Art Experience

My very good friend, Cherilyn, was preparing an art lesson for her children and invited Casia to join them. It was a really fun experience for the kids. Cherilyn covered one of her walls with paper and set four bins, one for each child, with different writing implements (colored pencils, markers, crayons and oil pastel crayons.) Each child took a place in front of a bin and was then blind-folded. Cherilyn then turned on some music and the kids were instructed to draw what they felt.

Here the kids are moving to the music. Cherilyn picked a nice selection of different music genres; jazz, rock, classical, big band, etc.

Two of the kids dove into the experience, moving with the music and creating an expression of how it made them feel.  The other two, well, they're more 'concrete' individuals. Casia is one of them. She spent the time trying to draw a picture with the challenge of the blind fold. To each his own!



It was a great afternoon and Cherilyn followed the activity up with one of her yummy desserts!

Election Day

Since today is Election Day, we changed up our normal routine to fit in some basic U.S. government. I found some great, kid accessible information on this site called USA for Kids. We talked about the difference between federal, state and local governments. Casia learned about the different branches of the federal government and their purpose and functions. We also talked about our state and local governments and the positions that are up for election this year. 

Then we followed the lesson up with a field trip to my local polling site. Casia has always accompanied me to the election booth in previous years, even as a toddler, and has always enjoyed pulling the curtain closed, pushing down the levers I indicate and then pulling the curtain open again. Sadly, they've replaced the manual units with high-tech computer voting. I'm sure there are plenty of benefits to the new system, but Casia and I miss the nice *cha-chink* sounds when we pulled the curtain lever.