Love Is . . . A patchwork of days

On the morning of Valentine's Day, we made cards for people using card stock and wrapping paper samples. My mother got the old wrapping paper sample books from a paper company for free. Each sample is about 6" x 14" so there is enough pattern showing to give much material for collage cards.

Since the cards turned out so cute, I would like to take credit for this idea, but mother hand delivered the sample books and the idea. All we did was to think about what pictures would make the receiver smile, then cut and paste. I printed the card stock and cut it to fit the envelopes before we got started. Both children thought their cards looked better than purchased cards. We had so much fun!!

Check local paper companies for cast off wrapping paper samples and make your own cards.

It's been like Christmas around here!

Yesterday, a friend called and said, "I know you are purging, but I thought you might like some art books for your homeschool." I knew they would be good because she was an art major in college. I, of course, said I was interested because I never met a book I didn't like. A picture would be great, but unfortunately I have not been able to post a picture in days - you know one of those beta blogger oops. What was I thinking when I clicked migrate? Where was I? There are books on Van Gogh, Cassatt, Balthus, and Romare Bearden. There is a book called The Artist in His Studio and one called That's the Way I See It. Videos of the Sister Wendy Beckett series The Story of Painting are also included. I think there are twelve nice art books, hardcover with lots of pictures.

The best thing about the gift is that gifts from this friend don't come with a lot of strings. I can accept the gift, then regift them any time - including tomorrow. She won't come snooping to see if we are using the books every day for six years.

Having fun in History

I think I have mentioned earlier that our home school is using The World in Ancient Times series published by Oxford for our history reading. We are loving the stories about archaeologists, anthropologists, and paleontologists in the first book, The Early Human World, who are making discoveries and attempting to place the pieces of our past. Yesterday, we read about Jean-Marie Chauvet, Christian Hillaire, and Eliette Deschamps finding cave art in December of 1994. The thrill of making a discovery and the significance of the art in the research of our past is documented in just enough detail for the children. Though the book has some great pictures, we took it a step further and looked at more pictures in Sister Wendy Beckett's The Story of Painting and the really cool website of the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-D'Arc. Take the tour!!

We, next, tried a cave art project from Art Smart by Susan Rodriguez. The children went outside and gathered sticks, dried grasses, bits of charcoal, and some roots to use as brushes. We then took butcher paper and placed it onto the concrete patio and texturized it with brown and tan crayons. After the paper was transformed into a cave wall, we hung it in the dog trot and Princess and Pink Panther started drawing animals and hands. They both commented that using the found tools was much more difficult and if they had it to do over again, they would know which things would make better tools and could do a better job.

I was excited because all the elements - books, art project, Internet site - came together to create something tangible, something fun, something they will remember. My husband came home and said that if it were darker he would have thought he was in a cave. That was just enough encouragement for the children to add more paper and art to the hallway. As long as I don't trip on the skull of a cave bear (or any other creature for that matter), let the transformations begin.