Both Mica and Rinoa did a great job with their zentangles. Rinoa gave up coloring in the middle of her project, complaining that her hand was tired. I think it looks great just partly colored.

In the meanwhile, I want to share another art project that my girls did. For fun, I recently joined the Artistic Mother’s Art Group based on Shona Cole’s book The Artistic Mother and hosted by Trudy Callan. I was flipping through the book when Mica and Rinoa saw this project and got excited. And there you go! We went to the store to buy some canvases and went to work. They did everything themselves, including choosing what papers and beads to use, except that Troy drilled the holes and I printed the photos.

The M and R were painted with crackle paint which both girls thought was really cool! Although Rinoa said “How come Mica’s M is more cracked than my R?” And I said “Because she put more paint on hers.” “Ooooh!”

These will hang on the bedroom doors. They’re excited about the idea of seeing their faces every time they pass by the doors – lol!

“The Octopus-Racer Lady” by Mica Redington (13 years old)

“Lady Dog” by Rinoa Redington (5 years old)

Troy came home early from work, got envious, and decided to join us and make one for himself. He’s not done with his yet (just needs some journaling) but here’s what his work looks like:

“What Are You Looking At?” by Troy Redington

Here are Teesha Moore’s video tutorials, in chronological order from creating a 16-page journal to filling the journal with collage and journaling. Enjoy!

Rinoa rolled …

and shaped her clay into a pot.

And so did Mica.

But alas, the joy of pottery. We blame the air dry clay.

They’re not too discouraged though. They’re willing to try again next time. Learn from mistakes. That’s what matters.

This one is from Rinoa (5 years old).

And this one is from Mica (12 years old).

And the idea for this project came here – an awesome site if you’re looking for art project for kids.

I’m starting them with color theory. Last Friday, we each did a color wheel and a simple experiment to explore color relationships.

I find that this is also a good exercise to get them comfortable with handling a brush – and of course, with mixing colors.

The left half is part of Rinoa’s color wheel and the right half is part of Mica’s. On the outermost right are sample swatches we did to study color relationships – like how surrounding colors affect a focal color.

This is a charcoal drawing that Mica made. A perfect example of patience and persistence paying off – over the past few months, I’ve seen her drawing skills progress from being haphazard to having more details.

While Mica was doing her charcoal drawing, Rinoa worked on her lion – one of the many great project ideas we found here. The site shows step-by-step instructions for this lion – perfect for my 5-year old. Rinoa traced her pencil drawing with a black Sharpie and colored it with regular crayons.

When they were done with the above projects, they wanted more and decided to draw cupcakes – an idea we found here. The cupcakes were rendered in oil pastels.

Cupcakes by Mica Redington (12 years old)

Cupcakes by Rinoa Redington (5 years old)

“Foreign language provides one with entry into a worldview different from one’s own. If it is important that our young value diversity of point of view, there is no better way to achieve it than to have them learn a foreign language.” – Neil Postman in The End of Education

After forty or so lessons, Rinoa now understands the concept of nouns, proper nouns, and common nouns. By next week, she’ll be ready to learn all about pronouns. I’m using Schoolhouse Rock videos to supplement the grammar lessons. I don’t even have to buy them, they’re all in YouTube. Below is the video that got her excited to learn all about nouns. (I just grabbed the first video I saw in YouTube.) And you can’t blame her, the song is very catchy!

Aside from learning grammar, she’s also developing her narration skill. I tell her a short story, and she tells back the story in her own words. The problem I encountered when I started teaching her was she gives too much details that her narration become too long to write down – but she’s learning to pick out the important points and tone down her summary. As for memory work, she absolutely has no problems. I give her a 4-line poem and she has it memorized in one day. Below are two of three poems she has memorized so far.

She makes up all the hand gestures by herself and the person you hear clapping in the background in both videos is Mica.

The first time I met my cousin, Baby Jessi, was in New York. She is a very happy and playful baby. Whenever you put her in front of a mirror, she laughs and giggles. If you play with her a lot, she usually smiles. Jessi loves it when you hold her up on her feet. She loves it even more when you play music and move her around like she’s dancing. Baby Jessi is one of the happiest babies I have ever known.

And what’s a post without pictures? Here are some of Baby Jessi , taken by my brother.