Beauty Captured Day 7 of 365

We were at the pet store today picking up ferret food and couldn't take our eyes off of all the brightly colored birds. We discussed how our dream was to turn one room in the house into a huge aviary where the birds could fly around and not even feel like they were in a cage.

Another Year of Creative Christian Cooperative

Yesterday was a fun but exhausting day. As many of you already know, I co-direct a Fine Arts Cooperative of 36 families. We held auditions for The Aristocats for the elementary drama class. Let me tell you, we were blown away by the talent from those kids. After watching auditions all afternoon and meeting new families I came home to yet more work for the Cooperative. I am in charge of all the business end of things with the Cooperative. In less than a week we start. Now my focus is on getting all the supplies and lesson plans ready for the classes I teach: Elementary Art, Puppetry Arts, Fun with Literature, and Yearbook Staff. Me and my co-director want the children that attend our Cooperative to have fun, meet new people and make friends, learn about God through the Fine Arts, and share their talents with others in the community to show God's love. This morning me and Grace were reading our devotions from "Who Is My Neighbor and Why Does He Need Me?", I came across something that I will be sharing with all my students on the first day of class.

If you choose to keep God's gifts to yourself, then you will never complete your mission. If you hid yourself away from the world, content to live out your days quietly and uneventfully until the Master returns, then you will fail to become what God always intended you to be: a blessing to the world.

You are here to make a difference.

You are here to change lives.

You are here to change your community.

You are here to change the world.

I just loved this section of our devotions today. Our ultimate goal is to train these talented kids to go out in the community and share their gifts with others for the glory of God. 

Beauty Captured Day 6 of 365

A fellow Crew member is hosting a daily linkup titled Beauty Captured. This is a daily link up of capturing beauty through pictures. I can't say that I will be diligent enough to link up every day, but I would like to try. So I join Beauty Captured on day 6.

Getting Excited

Today was our teacher's meeting for the upcoming semester of our Cooperative. This will be the second year since me and a close friend started a fine arts cooperative. We started somewhat small last year with 2-3 teachers and now we have exploded with 8 teachers and 34 families participating. There will be classes in drama, choir, art, yearbook, crafts, creative writing, puppetry, literature, and LEGOS. Next week is our first day. Today at the meeting all the details were ironed out and auditions are tomorrow for the elementary drama class that will perform The Aristocats in December. The upper grades will be learning Shakespeare and have a Night of Shakespeare in November. A Spring Formal is also in the works for the upper grades. It is so exciting at the beginning of a semester getting everything together, meeting new families, and just enjoying the fellowship with the participating families.

I will be teaching four classes this go around with elementary art, puppetry arts, fun with literature, and yearbook staff. I still need to find a certain book for my first class on Tuesday of next week otherwise I am set. Grace is also very excited to get back to it. Seeing all her friends and just being busy again.

Weekly Wrap - Getting It Back Together

This week found us trying to resume a more scheduled week with school and such. Here are some items we tackled this week:

What We Are Reading

The Children of Odin for Famous Men of the Middle Ages

Famous Men of the Middle Ages

The Book of Mark

Twenty-One Balloons

Who I Am Series for Devotions

Glaucia for Early Church History

King Alfred's English

What We Are Discussing, Observing, and Learning

Birds - American Goldfinch and Turkey Vulture

Integers with Fractions - Multiplying

How to Art Journal

Vocabulary for SAT Prep

Norse Mythology (Grace adores Loki)

Out of the House Endeavors

Grace had a doctor and dentist appt this week

Attended two Zumba classes together

Girls Art Journaling met at our house

Interesting Tidbit of the Week

King Alfred's English taught us that Celtic woman were very brave and fierce warriors. Our word bodacious comes from a a Celtic queen named Boudicca.

Upcoming Reviews

Time4Learning

Disc Career Style Report from People Keys

This week Grace's favorite thing was her new bamboo splash tablet. Her old tablet was broken a few weeks ago and she was going crazy not having it to do digital art. You can see a post here of some of her new creations. 

I am linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers. This week was only two days of school, hopefully next week will find us immersed in learning all week.

Art Journaling Group

This summer I hosted a girl's art journaling group once a week. Some weeks we had as many as 10 girls in attendance and some weeks, like yesterday it was small with maybe 5. Yesterday was actually our last meeting for the summer. I noticed that some of the girls were having trouble actually creating a page and knowing creatively what to do. 

So this week we built two pages from the ground up step by step. One page was what I call a "Quote Page" and the other was kind of like a journal or diary page. We used watercolors, markers, stickers, and erasers. I will miss seeing these girls once a week. Who ever said that hanging around teenagers was hard simply hasn't really spent time around them. They are a complete joy.

New Creations From Grace

Grace has been creating some really bizarre stuff lately. She loves drawing and making up her own characters. Some day I hope see will start including stories to go with all of her concept drawings.

Her forte seems to be blending humans and animals, especially goat, horse, etc. Anything with a tail can be used in her eyes.