Some good ideas here: Christmas Crafts for Kids
The star ornaments are just about my speed. Especially since my darling friend Brigid gave me a lifetime supply of hot glue sticks five years ago and I still have 98%-of-a-lifetime-supply left. Woohoo! Happy children + no shopping necessary = thank you Brigid!
Ooh, my kids are going to love this! (When they wake up. In about three hours. Boy, do I hope this baby doesn’t go on thinking the day starts at 4 a.m. after she’s born…)
I haven’t had a chance to explore this site in depth, but it looks like there’s some interesting stuff here about how the brain works and the ways people learn. Didn’t read enough yet to see what stance they take. So far all I’ve done is play some of the games they link to in their Brain Break entry, like this one:
How Fast Is Your Reaction Time?
Not too fast, evidently: the scoring screen suggested I drink a cup of coffee and try again.
My kids have been captivated by Sherlock Holmes since the first time they listened to Jim Weiss’s Sherlock Holmes for Children storytelling CD. As I recall, Beanie was barely three at the time, and it took me forever to figure out what the heck she meant by the “Madawin Tone” she was always talking about. (She was, of course, referring to the famous Mazarin Stone.) Jane’s interest was piqued by the CDs, and she has enjoyed several of the Holmes stories in the original during the past couple of years.
I was therefore delighted to hear about this little nugget from Stanford University:
Welcome to a new year in Stanford’s ongoing rediscovery of the 19th century. In 2006, we will rerelease a collection of Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of Sherlock Holmes, just as they were originally printed and illustrated in The Strand Magazine. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to discover the riches of Stanford Library’s Special Collections!
(snip)
Over 12 weeks from January through April 2006, Stanford will be republishing, free of charge, two early Holmes stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Speckled Band”; the nine-part novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles; and the famous “last” encounter between Holmes and Moriarty, “The Final Problem.” If you would like to receive paper facsimiles of the original magazine releases, you may sign up on our website. If you would prefer to download the facsimile as a pdf from the website, each installment will be available on successive Fridays. If you will be using the pdf files, please provide us with your email address on the subscription page, and we will send you an email every Friday, alerting you that the week’s issue is available to download.
I’ve signed us up for the paper version. Sounds like lots of fun.
Tip credit: Julie D. of Schooling with Joy
Growing up, I always wished I knew how to draw. I envied people who could draw a horse that looked like a real horse, or a face with contours and shading and expression, a real human face, not a circle with three dots and an arc. It seemed a rare and magical ability possessed by only the lucky few—maybe one kid in my class each year, and Artists in Museums. Later it turned out my sister was one of the Lucky Few. Whatever *it* was, she had it. Most of us didn’t.
Then, my senior year in college, I took a costume design class which, much to my surprise, began with a full six weeks spent not on costuming, but rather on drawing. Our one required book for the course was Betty Edwards’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Anyone can learn to draw. If you can write your name, you can draw. Really, truly. I don’t mean that anyone can be an artist, just as not everyone who learns to properly construct a sentence can write poetry. But basic drawing skills are not that elusive gift bestowed by fairies at your christening that I once thought they were.
About three weeks—only three weeks!—into our drawing lessons in that costume class, I drew a shoe that really, truly looked like a shoe. Contours and shading and everything. When I finished, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It wasn’t great art, mind you. But there—the frayed shoelaces, the worn place on the toe—it really was my shoe and if you held the picture in front of a pile of shoes, you could pick out the one I’d drawn.
This doesn’t mean I became a stunning visual artist. That particular gift isn’t mine. But if I want to draw a tree—and IF I have plenty of time with no interruptions to concentration, which is a mighty big if—I can draw a darn good tree. Good enough to please me, at least. And I practiced alligators and elephants to please my kids. It’s always handy to be able to whip out an alligator on demand. During the months young Jane spent in the hospital, years ago, I discovered to my great surprise that I had an undeserved reputation for being a good artist—solely because, due to Jane’s frequent requests, I’d perfected a quick giraffe sketch that apparently impressed the playroom attendants. They didn’t realize it was the ONLY thing I could sketch quickly and cleverly. I set them straight when they asked me to help draw a mural on the clinic wall. It was an outer-space mural, so I told them I was afraid I wouldn’t be much help. No giraffes in space, you know.
