Cave Painting

History and art rolled into one big messy fabulous project. We're studying ancient history, so what better way to start off the year's art studies? Cave painting has several advantages as an elementary-age art project: It's big. The materials are easy to find and to use. Cave paintings are very simple when it comes to subject and color. The pictures are not intimidating for children to imitate. You can fingerpaint or paint with sticks, draw with charcoals and pastels, or get even more creative and try to mix paints using dirt, leaves and spices.



You need:
Printed pictures of cave paintings from around the world and/or books with photos and brief explanations of cave paintings
Brown paper bags for practice paintings, or for your project if you choose not to do a large wall painting, crumpled then flattened
A large sheet or two of brown paper, crumpled and flattened
Charcoal sticks for drawing
Pastels for drawing (reds, browns, oranges and yellows)
Paints (Black, brown, red, yellow, orange)
A drop cloth
Rags for clean-up


Session one:
We studied cave painting as an art form. Look at cave paintings from aroud the world. Notice what makes them the same. What differences do you see? Why might people have painted these paintings? What did they paint? What do you think they used? Then do a warm-up drawing. Cut open a brown paper grocery bag. Crumple then flatten the bag. Draw your cave painting on the bag using charcoal and pastels. This step allows the children to experiment with the materials to find out what works and what doesn't, and to experiment with themes and lines and colors. Naturally, the fine young gents drew many weapons. Arrows, spears and blood were popular.


Session Two:
If you've got the time, the materials and the space, create a wall-sized cave painting. Use large paper, the kind teachers put on their bulletin boards. Crumple it then flatten it to simulate the curves and rough texture of rock. Attach the paper to the wall, put down a drop cloth if you're using paint, and let the children paint and draw their cave paintings using paints, pastels and charcoal, even dirt, sticks and leaves. Allow plenty of time for exploration of the materials and of the subject matter.

A flash from the past, a segment of our first cave painting, painted by our eldest lovely lady when she was in seventh grade:
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Internet lesson plans:

Cave paintings: Animals in Art

Art History: Create Cave Paintings

Cave Art: Discovering Prehistoric Humans through Pictures

First Day of School

First day of school: Journals in backpacks, pack a lunch, ditch the books and get outside for an Explore, an expotition.

It was a beautiful day for a trip to the river. Sunny and warm. Bit of a breeze. Dragonflies and minnows and a scolding Steller's jay.

The pear orchard is on the way to the river. We picked pears. Perfect.













Third-grade gent was so excited to break out his new paints that he skipped lunch to paint in the dry creek. There's something absolutely delightful and satisfying about that kind of enthusiasm.









Down the trail they go! It's been a while since we had a full-blown nature outing.





The fine young gents were thrilled to be hiking in a favorite place, eager to follow their feet.

First-grade gent. Look at that smile! He loves collecting things. Mount Pisgah is mostly oak savannah, with many varieties of oak trees. He collected acorns.










The fine young gents found a new place along the river with many rocks. They spent nearly an hour re-engineering a rock dam built by a previous visitor. Bonus: One of the fine young gents chose bridge-building for a fall study, so we all got a hands-on head start on the Bridges unit.

After a grand time splashing in the river, we all settled down with nature journals.



Writing, handwriting, spelling, science, nature and art all rolled into one. And we're out-of-doors. Perfect.

I'm going to print this picture and post it on the refrigerator. This is why we homeschool.

Life is good.

Gone Fishin'

Where has the summer gone?

I've been so busy living my life there's just been no time to write about it.

Boys are as funny and loud and boy-ish as ever. Thinking up crazy things to do much faster than I can think of things to forbid. Don't golf in your soup. Don't sit on your brother's head. No, you cannot try to open the laundry chute and slide down, and it's not a good idea to try to hurdle the picket fence or to use whatever that is as a sword either. Do hug your momma tight.

Lovely lady the elder has moved to Portland to live with her mom. A wonderful opportunity for her to build a different, more daily, relationship with her mom and her mom's husband before she's grown and off to college. And an opportunity to attend a wonderful alternative school. But it's still a little too close to home to share without tears. I miss her.

Lovely lady the younger is....lovely. Relaxed and funny. Her quirky, charming self. Storms are fewer and farther between. She's confident in who she is and where she wants to go. Where did she learn that? I wish I could send some of that self-assurance back to my fourteen-year-old self.

