Scrimmage

The day finally came were the boyz could hit somebody. It was a cool morning and a perfect day for some football. It maybe hard to pick the boyz out in the photo because we wore our practice jersey's. The Raiders scrimmaged 2 different teams for varsity and JV. Dalton is one of the team managers and was very busy with rotating balls in and out. We did have a couple of players pull a hip flex er but the day was a success. Tabor had a great day, his footwork is miles ahead of last year and will play both sides of the line. It is very obvious that he has been in the weight room. The team showed a big improvement over last week in practice. No fear Elliott laid more than one kid flat on his back plus he caught a few passes. Those kids think because of Tanner's size that they are going to run over him but it was nice to see Tanner stick it to them every time. The excitement is starting to build only 4 days till we go live!

Father Son Flag Football

We had our traditional football potluck to kick off the season on Friday night at the Bode's. The boyz all had regular flag football flags but the fathers had some alterations to their flags. They were camo and about 3 inches long! We had such a great time and laugh. The fathers won 28-18. When the father's scored it was 7 points and when the boyz scored it was 6 points. We had last years seniors be the ref's and the mom's did all the cheering. Darin scored 1 touch down and stiff armed several boys & pancaked a couple of boyz too. After his touch down he needed a heart starter! We often heard how coach was cheating and I think Darin got even with a couple of kids from practice.

Fine Art Class #5 ~ Edgar Degas (Body Movement)

What little girl doesn't want to look at art of ballet dancers?? The girls were all jumping up and down about doing this lesson. We started the lesson off with a little bit of background about Edgar Degas and his life in France, and his travels. Degas was also the first artist we have studied where we focused a bit on the mediums he used. He was born and lived most of his life in France, and loved drawing, painting, sculpting, and many other types of art. We talked about what 'medium' meant in art (a supply to make art) and the kids all named off different mediums they have used; crayons, paint, clay, glue, and even pine cones were mentioned. I didn't correct any of it. They are all mediums. :)

Then we read the book Degas and the Tiny Dancer. This book made me cry. It did the first time I read it to Cyan too. It is bittersweet, but very real and talks about Degas going blind at the end of his life and a little dancer who has a dream that never comes true the way she wants... but how Degas uses her as a model for his most famous sculpture and so she becomes the most famous dancer in the world. Again, this led back to art mediums... in this sculpture this clay person is wearing real ballet shoes and a real ballet dress complete with tutu. The kids thought this was fascinating (and it reinforced that pine cones were an art medium. lol!).

The Little Dancer Fourteen Years Old by Edgar Degas

Then we started talking about form. Now most of these kids are 7 and 8, so I didn't go into a lot... but we did talk about the classic stick figure, and how it doesn't move realistically. And about joints and how when you move, your joints all have to move as well. Realistic movements make a picture go from cartoon, to more real very quickly. So we worked with the body forms to copy the pictures we saw in the books about Degas.

Putting Pen to Paper

We picked one that we enjoyed the look of, and showed all of the joints in the body perfectly (we did not try to get hands or feet joints... just the big ones) and then the kids and I set out to copy that body form using our artists eyes (our 'artists eyes' are very careful about details).

As you can see, in the drawing, after we had covered the basics, we talked about how clothing and hair show the movement of the picture as well.

The kids absorb an AMAZING amount of the information I am giving them. It is just fantastic. Each one of these stick people has all the main joints, moving realistically. I watched their stick figures gain curves and definition (along with hair!) before my eyes. This is one lesson where I wished I had had more time. The mamas showed up and the kids were completely absorbed in their drawings. They were adding clothes, hair, color, etc, and did not want to stop. It warmed my heart to see them so interested. I can't wait to see the art they come back with next week!

Tomato experiment bounty

Top from the potted plant, bottom from the topsy turvy plant.

So far:

Growing up: 9

Growing down: 9

LOL! Isn't that funny? The ground tomatoes were damaged by my toddler back in May, and that may have something to do with the low yield, but they seem pretty dead even so far. One thing I have noticed is that the ground plant has larger tomatoes... but less of them. And the topsy turvy planter gets really dry real fast.

And these tomatoes are horrible. lol... they are mealy and nearly tasteless and stay really firm. This must be a variety they keep for shipping late in the winter. That is the only reason I can think to breed a variety so untomato tasting.

FOOTBALL

Finally we get to hit someone other than a teammate! Scrimmage in Madelia @ 9:30 am. I'll be there how about U?

This makes me so very sad!

Reading Rainbow shutting down after 26 years.

There are a lot of political things that I could spout right now after reading this very sad article... but the biggest thing that I enjoyed about the show is that it showed the love of reading, and the love of learning... and if you keep that alive, you will never have uneducated children. You just won't. You kill the joy of learning and you have the 'problems' we are facing today with our public school systems. I figure my ENTIRE goal in homeschooling is to teach my children to read, and teach them to love learning. Those two things cover every other issue they may have with their 'education' later in life.

