School - a thing of beauty

We've been trying to do school from our lovely little basement apartment even though I didn't have the foresight to keep out the kids' school books. It's been a bit of a challenge, and I've stretched the definition of school a little at times and agreed that playing Big Brain Academy on the Wii could be considered school. It hasn't been as organized an education as we normally have at home, but I think that we have done pretty good for a family living out of suitcases for the past month. We are finding that we can do all sorts of school things even without all our wonderful school supplies...opportunities for learning are all around and so abundant!

This week I decided that for school we would work on family unity, Webelos stuff for Garrett, memorizing the Articles of Faith for Owen's class in church, and Young Women's stuff for Teagan. And we would fill in some gaps with National Geographic movies during lunch time and on-line chess games, math games, and Khan Academy.

For Garrett's Artist badge in Webelos, we did each other's profile portraits today and the kids all had so much fun doing it! It took a little while to get Emmett to stay still and stop looking at the finger lights the kids were holding, but it finally as done! I did Emmett's and Garrett did Owen's.

 Teagan drew Garrett's and I did Teagan's.

 And then Owen did mine. They are now hanging on the mantle in the apartment. Thinking forward about the next time we do this, I want to make sure that we are all sitting the same distance away from the paper and the lights so that everyone's faces are proportionate to each other. And I would like for them to be a little smaller next time, not done on a textured wall that makes the lines all wiggly, and finished all in black instead of multicolored.

I've always wanted to do profile portraits of the kids and was so glad that this suggested as part of Garrett's badge work! Now we are on to having him find out the history of the public school system for his Scholar badge!