Halloween Party Homeschool Style!

Our annual Homeschool Lupine Halloween Party was as grand a success as ever! My family has so much fun planning and sharing this event. Thanks to all the Lupine mamas and senior kids who helped pull it off!

While the seniors are in the Haunted Dungeon preparing for the haunt, the moms are helping the junior kids with a couple of fun Halloween crafts. This year, we made beaded saftey pins in Halloween styles; a goofy frankenstien and jack o lanterns. Also, on the table for the kids to create were glitter skulls. They are gorgeous (for skulls that is ;)! Thank you Martha Stewart for that craft idea.

Our Halloween helper moms you see here are the pumpkin witch and cupid. Otherwise known as Wendy and Bonnie. (And Karen too!)

The spider web maze

Each child follows their colored yarn through the maze the giant spider spun - up, down, around, in and out they go to find the prize at the end of the web.

A princess pirate follows her spder web yarn.

After a Halloween potluck lunch complete with eyeballs, fingers, dragons blood punch (deviled eggs and carrot sticks and cranberry juice) it is finally time to go into the Haunted Dungeon! Here Vida helps the kids into the tunnel that will lead them  down, down, down into the dark dungeon where fiends (I mean friends) await them.

Screams of "Can we go in again?" are what we were met with when they were done.

At the end of the day the seniors come out of the dungeon to see the light of day. (Too bad some of them removed their costumes before we got the photo). What a great day!

Fall Fun

We continue into the month of October with our wonderful kids. The weather is lovely, so we enjoy the warmth as we know it is on it's way out. Here Esther leads circle with the juniors as they choose their knitting projects for the beginning of the year, or finish up their current ones.

Kasey is finishing her crochet purse, Ben wants to start a ball, Maia..what are you working on?

The woodworking continues as well..the kids learn to use a cross cut saw. They were very pleased when they made their last cut and that block of wood fell to the ground. Ku-chunk!

The juniors are doing a short weather block and are decorating their wind vanes. We just got through a rather large storm so we had a good time talking about the wind and rain we all just experienced. Too bad we didn't have those wind vanes finished last week to enjoy in the storm!

The seniors continued on their Renaissance art history, and are seen here working with David on a solar water heater. I love to see the great master minds at work. We can all enjoy the heater with our pool next year.

As this is going on, we are working on the Lupine Haunted House and Halloween Party at the end of October. Stay tuned...

A New Year Together

The Lupines year began mid September after a refreshing summer break.

The fall season has many challenging and interesting projects planned; Renaissance art history, solar water heaters, haunted houses, wind vanes, clay wonder houses..

Here is our first day back....

The juniors came back with some finger knitting, and those kids didnt stop for days. They each made a finger knitting rope that wound all through the house! I know this, because I kept tripping on ours.

It will be a year of woodworking for the juniors, starting with the most important (and fun!) skill of hammering nails into wood. Next week, sawing....

The seniors played a good game of basketball and here you see them working on our group project: A sit upon that each child, teen and mama will leave her mark upon. Bonnie has graciously offered to sew this quilt all together.

It is looking beautiful! (And so are our girls ;)

End of Year Celebration~ Friends

When the Lupine mamas got together to plan our mid-June end of year celebration for our kids, our goal was to provide a feeling of completion for the year we had together, and a celebration of friendships made. Here is what we came up with...

The kids all painted tiles, and are to sign them as well. These then will be taken to the local ceramics shop to be fired. They will all be displayed in a mural somewhere in our garden, so each child that was here at Lupines for this year will have a spot on our Lupine Wall of Fame ;)

The unfired artwork

Friends painting their tiles in the warm sunshine

Another painting corner and more friends

Creating great art work

Friends~ Mackenzie and Kasey

Friends~ Lisa and Alison

Lupines is not just for the kids!

A grand summer time potluck

Lupine moms, send in those recipes....let's see, we had the Bowl of Yuminess for the kids, (and a few moms) the raw peach pie for the moms (and one dad), and since we were so full of dessert, we tabled the ice cream making for our first summer camp day. There was much more yumminess as well. We did have a good lunch before all the desserts came out !

Friends~ A year together complete...

(this photo to go into a frame that each child and teen decorated in addition to the tiles)

A very full and satisfying day.

Now, for summer fun!

Medieval Games Tournament, May29th 2009

Here it is, the big day the the kids have been training for with John since March. Shields in hand, the kids arrive. Each contestant made thier own shield in order to get into the mood of it all (and they do make great decorations).

Here we have Mackenzie and Julie in the rod fencing competition; looks as if they are listening to John's instruction for the event. Who got the point?

Can you see the javelin that Andrea just threw at the target? The camera caught it in mid air! The target by the way, was a watermelon on a hay stack. Julie nailed it first try!

Jeremy is posed to hit the target....will he hit it?........Oh! so close.

Katelyn, Sarai, Olivia and Andrea during rod fencing warm ups.

Onlookers, Kasey and Elena. Kasey had a grand time building fairy houses during the quiet moments of the game.

The final ceremony.

Everyone received a metal, as all participated in each event. Good show squires and knights!

Completed Projects: Castle and seasonal trees

I am behind on my posts, life being so full of events and vacations. Here are the fabulous projects the kids have recently finished.

The Castle

Here it is, the seniors finished medieval castle. Isn't it a beauty?

It took four Monday mornings to complete it. They became so engaged with it, we couldn't stop them. Literally.

And here we have the finished seasonal trees made by the juniors. And the lucky seniors, several, who have said "The juniors get to do such fun projects" get to make their own trees this week. By the way, I have heard the juniors say the same thing about the senior projects. Oh, the grass on the other side....

