Finally!

Sorry it's been so long since the last update. We moved to an apartment in Fayetteville last summer and it took us awhile to get acclimated. We're used to having a lot more room for art projects, and the smaller space has been quite a challenge. We've made up for it by doing things at the library, arts center, and the clubhouse at our apartment. The boys really enjoy the variety.

We took a long break over the holidays from "normal" schoolwork, but caught up quite a bit on art and science that we didn't get to focus on as much as we would have liked to during the semester. We're doing art all the time, trying to weave it in to other subjects and daily life, but I wanted to spend some time working specifically with the color wheel, line, and form. We also experimented with and compared art mediums and tools (water color pencils vs. water colors, acrylic paint vs. tempera, cold/hard press paper vs. copy paper). I'm also learning that if you want kids to really "find" themselves in art, you gotta buy good quality stuff, and a wide variety of it for them to experiment with. I've already noticed that while Brennan loves acrylic paint, Rich depends more and more on watercolors as we've invested in better quality paints, brushes, and paper. There's simply no substitute for supplies that work like they're supposed to.

So nothing HUGE to report, other than, we're back at it. Brennan is determined to learn how to read before summer, and I think he can if he keeps at it. He's also learning about the continents and we started Africa today. This has sparked Rich's interest about world religions, so I'm trying to pull him in when we discuss various cultures around the world. Rich will be spending the better part of the semester with the Greeks and Romans, and hopefully his literacy learning will be drawn from there. He's warmed up to Greek mythology and anxious to move forward in math now that he's more familiar with the multiplication table.

More updates very soon and an exciting announcement to come...