Busy

Last week was another busy week with class projects.

You know, those are bad enough when there's only one to have to push a child to complete, but when it's all four at the same time it's just insanity.

At least at my house anyway.

The kids had to write a story for their English class and it had to be about an experience in their life and then they had to make a project to go with it.

I only managed to get pictures of two of the projects though.

Wyatt's story was about the people that own the land next to ours and a time when the kids got in trouble by those land owners for being on their property. His project had the guy that yelled at them in his truck. I dyed coconut green for him to glue down for grass, he used brown sugar for the dirt, and got some rocks from outside for some of the landscaping. I didn't think it was too bad but he wasn't thrilled with it. Hmmmm.......maybe he would have had more time to 'perfect' it if he hadn't kept putting it off until the last minute. Now that would just be crazy!!  Anyway, he told me it wasn't the best one there but after I asked he had to admit that it wasn't the worst one either. lol All of that to say that I didn't get a picture of his.

Addison wrote about a time that we went to the movies (the first time her and her friend got to go sit by themselves) and how these people sitting close to them kept bothering them by talking to them during the movie. So her project was inside of a shoe box and was a dark movie theatre. It was too dark to get a picture of.

Kirsten wrote about the cruise we went on a couple of years ago. (Gaaahhhh! I can't believe it's been that long already!) Anyway, she made a cruise ship.

 I thought she did a pretty decent job.

Abigail wrote about the time she fell in p.e. and cut her head open. Her Dad picked her up and took her to get stitches, and then passed out while they were doing it. That's him on the floor in her diorama.

I just had to laugh. Do you see the cut on her head with the blood oozing out? And the doctor going to help Dax and leaving her on the table? If I could have gotten a picture of her clay face the eyes are really big and the mouth is open in a circle. Too funny!

At least there was a little laughter in the stress of pushing to get these projects done, right?

School Projects

The last several evening have been consumed with projects for the kids' Texas History classes.

They had a list of people that they could make some type of project that related to that person or a landmark.

Here's what they came up with. I'll add here that we've been through a WHOLE lot of clay at our house in the last week.

Wyatt made the Alamo.

 It was made with clay that was rolled out to about 1/4" thickness. A dishcloth was used to get the texture. He used a toothpick to make lines for the different bricks (he forgot to on this front piece because he was too worried about the windows.) The clay curved a bit on the front piece and when he was dry brushing the color on (try explaining dry brushing to a 13 year old boy.....OY!) the bottom broke. I cut out a piece of cardboard and glued the front piece onto it. Thankfully he said it held long enough for him to turn his project in. lol

Kirsten did a sculpture of the Angel of Goliad.

 I baked the clay for about an hour - even though it's air dry clay - but it was getting late and she needed to paint it. It will probably take at least a week for it to really be dry. lol When she was painting it she remembered that she had wanted to make wings and a halo. Crap!! So I looked around and remembered we had a bag of feathers and were able to find two white ones that were close in size. I pulled the halo off of one of my Christmas decorations. lol

Addison made Davey Crockett's fiddle (at least I think that's who's it is.) She cut it out of styrofoam. Boy does that make a mess!! Anyway, the top and sides are just wood grain scrapbook paper. And she used thumb tacks to hold the strings in place.

Abigail used a piece of the paper that I had tea stained for an earlier project they did. She made the quill pen and ink jar out of clay. I forgot who's items these were. She actually looked up letters that her person had written and wrote the first sentence or two on the paper.

Overall I think they did a pretty good job. They said that theirs looked better than most of the projects that they had seen at that point. Wyatt was very upset with his Alamo because of where it broke until he got to school and saw some of the others. He said that his was way better than what he saw already turned in. I hope they get good grades because they really did work hard on them.

Maybe now I can get back to things that I actually think are fun. lol