Beach Day and Some (Mostly Kid) Art

The weekend was gorgeous, and we grabbed the opportunity to go down to the river and grab some driftwood for the lizard cage, and watch Mikro goof around with spear throwing and drawing dragons in the sand.

Things you don't expect to hear yourself say #3,768:

"Don't hunt the kayakers!"













Here's something I'm doing in clay:



And Mikro's most recent Sketch Tuesday entry, for "Sailing the High Seas":

Spring Fun

Mikro has been begging me to let him make something with clay. Today, he had fun sculpting a cobra, a mongoose, a cat and a weird alien. I worked on a bas relief of a mandolin and a recorder. The neighbor kids are off school this week, so a large part of today was spent playing outside with a friend. He read some economics, which is our new unit study, and watched a science video. He's bouncing off the walls because tomorrow he gets to visit Gramma & Grampa.



Yesterday, we stopped at the library and then went to the park for a day on the playground. Mikro played tag, climbed trees and had a blast. I spent my time playing with my camera and photographing the spring sights... Later on, we ended up at the Boat Launch, waiting to pick up Kev from the train. We saw black swans, cormorants, sea gulls, ravens, and, best of all, a bald eagle diving for fish. Of course, by then I had killed the camera batteries...

Mom's Night Out: Pottery Class is Back!

Pottery Class is in full swing, and I'm making pumpkins and gourds. And then I got the odd notion of making a set of clay husk dolls... er, corn husk dolls made of clay, that is...

Playing with Clay

Mikro made the angler fish. The rest are mine. Can't wait to see how they look fired... The glazed ones are done with Amaco underglaze (sets that look like pan watercolors), with a clear gloss glaze over the top...

Pre-Dynastic Egypt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here are some photos from our expeditions to the Met. This first bunch is from the pre-dynastic period. Fun pottery shapes, and animal figurines.

Early May

I've been a bad blogger. I'm way behind, so in an effort to catch up, I'll be doing a bunch of posts. This one is the early part of May.
Let's See...



Pottery got destroyed when the Middle School's kiln massively overfired. Everything *melted*. But the obnoxious art room owner is trying to say one of our pieces *blew up* and damaged her kiln. Um, no, when things *blow up* they do not *liquefy*, sorry. So a bunch of my sculptures bit the dust. Sigh. And we may or may not have pottery next semester, depending on the budget for kiln repair, and whether the smear campaign against our program is successful.

Mikro and I saw a wonderful play at Peekskill's Paramount Center for the Arts. Butterfly: The Story of a LifeCycle was a musical puppet show. We also walked around downtown, window shopping, enjoying the artsy Peekskill Coffee House, and hitting both used bookstores, where Mikro totally scored. Then we spent the afternoon at the playground and playing with friends on our block. (A large portion of May was spent in this way.)



We planted a bunch of annuals and some herbs in the front garden, and veggies in our sideline plot. We ordered caterpillars and ladybug larvae for our spring nature study projects. And we watched our nest boxes, and were thrilled when a house wren couple moved into one (and built a dummy nest in the other). (i'll do a separate Nest Watch post, with photos...)

We did the rounds of the Grandparents, since both Kev's mom and mine have May birthdays, in addition to Mothers Day, to celebrate.


My Mothers Day was lovely. We spent the day at South Beach at our local park, beachcombing and exploring and watching the waves. Found some nice sea glass. The oogey part was picking no less than 7 ticks out of my hair afterwards. Cringe. Yuck.








A very belated
to all my mama friends!

A is for April... and Art

I can't believe April is nearly over already. We spent a lot of time outdoors, playing in the yard, homeschooling on the porch swing, and watching the birds. For me, there was pottery (and I still have a couple of weeks left), and playing with leftover easter egg dye. I used the white crayon from the egg dye kit to draw pictures on white paper; then Mikro and I colored them in by dabbing egg dye on them with paper towel wads. Fun! I also dipped an old T shirt in the dye, and need to research how to set it... We both played with kiddie watercolors. Mikro tried oil pastels for the first time, and seemed to like them better than crayons. We did some crafts, read lots of books, and were so busy with field trips and classes with our homeschool groups that I'm thinking we need to start calling it Never-at-home-schooling. Well, except for the days when my arthritic gimpy body just refused to let me abuse it any further, and those days the porch swing was a great place to work on reading and science...