Artist Study- Henri Matisse

This month we studied Henri Matisse. He was an interesting artist because he not only painted, but he did a lot with paper collage and also interior decorating. We did not use a lot of resources, just Smart About Art: Drawing with Scissors and many of Matisse's art pieces. I love the Smart About Art book series because it is both fun to read and very informational too.

We made some collages with paper for our final Matisse activity. Their pictures could be either literal or abstract and here's what they came up with:

Noah's Collage

Jack's Collage (I helped with the leaves...:))

Common Mamas

I'm excited and nervous today because I'm starting a new 'adventure.'

I've felt for a couple months now, God prompting me to do something with Moms...and after a lot of thoughts and prayers, I've decided to start a Mama Share Group at my church.

I get a little nervous sometimes because I never know how things will turn out...will moms like a group like this?? will we connect well??

You know what I mean. :)

But, either way, I'm super excited for this morning!

I made a bunch of binders...one for each Mama to keep all their 'goodies' they collect at meetings. Each one has a little notebook in it too, to write down scriptures or quotes that inspire them.

And I so wish I could invite some blogland friends to come too!! So, to kind of include blogging Mamas from faraway lands, I decided to start a Blogspot for anyone to keep up with what we're doing at Common Mama group!

Here's the link to our new blog!!

Tea Time

As promised, I'm sharing some pictures of our fun tea party on Saturday. Since the party, our whole family has been feeling a little under the weather with strep throat, so it's taken me a couple days to post these pictures, but here goes:


This was my very first tea party as well as Sophia's and I think everyone had a lovely time.

Sophia looked lovely in her new home-sewn dress made by mama. She brought her 'tea time' manners to the party too, so that always makes for a fun party.

Here's some of the party decor:
Tea sandwiches and tiny cupcakes...perfect for two-year old hands

Mom and I went 'junking' last week and found a whole box of old shabby chic teacups and saucers. Nothing matched, but that was the point! We found this cream and sugar that I just LOVE!

The boys were great sports about going to a TEA PARTY! I'm sure they would have been much more excited about other things, but they got all spruced up and sipped some tea. :)

Sophie~ sampling some crumpets :)

Sampling some more crumpets with Uncle Art...don't you love that he wore a bow tie?!!

See? I told you she brought her manners!! :)

So here she is...officially 2!!

Thank you to Aunt Mamie Photography for the adorable pictures and thanks to you for checking out our Tea Party!

Sophia's 2!

After having two little boys, I never ever thought I'd have a little girl in my life. And when the doctor said those words, 'it's a girl,' I felt my eyes well up with tears of joy. Not that I would have loved another boy, but there's something about having a little someone in your home that wants to be just like you. Someone following you around with a rag and a broom, trying to be exactly like mama. I've posted on this subject before...but really, it's intimidating for a mother sometimes knowing there are two little eyes watching you like a hawk at all waking hours.

(just went potty)

So, today my baby is 2!! Two years since the doctor said those three little words that changed me as a mama forever. Two happy years of dresses and dollies, and many more to come.

So for Sophie's 2nd birthday, here's her two wishes from me:

#1: That you keep that crazy-determination you have...whatever you do in life, you'll be great at it!

#2: That you keep watching me...you make me want to be a better mom and a better person :)

I love you, Sis! Happy Birthday!!

Love, Mama

PS: To celebrate, we're having a tea party this afternoon....more bday posts to come :)

Top of the Morning to you!

Maybe it's just because I'm about 50% Irish or maybe because I just like the color green...I'm not sure why, but I love St. Patrick's' Day! We've been learning about Ireland for the past couple days and we'll end our unit today.
So here's a quick look at what we've been learning and some of my favorite Celtic things!

