Art Class

This week has been a tough one.  The kids work load is a lot and we're all feeling the strain.  Now when I say a lot, I mean it takes them 6 hours to get through their work, which is what K12 says it should take.  Around this house we like to get it done a little quicker than that and so when there are multiple 6 hour days in a row, we're whooped. 

I wish it was as easy as saying "Good Morning" and then everyone would go to their work and I'd see them at snack time and lunch, when I check all their work.  Rather, every morning I go through their assignments, get familiar with the subjects and offline work that needs to be accomplished.  Print anything that needs printing, get any supplies that got overlooked, basically fill in the gaps for anything that might need to happen for the day.  Then throughout the day I work on some projects of my own which can easily be interrupted like bill paying, cooking (I cook a lot from scratch lately), doing volunteer projects for Young Life, etc.  About every 30 minutes I have to check on the kids progress to make sure they're where they're supposed to be. 

Meanwhile, we had a few life lesson opportunities this week that are what we call "character building", for both the kids and I.  One of the moments was after gymnastics Wednesday evening.  Sam came over to where I was sitting in tears.  "What happened?  Are you hurt?"  "No" Sam says, "I just didn't make it into Level 2 Parcour".  Later in the car came the conversation, with gentleness, about how much time it takes to be good at something.  I reminded both he and Perrin that they've only been in gymnastics for 6 hours (1 hour a week) and in order for them to be really good at it they'd probably need to spend double or triple that amount of time per week.  We talked about the impact such a commitment makes on the family and how we have to choose what we're going to be good at, often to the exclusion of other things.  Are you going to be a good friend?  That takes time and intentional participation in life with people.  Are you going to be an amazing basketball or football player, that takes huge amounts of time.  But what about being a good student, a good writer, good at computers.  It all takes time.  Of course this led into how we spend our time and how we want to spend our time.  We also found out that the boys that graduated into level 2 gymnastics had been taking either gymnastics or Parcour for at least a year.  Perspective.  Choices.  It was a good talk.

Last night I decided that we needed a break from the everyday drill of school work.  The kids have an art section in their school which is good, but very historical.  Which is important, but it isn't fulfilling the creative/artistic need I have and want to share with my kids.

As the kids got up this morning and got their breakfast I told them to dress up a bit, grab their iPad's and we were heading to the South Hill, where Spokane shines as a gorgeous city.   On the way there I explained the little I know about photography and what makes a good picture.  I narrowed their objective down to putting one focal point in the picture, zooming in on something interesting.  I added a level of interest by telling them there was a prize for the best photo.  Game on.  Below are some of Perrin's shots with Sam's coming shortly.  I think they really enjoyed it and I hope we'll be getting out cameras out soon to capture a bit of the artistic beauty of the world.

 

 Below are some photos I took of the kids, which will be their "school" pictures.  I think they turned out pretty good.  Sam was being a 10 year old boy and not very cooperative when Perrin said, "Sam, if you spent as much time smiling as you do making dumb faces, it would go much quicker."  Sometimes Perrin is so wise.

Perrin was fixing Sam's hair as you'll notice it was sticking out in random places.