Year 1: Week 19

Masterly inactivity: ✔️

My husband read to Gemma about sticklebacks (from The Burgess Seashore Book), and we watched a YouTube video of a male stickleback building a nest. My husband also read Gemma a chapter about members of the rose family from Plant Life in Field and Garden.

We got a giant amaryllis bulb at Trader Joe's, and are enjoying watching it grow.

At Grandma & Poppa's, Gemma discovered this very long green slug with a fan-shaped head. I looked it up and it's a hammerhead slug - the world's largest flatworm. Nature study: ✔️

Gemma wrote the student creed for jiujitsu as her copywork.

She drew an Indian princess (Draw 1-2-3: Princesses by Freddie Levin).

Reading: Our Bible passage was "The Child in the Temple," from Luke 2:25-32. We started Lamb's "As You Like It." Our current free reads are Little House on the Prairie and The Magician's Nephew; I left those two at home, so our free reads on vacation were Saint George and the Dragon (which we finished), and The Year of Miss Agnes (in progress). One of the books Gemma read this "week" was The BFG, which she loved.

Math: Gemma did a couple of pages of Mathematical Reasoning and completed a chapter in LOF Liver.

History: We completed The Beauty of Athens, and will complete The Death of Socrates and Architecture ch 5 in the next couple of days.

I got to take Gemma to CC for the last day of the first semester, so I got to help her assemble her body poster.

We went ice skating.

We also went to a trampoline park.

There are all sorts of things I'm leaving out, like dance class, piano practice, etc., and things that will happen in the next couple of days, but I'm going to end this post with this...

Grandma taught Gemma how to make a pour painting and a swipe painting. After priming her canvases, Gemma chose which colors she wanted to use.

She stirred in flow medium...

...and added silicone.

Next, my mom helped Gemma pour each of the colors into one large cup. There is a special way of doing this (white has to be poured first, paints need to be poured from up high, etc.).

They placed the canvas on the cup, and carefully turned the canvas over.

They put the canvas in the plastic pet pool my mom uses specifically for painting projects, and lifted the cup.

After tilting the canvas so the paint flowed and covered all of it, it was time to torch it. Here is Gemma playing with fire...

And here is her finished painting...

My mom also taught her how to do a swipe painting.

If you were at a loss for what to buy your six year old for Christmas, might I suggest their very own creme brûlée torch...

Gemma's finished swipe painting...