Where in the World is Andrew?

Well, he's actually home right now, but that's after a whirlwind last 10 days!
First, he was in Los Angeles to go to a Padres Game with some of the guys from the Famous Group:
Then he was in Galesburg, Illinois for the annual Harley Knosher Golf tournament:
This past weekend he actually went off to Michigan (and was in Chicago for a day or so on each end) for a Bachelor party golf outing for our college friend Vince. Sorry, no photos from that. They were too busy golfing to take any photos.

And finally, yesterday, believe it or not, he went to Vegas for ONE DAY. He flew there in the morning, had a meeting, and then flew back. The good news is it seemed well worth it as they may get the job associated with the meeting.
As far as I know, he's currently home with us for a bit until we take a few family trips in the near future.

Art Journal Wednesday: Project Two

I was inspired to do this week's project based on this post at Art Projects for Kids. Although Kathy was just selling it as a mural idea, I figured it wouldn't be hard to adapt it for the art journal. The project centered around a French artist named Robert Delauney. He was part of the Cubist and Expressionist movements. And made cool abstract art like this:
We talked about what we saw in the picture: Circles. Big circles, little circles, overlapping circles. I also introduced the concept of complementary colors. Delauney liked to use complementary colors in his work. And color in general was a huge part of his images. So I made a quick color wheel showing the girls that the color opposite each one was a "color pair". I figured color pair was easier for them to grasp then complementary. I made little box pairs one red/green, one blue/orange and one yellow/purple.

I gave them each a paper cup, a plastic bottle cap, and I had a large can of French Fried Onions (you can find whatever you want in your house of varying circle sizes). The girls drew concentric circles on their page wherever they wanted. And then proceeded to color it all in.

Here's what we ended up with:

Above is Ella's finished product

And here's is Lily's. Lily especially liked this project.
I think she could fully grasp what we were doing and that circles were "easy" for her to do.

Coming up: a Fourth of July project next week and a couple "Where in the World is Andrew?" posts.

Art Journal Wednesday: Project One

My goal with Art Journal Wednesday is to expose the girls to different artists and art styles. Of course, my art history background is coming out here. And I try not to make things too complicated or go into too much on the artist or anything. But I think it's fun to show them an artist's work and point out what is interesting about it. I usually just tell them the artist name and we talk about what is going on in the painting, the colors, how the artist made it, etc.

The first artist I chose was Vincent van Gogh. I showed the girls pictures on the computer of his work. We focused on Starry Starry Night.
We talked about how van Gogh used short strokes (with me demonstrating on a piece of paper) to fill in shapes, or made a shape such as the moon and then made short strokes around it to emphasize it. We also talked about how he used all different shades of blue in the sky and around the moon and stars. And talked about how the swirls could be the wind in the sky.

I asked the girls to make the basic outline: the moon, the houses, the mountains, the bush/tree in the foreground. And then they used different colors to make the rest of it. Ella really liked this technique. And she did her entire picture all on her own. I guided Lily quite a bit, but she enjoyed it too.

Above is Lily's Starry Night. She was particularly proud of her heart-shaped house.

And here's Ella's. Not much to say other than she did a great job.
And I think it turned out very cool.

Summer School and Art Journal Wednesday

Okay, I'm sick of trying to catch up and ignoring the present. And some of you will probably be bored with this because you want to see "real" photos of the kiddos looking cute and cuddly. BUT, I think this is COOL so I'm writing about it! ;-) I'm doing "summer school" with the girls every weekday this summer. Each day we focus on a different subject. Math Mondays. Tuesday is letters/reading. I figured I should break up some of the academic work with something I know will just be fun for the girls so Wednesday is art day. Thursday is vocab/word learning. Friday, we do poem activities. Now, before you get too impressed with me, much of this is simply the girls working in workbooks, or using materials sent home with Ella throughout the school year that we didn't get to, and I saved especially for working on in the summer.

