School at Home: Day Two

I intended to take the girls down to the beach today for a craft project, but the craft project relied on having access to dry sand. As you can see, that wasn't an option today. They enjoyed their "outside time" once I explained that yes, it's raining. Yes, this is mandatory. :) Mimi insisted on sandals, but didn't seem to suffer any ill effects from the cold toes! They ran around the yard, played a game of golf in the driveway with putters and a tennis ball, and rode their bikes.

For circle time we read our summer stories (we have about 20 from the library right now, we read a little stack of their choosing.) We sang summer songs, and had a really rousing rendition of "I Am A Child of God." (I'm going to stick with that as our opening song for a little while, it's a nice one.) I didn't know Mimi knew so many words! She was really belting some of them out :) Oh, and I remembered to go through our scripture verse for the week- we're doing the Articles of Faith, because Ernie is already learning those in Primary, and they've been set to music. Her primary is on #9 right now- "We believe all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal, and we believe he will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

In leiu of our beach craft, I got out the paints and paper and had the girls do marble paintings- blob a few colors of paint onto a sturdy piece of paper, and put the paper in a box with a marble. You shake and tilt the box to make the marble go all over and through the paint. It makes kind of a neat effect, but it didn't work well. Mimi had a fit when she saw that the marble was mixing her colors, and the colors E chose were too thick to let the marble through. (I need to add a little water to the paint if we do this again.) They're still in the boxes, drying (the blobs of paint were quite large!) but I'll take pictures when they're dry and hung up.

I handed out paint brushes and let the girls paint for a while. Ernie drew a picture of our family in the rain. A few things that I love: art smocks from Ikea, tempura paints that wipe off tables (and high chairs, and even walls on occasion,) and oil cloth stapled to my table. Seriously, just about everything wipes off if you can catch it in the first hour- crayon, ball point pen, paint, etc. The only thing that's ever left a mark is greasy tomato-based foods like chili and spaghetti sauce, but those marks have either faded or simply blended in with the strawberries because I KNOW there are spots that haven't wiped clean after meals, and I can't find them now. Love, love the oil cloth. Plus it satisfies my need for color without painting another wall! I'm trying to tell myself that the table is PLENTY of turquoise blue....but I'm still itching to add more blue. Summer is ending, the light is fading, and yes: I compensate by painting my walls to look like the Crayola factory exploded. I have lots of pine furniture- those might be nicer if they were blue....hmmm. (Hubby: I'm kidding! :)

Mimi had fun pushing blobs of paint around. I'm excited to have some new art for our art line, and....new construction paper. All of ours was either faded, or orange, or green. Seriously, it looked pretty drab. We stocked up on a few supplies at Ikea before school started- chalk, smocks, paper, etc.- and it's fun having shiny new supplies!

For lunch I made sandwiches on the girls' loaves- they formed these themselves last night after dinner! I was pretty impressed- I showed them how to throw the dough down and press it out into a rectangle, then roll it up like a hot dog. Mimi did the fatter loaf on top completely on her own before I could turn back to show her how to roll it. I made the cuts though- next time I'll remember to call them into the kitchen to slice the tops just before I stick the bread in the oven.