It's 2009!

Today we should be getting back at it, but I am not feeling it. My brain is still on holiday. But it has tuned out to be a pretty fab day anyway.

The littles had J's new art kit out before I was up this morning and they were sculpting:) Other than that it was a lazy morning.
After lunch, I put on Mozart's Magic Fantasy, part of the Classical Kids stories. It is based on Mozart's Magical Flute Opera and I bought the study guides that are full of interesting tidbits for a comprehensive music study and cross curricular ideas. So we just listened to the first act and read a bit and discussed what we heard. The kids responded quite well. Then J and A played with a spelling puzzle they got for Christmas while R started his chores.
We were listening to a Jonathan Park Cd, which they also received for Christmas. I found it informative and entertaining, if not a bit preachy. Okay a lot preachy. The kids on the other hand, loved it! I also have the study guide that one of my dear children has already misplaced. I hope to find in and go over the information in there. edit: The study guides are all available on the website as pdf's, as are ideas for real life adventures for your family!
Now we are listening to G.A. Henty's With Wolfe in Canada on cd while the kids paint and draw. J is experimenting with colour mixing and A is having fun making shapes with her brush and stamping. The big boys are drawing and helping with the littles.
I think my off day has been rather productive. Maybe we will learn some kitchen skills in a bit.

Thursday teatime

We did our first official tea time today. Other than some wrestling between the 13 year old and the 4 year old, it went well.
We started off reading The Royal Canadian Mounted Police by Marc Tetro. It is a picture book for 4-8 year olds I would think and has amusing drawings that all the kids enjoyed. Then we started The Jungle Book, an illustrated one that I bought years ago and never read. All 3 boys seemed to be really into it and the older style of writing doesn't seem to be an issue. We stopped at page 26, just after the wolves accept Mowgli as part of the pack.
The children then each chose a poem from Favorite Poems Old and New selected by Helen Ferris to read and I read Written in March by William Wordsworth. I gave the older boys an assignment to pick a poem to memorize for next week.
Monkey Boy and I did some Hershey Kisses Math before the big boys joined us, Monkey's choice. It is a multiplication and division book, but he was really into it and seemed to at least grasp the basics of the multiplication part. I would like to find a similar addition book.
Next we opened the laptop and went to the Classics for Kids website where we listened to 4 shows about Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer of the Flight of the Bumblebee. I think next time we will just do one show, even though they are just 6 minutes long, we were all restless by the end.
We headed on over to News Flash Five, a news for kids site I found on PBS. I am gonna go through some of the lesson plans and maybe incorporate some of them into our weeks.
I thought we would spend some time looking at some art books, but we were all tired of sitting by then and I gave the kids their poetry assignment and told them that they could actually have their computers back today to blog. I can't wait to read them, I have missed their blogging.
Oh, biggest brother read a really cute version of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and Monkey has been reciting it all day.

I can't wait to try this again next week. It is nice to just relax together, read and talk.
If anyone has some good art appreciation websites, would you please share?

Free Children's Music

My Dad sent me this link the other day for arts reformation dot com. This page is filled with Children's recordings, mp3's of vinyl records from the 50's and 60's. I am madly downloading them as we speak. Tons of recordings of Fairy tales, fables and nursery rhymes as well as interesting schooly stuff like Songs Children Sing: Germany or Italy or...
I am also interested to have a listen to their Children's Introductions to: (orchestra, ballet, Shakespeare, multiplication.....)
I can't wait to unzip some of these files and share them with my kids!