Last week was our “Spring Break” for our homeschool group, and it’s in quotes because all that meant was that we took a trip together to do three days of learning with our friends, instead of one day here at home.

That sounds like something those overachieving, overbearing homeschool parent types would say so let me pause here and clarify. We ARE NOT those parents. Straight up doing nothing for Spring Break is really awesome and encouraged. Travel just happens to be where we are at our homeschooling best. Trust me when I say that you are most definitely showing us up all day, every day. ;)

We all decided on a 3-day mini-roadtrip to west Tennessee. When I just think of what is in west Tennessee off the top of my head, not a lot comes to mind for young children. However, once we got to digging, we found all kinds of great stuff within a 3.5 hour drive of our house. Continue Reading

We only do birthday parties on odd years, and because all of our kids have a sibling with a birthday that falls within 3-6 days of their own, we pair everyone up for joint birthday celebrations. This means I get to save up all my enthusiasm for party planning and go nuts about once a year.

You’ve probably seen Seven’s Dr. Seuss party and you know that I can get a little out of control. I’ve covered our entire living room with blankets for a pillow fort party, and thrown some massive outdoor summer flings since then. We’ve talked about it before many times, but it bears repeating because it’s just oh-so-true: the detailed birthday party is my love language.

As soon as I realized Seven’s monumental 7th birthday and Serai’s big number 5 would coincide, I was fully prepared to pull out all the stops for an extravagant extravaganza. I’ve been thinking about those crazy plans for years, but then something happened… Continue Reading

I love exploring abstract art with kids because they’re so naturally good at it. Adults (myself included) get very stuck in their perceptions of things and struggle with it, but the abstract flows so freely from children.

A few weeks back we studied Kandinsky.

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian artist in the first half of the 20th century. He is credited with creating some of the first works of truly abstract art and is known to many as the father of abstract art.

“Yellow-Red-Blue” by Kandinsky

 

Kandinsky loved music and color and wanted his work to be about those things above all. He used color to convey emotion rather than actual objects.

We looked at various pieces by the artist online and in books before beginning our own.

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