Art: Greek Style Tiles

About a month ago when we started our Ancient Greece unit (which we're finally finishing up now), we had a scheduled art project for making a Greek-type tile, and it sounded like fun so we went for it! The instructions were pretty simple and we got them from an Ancient Greek Art book at the library. All we needed was Air Drying Clay, something "sharp" to be able to cut a pattern in the clay (we used a butter knife), and paint. The Air Dry clay comes in a big block and I just cut a square off of each and and pounded it out into a rectangle with my fist until it was more-or-less a rectangle that was flat. They each decided on their own design to cut out, then we let the clay air dry (we let ours dry for a full day and a bit more and it was totally hard and dry). When it was dry we got out the paint and they colored their tiles how they wanted. Once the paint was dry they were done and beautiful! Here are the pictures of (most of) the process. :-)

March 2016

I realized that I hadn't updated for a month already (time flies!), so I figured I'd at least post up some pictures and show some of the fun we got to have (and learning we did of course)!

The first set of pictures are from playing in the snow at a friend of our's house and making snow angels and sledding down a small hill.

These are from a really fun place we go once a month called Xtreme Challenge. The boys love it because it's like an American Ninja Warrior course type of training... I like it because they learn about physics and fall asleep really easy that day! Win-win! ;-)

These are from a place called Jumpstreet that we go to with the same homeschool group as the Xtreme Challenge place, but it's much cheaper and weekly or bi-weekly. 

The last pictures are from our trip to the Denver Nature & Science Museum (YAY for free days!) when we went to look at the Mummies from Egypt, but also saw some other really cool stuff! 

Well, those are the most exciting points of the last month/month and a half or so. This month (April) is the boys' bithday month and it's CRAZY busy, so look forward to more updates soon! Well, as soon as I remember to do it again... lol!

Blueberry Dyed Shirts

A few weeks ago we were doing a history lesson and learning about the ancient civilization of the Phoenicians (who also provided the base for our modern day alphabet apparently... Phoenicians... phonics... *lightbulb*... lol). Anyway, when ancient civilizations wanted to dye their clothes they had to use natural things to do it; in their case a type of slug that they boiled for a particular purple color that was so strong it even dyed the workers so that they became known as the "purple people". Now, as much fun as finding and boiling slugs sounds... *gag*... we decided to go with an easier (and less disgusting) approach and use blueberries! Of course blueberries aren't the only things you can use, blackberries are another good option, but Wade wanted to eat a few when we were done so blueberries it was. We made a special trip to the store (which of course included a jaunt by the park...), got our blueberries and got started.

I forgot to look at the label before I threw it away, but I'm pretty sure we used about 8 oz of blueberries in a pot of water. All we did was put water in the pot, added the blueberries (at the rate of two 6 year olds...) to the pot and let it boil about half an hour. Once time was up, I (in the name of preserving my kitchen from being dyed blue) strained the blueberries out of the pot (keep the water of course) and the boys put their plain white t-shirts in. We let the shirts soak for at least 5 minutes, probably closer to 10 honestly, and then pulled them out and let them drip dry over the sink until they stopped dripping and then finished drying in front of some fans. Once they were dry I washed them once in cold water, hoping the dye wouldn't disappear, and they turned out pretty great! They fade a little bit after washing them over and over, but they're still purple and the blueberries did a great job!

Blueberries in the pot

Shirts soaking in water

After dyeing shirts

After washing them. :-)

So far in 2016...

Apparently I have some sort of mental block about remember to update this... but here are some pics to catch up with things that have happened so far this year! :-)

We made some delicious sugar cookies that they iced all by themselves. :-)

We read a ton more books and earned more Book It coupons! 

We spent as much time as possible playing and snuggling with our buddy Ringo!

And after our biggest snowstorm of the winter (so far anyway...) we went sledding and they had a blast and went by themselves over and over for the first time. :-)

More updates to come! (Hopefully soon!) :-)