I can’t believe how quickly this week has passed. Life has a way of doing that, doesn’t it? Nothing of great interest has really happened this week – business as usual, I suppose. We are looking forward to the upcoming holiday season though and love the smell of autumn leaves. Fall is certainly my favorite season. With that in mind, we expressed our creative sides this week with two projects – moon art and carved pumpkins.
Moon Art
On the night of our recital last week, the kids expressed interest in doing an art entry in their moon journals. Some time ago, I had pinned an image to my Art Projects & Handcrafts board on Pinterest, of a tree silhouette. The pin did not link to a tutorial page, sadly, but the image provided the inspiration we needed to get started. Rather than use charcoal and tempera paint, however, we opted to use chalk pastels. We’ve used them in the past with Tricia at Southern HodgePodge and knew from experience they would work well for this project.
We began by cutting out a shape for our moon with scrap paper. We then adhered it temporarily with a glue stick. Then the mess began. Using the broad side of the pastels (dark blue, purple, red, etc.), the kids covered the entire surface with chalk; rubbing it with their fingers to blend the colors.
We blew away the dust, carefully removed the paper moon, and then chalked in the tree and owl silhouette with the tip of a black pastel. Lastly, we used a small paintbrush dipped ever so slightly in water to smooth out the black chalk. They were delighted with the results and look forward to continuing with our moon journals in the months to come. If you are interested in learning more about their journals, check out the World Moon Project – a global citizen science project connecting students around the globe.
Carved Pumpkins
We didn’t get a chance to visit a pumpkin patch this year – just too busy with other weekend activities. We can’t let the season pass without carving Jack-O-Lanterns, however, so we purchased our gourds at the local market.
Sweetie and I had been thinking about our designs for some time ~ Pinterest users can attest to that, yes? Buddy, on the other hand, struggled to come up with a design that was suitable for carving. He had wanted to carve Indiana Jones’ bullwhip as well as King Arthur’s sword but both were too detailed. Even his hope of carving a Lego mini-fig were dashed when I explained the holes would be too small to illuminate the face. It was an emotional night, needless to say. In the end, however, we all found success.
Extras
- The kiddos both made good strides in the construction of their Halloween costumes. Yes, they are making their costumes themselves – with a little help, of course. I’ll share pictures when they finish. 🙂
- Sweetie has been actively updating her own blog. She asked that I share her post, Mother Nature’s Dream. It includes a poem she wrote recently.
- We learned a new recipe as part of our China cultural studies – Drunken Noodles.
