Art-ish

I think my frustration has finally surfaced with our current homeschooling curriculum.  I have been largely uninspired because I have very little say in what we learn and how we do it.  As I said in my previous post, while the material is good, I am way too stressed about meeting their guidelines.  It just isn't my style (as lame as that may sound).

I haven't even known how to blog about it lately.

 

Eye, aye, I want to call the shots, take a field trip, and work on projects with my 2nd grader, and I want all that to count. 

All this hit home when Bella asked me, "Mom, why don't we do any art projects like I did when I was in school?" 

Ouch. 

Taking her out of public school has only changed her environment (which is good, but is not enough).  We are still doing what the state tells us is important, and I'm not comfortable with that.

Therefore, I will very shortly be pulling out of the state-funded homeschool curriculum and going off the radar for a while.  I'm looking forward to planning subjects, activities, and themes that we can dive as deep as we want into, before moving to the next thing.  Including my 3-year-old in the fun of learning will be another element of our plans.

So after the horrific realization that we weren't planning enough art in our life, we read a book by Peter  H. Reynolds.  If you haven't read any of his work, I also recommend the book Ish.  Love them!

In The Dot, we let the story inspire us to paint a picture, and then sign it.  You never know where something as simple as a dot can take you!

We headed outside for some back porch painting.  Brody skipped the dots and only added them AFTER he painted "Batman" twice. Bella took her time mixing colors and getting creative with her dots before she moved onto other subjects.

View their finished work in our toy room art gallery!