As many of you who follow our blog know, Ella has a motor planning speech disorder called Apraxia. And while we've overcome the hurdle of proper articulation with words, we are now encountering trouble with understanding language. Her expressive language (or getting the words out and in a grammatically correct way) is very deficient. We also figured out that she works VERY VERY hard in class in order to keep up with the rest of the kids. She was doing so well we didn't even know she had a problem until we learned the results of some testing in her speech therapy class. Anyway, I'm going on and on. But basically, I felt I should work with her this summer to help keep her up where she was at the end of kindergarten so she doesn't forget and have to work so hard to relearn things when she starts first grade. We just spend 20-30 minutes each day on the given activity (unless it's art day and then they tend to spend more time). And Lily thinks she's doing "kindergarten" work so she's super proud (even though she's doing preschool workbooks). Hey, she's interested, I'm for whatever she wants to think and it's all getting ready for kindergarten anyway.

For Art Journal Wednesdays, I used a few different sites to figure out what I'm going to do each week but I always go back to Kathy Barbaro's Art Projects for Kids site. She has Art Journal ideas on there. Many of them seem to be for a bit older kids. But I liked the idea of having one sketch book where all their weekly projects could be kept. So I bought them each their own book and some art supplies that we use ONLY when we do our Wednesday art projects. This keeps them special and exciting to use. And also keeps the supplies nice and not lost all over the house with lids missing, etc.

Our first project was a self portrait. I just told the girls to draw a picture of themselves and then maybe some fun things around them that they like.
Here's what they came up with:

Do you see Lily's "old bear" and "new bear" there? I think that is so cute!
The person in the middle is a "mistake" and she started over with the "real" Lily on the right. :-)
Ella obviously took her time with this. She drew herself walking in the street (she told me why, but I can't remember now). In her hand on the left there is her current favorite stuffed animal. It's a mini polar bear.

Never fear, I will continue to update the blog with past posts, but I will also update with our weekly art project. So stayed tuned! I know you're thrilled! ;-)

Easter in Iowa: Part Two

Aside from all the fun activities we did while in Iowa, we also celebrated Easter! The girls were highly impressed that the Easter Bunny found them in Cedar Rapids and also hid eggs outside this year as well as inside! This was a new twist. In past years, in Minnesota, we've still had snow on Easter making outside egg hunts a bit difficult. ;-)

We woke up and found the eggs and baskets hidden inside. The Easter Bunny also left baskets for Mommy and Daddy this year which was also new. The girls were really impressed that we got baskets too! :-)

We colored eggs on Saturday:


Don't you love Lily's expression there? Sort of "Okay, I'll look at you mom, but I'm not going to smile nice for the camera."


And the outside hunt:




We went to an Easter church service. Kellan really seemed to like the music. And Lily sang all the words to the songs!

Kellan wasn't too fond of his cute little hat. :-)

And we attempted to get our first family photo of the five of us (aside from the ones in the hospital). Ella thought bunny ears was appropriate for Easter.

Cue Lion King Simba music here. ;-)

I think all and all Kellan had a good first Easter and the rest of us enjoyed our Iowa Easter as well!

Trip to Iowa: Part One

When we last left off, it was the beginning of April, Ella had spring break and we headed down to Iowa for my mom's 60th birthday, which just so happened to coincide with Easter this year. This was Kellan first long car trip. And he did great! Just a tad bit fussy, but overall, the trip went well.

We had a fun five days playing outside, coloring Easter eggs, visiting the Iowa Children's Museum and more!

We went to the Noelridge Park Greenhouse. I don't remember ever going there before, so I didn't know what to expect. It's really pretty inside. It's too bad they don't have it open more than a couple times a year. They had decorated everything for Easter and the girls LOVED it!




As you can see, Kellan enjoyed the greenhouse too. ;-)

We've been to the Children's Museum on past visits and the girls enjoyed going again, especially enjoying the new motion exhibit. I think Ella's favorite thing was building a rocket out of paper. You could shoot it up in the air to see how high it would go.
These pictures are from a different area though. Here, you could build cars and race them down the track to see which one would win.

Above, you could stick the slats in the wall however you wanted and then you could race golf balls through your track.

The girls played outside quite a bit when the weather was nice. We took them across the street to Mt. Mercy College and they played around the Grotto area there. They also discovered the sand in the volleyball courts there.




Here's a couple from Mom's birthday:



And finally, because I have a gillion photos, here's a slideshow:


Next up: Easter!