~Monday: Ireland (history of and about the country)
~Tuesday: Irish Folklore (leprechauns, fairies, and where we get these fun stories)
~Wednesday (today): St. Patrick (what he did for Ireland and why we celebrate him today)

I LOVE shamrocks and I usually have one on my table this time of year. This is the time of year where I really start craving green! This one was delivered to me from my mom. (whose maiden name was O' Hagan before they dropped the 'O' years and years ago because of reputation sake in those days) Thanks, Mom! xoxo

Here are some of the books we read. There's TONS more great books on St. Patrick's Day out there of course, these are some of the ones I owned or the library had. Some others that looked good were: S is for Shamrock and Gail Gibbon's St. Patrick's Day.

This is a traditional Irish meal: Beef Hand Pies. They are kind of like a Shepherd's Pie pocket, if you can imagine that. Click on the picture for a link to the recipe. I have never made this particular recipe before, but it looks good. We'll be dining on these for our Irish feast tonight!

I came across this Celtic Lullaby CD a while ago and bought it for Sophia's birthday that's coming up. It arrived yesterday and I had to have a listen before I wrapped it up :)

Click on the link and listen to samples...it's so pretty!

Wishing you a Happy St. Paddy's Day!!

When in Rome...

After a quick week in Greece two weeks ago, last week we were on to Rome. The boys are so fascinated with Gladiators and the Roman soldiers. It's so fun to watch your kids love to learn. :)
Here's a look at what we did last week...

A couple of our resources:

Classical Kids by Laurie Carlson: LOVE this book! She has many others too that I'll use in the future also. She has tons of fun facts and even more really fun projects, ideas, and recipes to go along with your Ancient Greece and Rome studies.

Evan-Moore's Ancient Rome's History Pockets. I pictured some of the 'pockets' we made from this book below.

Like when we studied Greece the week before, we had a Roman feast last week also. I'll admit...this was not something I was super-excited about doing that day. It was Friday night, I was tired, it had been a long week. But, I did it. And when we were done I was so glad I did. The kids had a blast and it didn't kill me either :)

My first idea for the boys was to have them wear a (really simple costume) toga. But they were insistent that they dressed as Roman soldiers. Ooookay, like where do you come up with a Roman soldier costume? So here you have it: their daddy's white undershirt, armor from the dress-up box, and mommy's old valances safety-pinned to their backs. :)
I giggled. They loved it!

Here's a look at our dinner:

Bean salad and steamed artichokes

Hard-boiled eggs, olives, grapes, and a handsome-looking Julius Caesar in the background :)

Here's a peek at Noah's pocketbook:

Cover

Gods

This is a little project the boys did all by themselves. It's a catapult they each made and used to fling marshmallows at each other! Aren't they just the cutest?! I LOVE flinging food for the sake of education!

This is one of the projects found in the Classical Kids book I showed above.

So now we're movin' on. We've accomplished everything I was hoping to for history this year and we're going to end out our school year with some fun Geography, studying one continent per week and learning about some different world cultures. But before we do that, Jack has been begging to study DINOSAURS, so I think we can squeeze that in next week before we start our Geography unit. We're going to take it easy this week, focusing a little on Ireland, then we'll be moving on to dinosaurs. :)

Greek Week

After a quick study on Greece last week, we're moving on to Rome this week, but here's a look at what our week in Greece was like...

Here's some of our resources.

After reading about all things Greek all week, we celebrated the end of our unit by having a Greek feast. We scooted our dining room table against the wall and dined on our coffee table while sitting on pillows on the floor. We ate roasted pigeon (our just your typical rotisserie chicken from the grocer), roasted asparagus, olives, and some tasty spinach and feta cheese pockets made with puff pastry sheets. We got our ideas for the feast in the "Classical Kids" book shown above. There's great ideas in there. I took some cute pictures of us dining, but my camera was acting up and they didn't turn out :( But here's a picture of the kids in costume.

I used this Ancient Rome History Pockets book like I did for the Egypt study and below are some pictures of the book we put together.

Cover...

learning about the marketplace...here, Noah made a sign for his marketplace shop.

...learning about the first Olympics.

The kids loved talking about Greece and now they're loving Rome, too! I hope my kids like history as much as I do when they're older!! They certainly seem to love it now!