Working on art projects - part 2

Dakota is also busy working on art projects. He has painted this board white to prepare it so he can paint something on it. I can't wait to see what he comes up with.

He has been working on this Paris picture for several months now. I think he still has a little touch up to do on it, but he is close to being finished.


I don't know what he plans to do with this odd shaped picture frame, but I'm sure it will be great.


This is an oil portrait Dakota finished recently that I think turned out really cute.


Here is a close up of the hair technique. This is oil paint just squirted on. It took that hair a very long time to dry.

We will post pictures of completed projects as they are finished.

Busy working on art projects

Elijah has been busy working on art projects.



Here he is painting wood pieces that he will be able to make into a castle.

Elijah has been working on this hand project for several weeks now. I wish I would have thought of this project when you was much younger and had him to make one every year.



We will post pictures of finished projects as they are completed.

Tonsils have to come out!

Elijah continues to get strep over and over. I think I stopped counting when he got to #12. That's just in a years time.

His doctor sent him to an ENT several months back, Dr. D agreed the tonsils needed to come out, but he wasn't going to do it. Dr. D said it was too risky for Elijah to have the surgery. He really put the fear in me about it all.

Elijah continued to get strep, even more often now, about every two weeks. And his rocephin shots are not working as well since he has been getting so many. Dr. R said the tonsils have to come out. He said the strep infection could cause more problems like going to the brain or heart. Okay so he put the fear in me then.

Dr. R sent us to another ENT. Dr. B said those tonsils and adenoids have to come out, no question about it. He scheduled the surgery for July 28.

Most kids get to eat lots of ice cream after this surgery, of course Elijah will not be able to and if that isn't bad enough.... kids also go home on antibiotics and pain meds. Elijah will get neither. He can't take meds by mouth. I'm really worried about the pain. I don't want my baby to be in pain and not be able to help him.

Jody's cousin's husband is a compound pharmacist and someone (thanks Nicole!) told me he makes a numbing sucker. I called him to find out what's in this sucker to see if Elijah will be able to have them. After talking to Tim and telling him Elijah gets a lot of ulcers in his mouth and I put Orjel on them, we determined the suckers will be safe for Elijah. The sucker is just sugar and meds. The suckers are the size of a Dum Dum sucker and they are $4 EACH! LOL At $4 each the sucker needs to be the size of a blow pop! I do hope the suckers will help with the pain.

So I'm asking everyone to pray for Elijah having this surgery. My concerns are the pain, and infection. Thank you for taking time to pray for Elijah.

Dakota had Elijah convinced he wouldn't be able to talk for two weeks. He told Elijah even if he felt like he could talk, not to try it. Jody spilled the beans, so Dakota's plan didn't work.

Living Math

I'm trying to use more living math in our school day. I think Elijah is good at math, he just dreads workbook pages.

I've been looking a Math on the Level and I'm still trying to convince myself it's worth the $$$.

Today for math we played a game with egg cartons and little glass stones. I really don't know what you call these little red, white, blue and green pieces. I picked up a bag of them at Dollar Tree to use for game pieces because we are always making up games.



We reviewed the 9's addition facts. After reading more of Charlotte Mason and about living math, I wanted to go back and re-enforce what Elijah already knows with hands on living math.

I told Elijah that 9 wants to be a 10 so bad that he always sneaks one over. If you have 9+9, 9 will sneak one over and make himself a 10 so you end up with 10+8. We went through all the 9 facts showing how this works.


Next we played a ring toss game. I called out the 9 math facts and if Elijah could tell me the answer right away without thinking he won a ring to toss. He spit the answers out as soon as I got the last number out of my mouth.
I got these rings in the dollar bins at Target. Oh and our sea salt grinder came from Sam's. LOL I planned to get a 1 liter coke bottle and fill it up with water when it's empty to use for this game, I just haven't bought the coke yet.

I'd say we had a good day of math. Matter of fact Elijah didn't want to stop.

Tomorrow I will give him a page of 9 facts as a review.

Do you have any math games you'd like to share? Please tell us about math games your family plays.

Workboxes

I don't know how far we will get tomorrow, I don't expect to get through all 12 boxes. This may be 2 days for us.

1. space class online
2. 4th of July notebook pages
3. egg carton math game
4. hand art
5. online math class
6.butterfly notebook pages
7. math game
8. trivia cards
9. pipe cleaner animals
10. vocabulary cards
11. Ancient Egypt
12. skill workbook

Firework show

Last night the boys and I went and enjoyed the firework show at the river. Dakota got a few interesting shots with his new camera.

Happy 4th of July

We don't usually do food stuff for holidays, but this was something we could all eat. The kids made this flag rice crispy treat. They did a good job on it even if the colors turned out pink and baby blue. It was yummy too.

I haven't been blogging much lately, although I've spent plenty of time on the computer. Dakota and I have been busy working on our homeschool website. http://www.nelcha.org It's still not complete, we are waiting on information from the board. Dakota does the work, I just come up with the ideas. I tell him what I want and he creates it.
We'd love to see other homeschool websites, so if your group has a website post the link for us.

I've also been researching and planning for our school year. I've never been one to plan out what we are doing and I probably not going to start now. I'm more into making list and having the freedom to choose something on the list for that subject.

Dakota will be a senior this year. He has most of his credits already so he will have an easy school year. I better stop there or I'll end up crying thinking about it being his last year to homeschool.

We should have an easy school year. Right now we are only committed to the Thursday co-op. I have thought about 4-H for Elijah because they only meet once a month, but we'll see when the time comes. After the over committed year we had last year I'm looking forward to a nice calm year.