May 4, 2017

One of my biggest regrets in homeschooling has been not following through on the fun stuff.

I was always so focused on academics that most of the time we ran out of steam and time when it came to fun.

There's a curriculum we used when Jed was younger, called Five in a Row, 

which uses classic children's literature as a foundation for lessons,

and while we always completed the lessons for the major academic subjects,
there were quite a few other things we didn't finish.

I kept a list of them over the years, and since we have a few weeks to finish out this school year,

and Jed has done enough academic work already,

(besides Latin and algebra, the kid can draw the entire world and label most of the countries from memory!)

I decided to use this time to tackle some of those fun things.

Today was art.

This book, Night of the Moonjellies, was part of the FIAR curriculum, and we both loved it.

The art lesson was to use oil pastels to duplicate the ocean scene on the cover of the book.

My older son Brad, who is an artist extraordinaire, had given me a set of oil pastels years ago,
and I was thrilled to finally have the opportunity to experiment with them.
Jed doesn't love art, and he didn't want me to post his work, but I couldn't wait to post mine -

I LOVE it!!

I couldn't do the moonjellies because the white pastel crayon just blended everything, 

but there were valleys in the watercolor paper that wouldn't take the color, 

so I left them white to simulate the moonjellies, 

or what they actually look more like, whitecaps.

I didn't tackle the boat because I just wanted to experiment with the water.

It was so incredible to see the water and sky taking shape layer after layer. 

There's a ton of oil pastels on this paper.  :)

I wish I had time for a new hobby!
(click on the pictures to enlarge them)