And luckily, I have a library that has oh so many episodes of Reading Rainbow on DVD already. :)

Nicollet Raiders new football wear as modeled by the Elliott boyz. Only 8days till season opener at Cleveland. Boyz have a varsity scrimage in Madelia on Sat and Tanner's first JV game is only 6 days away at home vs. the Mustangs from Granada.

Inner city beach tour 2009

We have spent many an day at the beaches around our area lately. We have found some gems too! I will do a whole big post on it later, but for now, I will leave you with my favorite picture of the week:

More new nature table stuff

Our nature table is really growing this year. I have pulled out all of our old stuff... but with three kids now fully involved in the nature table and what we put on it, our sets have started to expand. This is our newest set... felted bowls from a very talented lady at the farmers market. I got four; brown large one, yellow and green med ones, and one small blue one. They will hold treasures like rose hips, sea glass, acorns, and pine cones depending on season.

Signs of Fall

As August comes to an end and as you look around the yard it's definitely fall! Chickens are busy eating crickets, the leaves on the maple trees are changing and the sunflower heads are starting to fill with seeds. The garden is in full producing getting around a 5 gallon pail of tomatoes a day. The kitchen counters are full of canning jars even the pumpkins are turning orange. We are just 10 days away from kick off.

The Dome was Rockin'

Friday night we dressed up in our best purple & white to cheer for the home team. Naturally with over 62,000 other fans hoping to see something great from our newest player. You will notice a extra in a photo,that is Joe, Darin's office manager. Joe rode up with us to the dome for the game. Foodliner treated some Cargill employee's to a night at the game and all the eats & treats they wanted. They were all located a few rows behind us at the game. The plaza outside the dome was filled with all types of activities and people. The boyz each spun the Vikings Children Charity wheel where they won viking t-shirts (and why do my boyz always win the white ones?) hat & vikings tote. Our seats were amazing and we were on TV a few times. Friends were calling and texting us during the game when they would see us. We were sitting in a sea of purple except Tabor who was wearing his new WHITE#4 Farve jersey. And the boyz got a kick out of seeing themselves on ESPN & SPORTS CENTER about 10times. We have been to the dome a number of times for great events and it has been loud. The Bison -Gopher game was really loud. NOTHING compares to when Brett Farve came out! They had to of heard us in Green Bay. Okay we all know he didn't do marvelous things that night on the field but we just have to point out the long hair dreadlocks freak #13 who should be cut, totally dropped the ball. So for all you Farve boo-Hooters~ hey its nice to have someone to cheer about that makes you forget about work and all the other troubles from the week. It gives kids a positive role model who hasn't beaten his wive, shot anyone or himself and doesn't own a pack of fighting dogs. And "Thanks Farve" the extra tax dollars you are bringing into our state will educate the boyz and maintain our roads. Who knows this may make the VIKING wear popular again for Christmas gifts. We have a countdown for all of you ..........11days till the 1st football game for the RAIDERS! What do you think should we hire the guy with the purple face to paint it royal blue & white for our game?

Fine Art Class #4 ~ MC Escher, Master of Perspective

MC Escher... another artist from the Netherlands. And let me tell you, I could have researched him forever. What an interesting artist! He just had a eye like no other....

We started the talk off with a review:

Van Gogh, Master of Texture

Mondrian, Master of Balance

and then moved on to Escher, Master of Perspective.

I showed the kids this picture, and asked them to tell me if it worked in their eyes. All of them said yes... and then I asked them where the water came from.... and they looked... and looked again. They came up with all sorts of ways to how it could works; pumps, water going so fast that it went uphill, etc. It was a neat and fun conversation.

We spent a lot of time talking about Depth Perception, and Foreground and Background. For depth perception I taught them the "I'm squishing your head" thing from SNL from when I was a kid. They got a kick out of that and they spent a few minutes 'squishing' each others heads and talking about depth perception and perspective. I doubt they will ever forget that! lol!

Then, putting pen to paper, I asked the kids to make me a snake. This snake had to cross over itself (foreground and background) and have some details. The kids spent over an hour on this project and a couple still didn't get theirs done. They were completely enthralled.

I wish I had a better picture of Elias'! His was amazing... it crossed over itself probably 10 times and he was coloring it gold when we had to stop and move on. I let him take the gold pencil home and I hope he brings it back to show it to me next week.

Then we moved on to Escher's Tessellations. The first pic is a perfect example of some of the works he is most famous for. His lizards that fit into each other so perfectly that it is hard to stop looking around the page. The activity that went with this part of the lesson had really shoddy directions. It ended up only working one way... which didn't really show the way to do a tessellation. It was frustrating for me and the kids... but they thought tessellations were fascinating and we spent a bunch of time looking at Escher's Metamorphosis Tessellations.

All in all, I considered it a good class. It wasn't my most successful class, but the kids really understood the concepts, and it was neat to watch them apply them.