It will soon be time to change these spring trees to summer trees, with fruit bearing heavy on the tree branches.

Soon to come, photos of our Pine Wood Derby and Medieval Games Tournament

May Day!

Impromptu May Day Celebration

I have lead a May Day celebration for 8 years in a row and honestly, I was feeling complete. I knew my son was ready to move on as well. Now, having said that, I still like honoring May Day in our own private family way...taking joy in the full blossoming of the earth with simple activities such as going out in the morning and collecting flowers from our garden to bring spring inside, adding nasturtium petals to our salad for lunch and lavender petals to our biscuits with tea in the afternoon. But, I didn't have it in me to do a full on May Day party....again.

Or, so I thought.

When I mentioned May Day to my daughter, she brightened up and said, with an excited blissful look on her face "Oh, May Day? When do we get the May pole out?" Uh Oh.

Needless to say, we had a May Day celebration....again.

The girls making May Day baskets. Thank you everyone for the beautiful flowers from your gardens.

Our May Pole dance

More May Day baskets being made

Calendula Dye Bath

We made dye baths with calendula petals. The dye will sit in the sun all week collecting the suns energy to make a beautiful sun-yellow-orangey color with which we will dye our clothing blanks next week with. Thank you Mary for organizing the Dharma Trading order and leading the dyeing project! That was a huge job.

Medieval History Continues

Castle Making Project is a hit with our seniors

This is their third week in working on their castles. I initially gave them two weeks to work on it, but they were getting deeply into the project and were working so well as a group, that we just couldn't stop them! Luckily we had some wiggle room in the calendar, so us moms quickly got together to arrange another couple of weeks to give them completion. There is much talk of castle life and how to represent it, helping their medieval studies come to life! Thank you Karen and Bonnie for leading this project.

Soon to come, photos of the masterpiece.

Pizza and Chicks

Another field trip to enhance our Italy Day was to Buca Di Beppo for a tour of the kitchen, followed by lunch, and a visit to Bonnie's house to see her baby chicks.

It is such a pleasure to know you are meeting up with friends for an adventure. All of us, the kids and the adults enjoy it so much. Homeschooling friends make it all worth while. Thank you my dear friends.

Next up....moms night out!

First, the pizza; the gang in front of Bucca di Beppo

and then the chicks.

Talk to Bonnie about the name of this field trip...I take no responsibility. ;0)

April Heat Wave!

It was hot, hot, hot last Monday at Lupines. So, what better way to start the day than to make fresh lemonade. Alison brought boxes of lemons for us to share. Thanks Alison! As everyone arrived those lemons were cut and juiced. Many hands went into the making our yummy lemonade. But...we cant drink it yet...it must go into the fridge to get nice and coooold. We got to enjoy it at the end of the day with snack. 

The seniors making lemonade and laughing ALOT. What did they put IN that lemonade?

Surprise heat waves call for the slip and slide to be brought out of hiding from the attic. 

While the seniors made lemonade, the juniors had a blast getting good and wet before circle and game time. Towels please!

Esther has been leading junior circle and game time in the mornings this month. She is a natural! Here, they are playing clapping games to the count of threes; a great way to learn your multiplication tables, and fun too. You should hear these kids giggle. Great work Esther!

After lunch, the juniors worked on another felting project. Hot days are good for wet felting, as we got to sit under a shady tree and dip our hands in soapy, splashy water. This project is from the book "More Magic Wool" by Angelika Wolk-Gerche. So many terrific projects in there!  This is a seasonal tree which can be decorated with colored tufts of wool each season. Today, they made the bare tree with branches. Next week they will decorate it for spring. When summer comes along they can remove the felt in which they used to make their spring tree and make it a summer tree, and so on.....a family heirloom! 

The first part of the seasonal trees

The seniors project was to make a castle out of clay. They each first drew a castle on paper to get their creative juices flowing. Then they broke up into two groups and worked together to begin. I hope to have photos to share next week of their (hopefully finished) medieval castles.

The seniors also continued to work on their pine derby cars, the homeschool pinewood derby race is coming up May 7th.  And John was here as well to work with the kids more on archery (still no arrows), rod fencing, and this week, they added rope climbing. 

Italy Day!

Geography Club - Italy Day

This week was our celebration of Italy. The kids all made pasta and gnocchi from scratch. It was a very full morning as the kids gathered in groups to make their pastas. Stephanie supplied us with some fabulous italian music to cook by and there was flour ALL over the floor. Thank goodness for brooms, is all I can say. 

We love our potlucks, and lunch always takes ALOT longer on celebration days. 

Bon Appetit!

This batch of grated potatoes was to be our gnocchi. Thanks to my friend Rupal for bringing over the food mill at the last minute! A cheese grater just would not have cut it.

The uncooked pasta

The chefs at work, cooking their pasta creations

Bows and Arrows

After a very big meal, the afternoon activities take place. Here are the senior kids working out and getting ready for their Medieval Games Event in May. I was happy to see that they did not have the actual arrows yet, since they were in the middle of my playroom. Yikes! 

Can you see the Robin Hood expression on Jeremy above?

Medieval History

At the Legion of Honor

For the past several months the senior kids have been working on Medieval History projects. Karen led a two month art history session in which they did mosaics, frescos, made gargoyles and grotesques from clay (did you know that gargoyles spout water, and "grotesques" dont? So, when you see a building with a gargoyle on the front, is it really a gargoyle or a grotesque?) illuminations, rose windows, asian brush painting and much  more. We ended the study by going to The Legion of Honor in San Francisco to view the medieval art live and in person. Last week the kids made maps by hand of Medieval Europe. I liked that this project was drawing, art, geography and history all in one. I think they did a pretty good job! Don't you?