Loving husband is as loving as ever. Calm and steady.

And me. I've been in the garden, in the kitchen, at the park, riding bikes, scolding kids and hugging them too. Painting, planting, pickling, picking, preserving. Playing. Steering the ship. Squeezing every last bit of summer out of these days. If I give my children no other gifts, I want to give them the joy and contentment that comes from a life well-lived, work well-done, people well-loved.

Life is good. We'll be back when school starts.

Today's Harvest

Eight sweet onions

Two medium pickling cucumbers, planted at lovely lady's request
(Imagine her disappointment when she found that the plant grows cucumbers, not pickles.)

Three zucchini

A bowlful of raspberries

A bunch of fragrant lavender

And two buckets of blueberries from the blueberry field down the road.

And I picked sour cherries yesterday, so there are cherries in the dryer, and cherries in the fridge waiting to be made into pie and jam.

Life is good.

Catching Up: Fabulous Fourth

"Hey, Mom!"

I called my mom on the phone just before the Fourth.

"Want to come sit on a hot sidewalk for two hours, sweating and watching tractors? For a bonus, you might get your eardrums blasted out by sirens and get hit in the head with Smarties."

Why do we do this? Every year, I think to myself, It's going to be hot. I want to stay home. I've seen all this before. And every year we go to the parade, barbecue, go to the fireworks. Why do we sit in the blazing heat watching firetrucks and Boy Scouts on bikes? Why do we eat outside in the back yard? And why do we pack everyone up, drive for forty minutes and sit for an hour waiting for a thirty-minute fireworks show then drive home to tuck in tired, cranky, sticky kids?

And every year....We sit on the sidewalk chatting and stealing the Smarties from the kids' candy bags. The people in the parade smile and wave. We see the same tractors and horses that we saw last year. We gather in the back yard, family all together, with good food and good fun. And we sit in the cooling evening next to the river. I remember why I love the Fourth.

This year's highlights:

The parade. Always. There's nothing like a small town parade. No fancy floats here. The veterans wave and salute, farmers bring in tractors, the insurance agent drives his car through town, the churches pass out fliers, the horses and bikes and red-white-and-blue everywhere. People are smiling and waving.

Our guests. It is perfect that our friends from China are here for this oh-so-American holiday. They get to celebrate our country with us. This year I learned that in China, they too celebrate a holiday with fireworks on the riverbank, standing in the gathering dark awaiting the show. It was familiar and foreign to them.

Backyard gathering. It was 93 degrees, but in the shade of the filbert and magnolia it didn't feel like it. Our family was there, the people I love. That's my favorite part. I insisted that someone play Uno with me, so there was an Uno game at the picnic table. The food was delicious, melon salad and chicken and watermelon and macaroni salad and hot dogs, even delicious vegan sausages. And an impromptu talent show, which deserves its own line.

The impromptu talent show. I don't know how this came about, but we held The First Ever 4th Family Talent Show. We had yo-yo tricks, silly acts, a contortionist, singing and even...eating. Come prepared with a talent next year! Note: Eating no longer qualifies as a talent unless you're going to eat something gross or amazing, like bugs or fire.

Fireworks. I grumped about having to go to the fireworks. I groaned. I tried to think of a way to get out of it. In the end, like every year, I went anyway.

And just like every year, settled in the cool evening by the river, surrounded by my family, watching our children play with their cousins.....

I realized (again....when will I learn?) how much I love this holiday. And why. I like the parade and the picnic and even the fireworks. But my favorite parts are the quiet moments, and the silly ones, and even some of the loud ones: The children playing, visiting with the people I love, waving at smiling strangers in the heat, watching the sun set by the river at the end of the day, and even tucking in tired, cranky, sticky children.

Life is good.

Pictures of last year's Fourth here, featuring the same old dude on the same tractor, and the same firetruck too. Oh yeah, same kids too, just shorter.

Here we go again....

Farts and burps and giggles, oh my!

We've got guests from China again this summer. Guess what the fine young not-so-much-gentlemen are doing?

Burp! Beeelch! Giggle, giggle, teehee!

Not purposely. But still.

This year, I joked again, "Tolly, Cherry will go back to China thinking that little boys in America have no manners."

Cherry is such a lovely and earnest young lady. "Oh, no. You have very lovely little boys." I laughed and said, "Well, I expect little boys in China burp too."