Anyway, the reason I’m posting about this today is because we’ve got a holiday weekend coming up, and it’s very likely there’s going to be a stretch of time somewhere when everyone is lazing around, and you’ll have obliging grandparents or uncles on hand to entertain the kids, and if you’re like me and always wished you could draw, well, you should. That’s all. Check out the Betty Edwards book, or Drawing With Children: A Creative Method for Adult Beginners, Too
***
These are some drawing books my kids are nuts about. The Usborne ones NEVER stay on the shelf; someone is always using one, it seems. They’re also fond of the Draw Write Now series, but we’ve always ignored the Write part. They just like the step-by-step instructions for drawing things like the Statue of Liberty and buffalo. (We only have a couple of them, but I’m assuming the others are just as good.)
On The Farm, Kids & Critters, Storybook Characters (Draw Write Now, Book 1)
Christopher Columbus, Autumn Harvest, The Weather (Draw Write Now, Book 2)
Native Americans, North America, The Pilgrims (Draw Write Now, Book 3)
The Polar Regions, The Arctic, The Antarctic (Draw Write Now, Book 4)
The United States, From Sea to Sea, Moving Forward (Draw Write Now, Book 5)
Animals & Habitats — On Land, Ponds & Rivers, Oceans (Draw Write Now, Book 6)
Animals of the World, Part 2: Savannas, Grasslands, Mountains and Deserts (Draw Write Now, Book 8)
And these are two books that I’ve been using to improve my own skills a little…I especially love the snippets of advice Claire Walker Leslie gives for drawing trees, plants, birds, etc. She has a knack for pointing out just the right way to approach the tricky bits that don’t come naturally to me, like how to make a tree branch look like it’s really curving out of a trunk.
Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You
Chill, blustery morning here. No one felt like going outside, except for Beanie who was hoping to encounter another snake on the nature trail today. We startled one on the path earlier this week, causing him to scoot for the creek. I told Bean I doubted any snakes would be out on a shivery morning like this one, and she decided the walk wasn’t worth undertaking without the snake.
Rose was in a yarn mood, having just re-learned how to knit yesterday after an eight-month hiatus, so we all got out our knitting baskets and crowded onto the couch. Wonderboy serenaded us on the piano, tapping out a descant to the wuthering wind. Really a very pleasant way to pass the morning. Rose worked on the scarf she is making for herself, and Jane and I commenced a new project. This one goes in the So Cute I Might Die department. I stumbled across this free pattern for knitting a gnome baby which is simple enough even for my haphazard knitting skills. That’s a picture of the finished doll up there—not MY finished doll, you understand; that one was made by the nice lady who provided the pattern. So far mine is only a pair of legs and a smidgen of belly. (When I knit with the kids, I personally get very little knitting done.) But it’s getting there. So adorable. I’m using some leftover Peace Fleece wool from my short-lived weaving days long ago. What’s funny is I think it might be the very same yarn used in the sample doll in the picture. Sure looks like it.
If I get very brave (and it isn’t a total disaster) I might post a picture of the finished project. Watch this space in about, um, three months. (Factoring in my standard interruption and distraction rate.)
Alicia at Studeo has posted a list of fun geography links. The Geospy game’s Africa quiz destroyed me. Ouch. Haven’t shown these sites to the kids yet…I just know Jane is going to leave me in the dust. Unless maybe I sneak in a lot of practice first….
Thanks for the great tips, Alicia!
We are fond of:
•The Tale of Despereaux : Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread
•The Mouse of Amherst
•The Mouse in Winter, an issue of the free online newsletter, Wild Monthly
•Three Terrible Trins
•The Complete Brambly Hedge
•The Tailor of Gloucester
•The Tale of Two Bad Mice
•Seven Blind Mice
•Chrysanthemum
•Frederick
This is a game we played in the car yesterday, all the way to town and back. I assigned each of the girls a part of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb (one girl had to take two parts in each round). From there it went something like this:
Me: Miss Noun, what is it?
Beanie: A giraffe!
Me: Miss Adjective, what kind of giraffe?
Jane: A hungry giraffe.
Me: Miss Verb, what did the hungry giraffe do?
Rose: It bounced!
Me: Miss Adverb, how did the hungry giraffe bounce?
Jane: Enthusiastically!
All together: THE HUNGRY GIRAFFE BOUNCED ENTHUSIASTICALLY!
Wonderboy: Huh?
I like free. Free is good. Stumbled across this Kinderart site and was pleased to see a lot of ideas for drawing, painting, sculpting, and whatnot with the kids. I just know my girls are going to be all over the Baby Wipe Tie Dye project.
