Saturday, February 4, 2012

doings this week

 Bird inspiration continued into the week, with a few books from the library (The Boy Who Drew Birds: The story of John James Audubon) and some pen and watercolor art.

Ani's Owl
Eliza's Crow
We embarked on another art project about birds - we'll have to share the whole process when we've got them finished...
We read a lot this week, finishing the third in our series by Monica Furlong (love!), and Ani read through several Amelia Bedelia stories all on her own. She and the author, Peggy Parish, share a great love of words and word play.  Ani was wondering today why the earliest people who used language thought to come up with so many words that rhyme...ah, good question. My answer? 'Cause it was FUN!

We had time with friends this week - at Homeschool Marching Choir and at the park after (it was nearly 60 degrees out) - and at home, making masks...we visited friends on the farm and had friends over to play cards and watch "Groundhog's Day". Much silliness.

Eliza spent time working on her typing, on BBC's Dance Mat Typing.  We also watched a few more Muzzy in French videos on YouTube (wish our library had these! they're awesome!).  Also listened to a charming fellow teach us french greetings (enchante!) on JeFrench.
More stories - these from Story of the World, which we have on CD - Jim Weiss talking about the early humans...

Lots of piano playing by Eliza - her teacher has skipped her ahead a book because things are just clicking! It's so fantastic to watch her enjoy playing so much.  She's feeling really good about it and is picking things up quickly. 
Ani and I played a lot of race to one hundred - basically, using our math manipulatives from MathUSee, we try to fill in the 10-spot lines of a one-hundred block, using cards to guide us. Trick is that you have to fill in one row before beginning another, so her understand of what makes 10 is really solid!! I thought about making her a little cheat sheet, but she showed me right away that she doesn't need it, adding or subtracting. And she loves the game.
Making  cheesy crackers like these (recipe in the comments) has been on our list of things to do for a couple of weeks now, so we finally got to it on Friday - YUM. Highly recommend them, especially if you have a helper as diligent and enthusiastic as I did.
And then...Friday afternoon...the act of courage for the week. Eliza cut her own hair.  Now, I know what you're thinking - "what kind of mother lets her 9 year old cut her own hair?" - but really, I thought it was ok. We talked about it for a while - she's been toying with it going really short for a few weeks, and I finally said that as long as she felt good about going really short if it didn't work out as she had planned, then I was ok with it!
In the backyard, getting ready!
I've always wished I had the courage to cut my own hair. I don't. But I could see how awesome this made her feel...
YEAH!

Go!!!
Let me read her lips for you.  "I'm cuuuuute!"
Mmmmhmmm. Girl, you are cute.
"Mom, did I just invent a new hairstyle? Short in the front, but still long in the back? I really like it!"
Darlin', you are beautiful. Inside and out.
Sisters lookin' in the mirror
And yes, she still loves it, for so many reasons. I offered to even it out a bit, but she said that for right now she'd like for it to be the haircut she gave herself all by herself when she was nine. All right, then!
Shooo! So, that was a wild and crazy near-end to the week, but let's see...there were also many cardboard cups made and used, thanks to the demonstration at our salon...there was a first-time putting together a large puzzle all by herself, which was definitely exciting.
So much of that around here these days. It's all I can do to keep up!
Friday night family movie night (The Phantom Menace), and OH!! Gracious! I almost forgot, after our busy wonderful weekend - our week started with STOMP! YES!! It was AWESOME!!! Eliza spent quite a bit of time the following day looking up information on auditions...gotta be between 18 and 35, so there's a bit of time to prepare yet...

4 comments:

Joanna said...
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verdemama said...

My girls love to cut their own hair. I think empowering them in that way is awesome!

alissa said...

I admire your restraint and patience, mama. letting our girls find their own way and their own beauty is gonna be rough! but when you let go, how fabulous!!!

kelly said...

You did so much!!

I love that your daughter cut her own hair. My son cut his, but in a very haphazard way "I just got the bits that were in the way", so I ended up helping him out but my other son - who is younger - regularly uses his Dad's clippers on his own hair (supervised of course!)