"Oh yes," she replied, and laughed. "Yes, they do very much."

So, to all the Chinese mothers out there saying the Chinese version of "Oh for goodness sake. Say 'Excuse me' and move on," I salute you. And the gents send a little giggle to all of the gassy little boys.

Jam

6 flats of strawberries, U-pick: $70 and 4 hours
3 flats of strawberries from the farm stand: $60 and 10 minutes

New lids, freezer containers and freezer bags: $20
Processing strawberries: An entire weekend
Cleaning the kitchen top to bottom: 1 hour

Saturday night take-out pizza (because the kitchen was full of strawberries): $35
Ice cream for the children after an afternoon of picking strawberries: $9.50

Afternoons of conversation with dear friends, time for the children to play with friends in the strawberry fields, good exercise and spending time out of doors. And freezer and pantry full of a year's supply of sweet local strawberries dried, frozen and made into jam: Priceless.

Life is good.

Happy Father's Day!

Musings

In Which We Attend 8th-Grade Promotion
Last night lovely lady, 13, went through her 8th grade promotion. My baby girl is in high school.

Excuse me while I catch my breath.

I don't know how this happened. Not the high school thing, even though I'm a little short of breath over it. The hair and the shoes and the black eyeliner. I'm not sure how I became the mom of that kid. The girls I saw in school who were a little rebellious and different. The girls I'd see outside the high school when my lovely lady was little, and I'd think, "No way, no how. What are their parents thinking? Maybe their parents don't really care much about them."

Heh. Life has a way of handing us our assumptions, our "not-my-kid," our "No way, No how" on a silver platter, eh?

There she is in all her pink-haired, wearing black, life is-dark, skull t-shirts, Converse-wearing glory. I paid for the hair and helped her lace up her boots. And I adore her to the ends of the earth.

I've learned from this challenging young lady to pick my battles, and more importantly that there don't need to be battles. That it's important to find ways to say "Yes." To honor her idea of who she is instead of my ideas about who she should be, no matter how cute I think she'd look in that baby pink polo. That a daughter with the confidence to be a little different is more important than what other people think.

In Which I am Shocked, or A Lesson in Appropriate Clothing for Young Teens

So, the other reason I'm not the least bit bothered by the pink hair and etc. I was shocked by what the other girls were allowed to wear to the graduation. I thought I was pushing the envelope by allowing my lovely daughter an above-the-knee dress that shows a hint of cleavage. That sparkly pink dress is conservative compared to the outfits of many of the other girls. The little black dress with a plunging neckline worn with three-inch heels was a popular choice. There were a couple girls whose dresses made me want to run out with a robe to cover them. Excuse me folks, but they're fourteen. Perhaps we could leave a little to the imagination, at least until they're in their twenties and old enough to decide for themselves if they want to dress like....well, they're only fourteen, if that, so I'll be kind.

Let's just say that the pink hair and Converse is looking beautiful to me right now.

In Which My Daughter Really Does Need Me, or Adventures in Autism, or Ways to Connect

I've shared my struggles with my lovely lady and the ways in which her disability impacts our lives. Take the surliness and emotional turmoil of a typical hormonal teen girl, throw in a good dash of My Mom is the Most Embarrassing and Unreasonable Person on the Planet, and remove the social filter, and I've got quite a parenting challenge on my hands.

Over the past spring we've had lots of grumping and fussing and "Leave me alone." A deep need for some peace and solitude after a long day of social interactions. It's heartwrenching when a young person so embedded in my heart doesn't want to have much to do with me and makes it crystal clear. I was genuinely concerned for our relationship. Until the morning the phone rang, around noon, and it was my precious lovely lady. "Mom, I was thinking about my trip to Arizona. Do you think I need a new swimsuit?" I ventured that I thought the one she had was probably just fine. "Oh. Okay. Thanks, Mom. Bye."

I realized that increasingly over the past few months the phone rings midday, and it's my lovely lady. She'll ask me a question or share a pressing thought or ask advice over a little concern, then off she goes about her day. All issues that could very well wait until she gets off the bus.

A quick connection. A "Mom, I need you." A way to reach out and preserve our relationship and still get the quiet she needs at the end of the school day.

And so I can be patient. That little phone call was all I needed to refresh my spirit and renew my faith that deep down in there, my baby still needs her momma. Pink hair and all.