosting is moving an a few months and we are all going to miss the grace with which she deal with noise and chaos. (Somewhere around 5 – 10 kids, depending on noise level, I start feeling my only child status.)

Yesterday was their homeschool enrichment program, which they all love. Then they had akido. I’ve got one suddenly starting to waiver even though she had been enjoying it so much before vacation. She has a lot of trouble getting back into the swing of things after taking a break. D and C are still having a great time and D was invited to test for his yellow belt next month. Much more complicated that knowing your moves, this dojo stresses concentration and paying attention by making them know the names of the moves as well…in Japanese! And know some off the philosophy of akido and the dojo, know martial arts etiquette and more. He’s got the moves down but we’ll need to spend the month working on our Japanese.

Which brings us to today. Before we head off to park day, where anything can happen, we got an email from the homeschool fencing class. They were taking a break this session but now have to decide about next session. I’ve got two thinking yes and one no.

Which leaves us at:
Arizona Homeschool Theater – 3
D&D – 2
Akido – 3, but one is thinking of quitting
homeschool enrichment – 3
fencing – none, but two may pick it back up

Phew. Still way less busy than Oct – Dec where we also had swimming, dancing and fencing for all three. Decisions, decisions…

For the first quest they did, the dad who is the dungeon master and teaching them to play took the time to make a bunch of characters and just let them pick one. One of the joys of living somewhere with numerous homeschoolers is there is a group, gathering, co-op for that. Whatever that is.

For their second quest, they have the option of making their own characters. Now neither of us ever played D&D – just because I never knew anyone who did, not because of it’s geekiness; we played Magic the Gathering for a while instead :)- so trying to get through the guidebook is like reading a foreign language. I keep having to ask the boys, “Did that make sense?”

They have loved learning to play and are really enjoying the game. D&D doesn’t have the same geeky connotations today that it used to. Or perhaps being geeky itself doesn’t. Today’s children – and adults – are surrounded by computer technology – the more you know the better; Harry Potter and wizardry, magic and dragons;  Bill Gates and Steve Jobs being household names. Nothing wrong with being smart or liking myth, magic and make-believe. Of course, this comes from probably the only cheerleader in my high school that read Tolkien and Douglas Adams.

One of my favorite quotes by our eldest was last year when I mentioned Shakespeare. C, who was 8, momentarily couldn’t remember who that was. D, who was 10, looked and him and said, “Remember on that one episode of Dr. Who…?” Pure awesome. I’m not sure which puts us more firmly in the homeschool box: the fact that I expected my 6, 8 and 10 year olds to know who Shakespeare was, or that the explanatory reference came from Dr. Who. Of course this same child performed in Romeo and Juliet just last month. He was Abraham of the “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” line. When his sister asked what that meant he held up his middle finger and told her he thought it was the same thing. Then he held up his first two and said that would be the same in the UK. After telling the idea was similar for all…I told him he watched way too much BBC.