about every other month week, i have a homeschooling freak out.  what am i doing?!  i need all the newest-coolest-most-expensive curriculum.  and then i talk to seasoned friends, i pray for peace and wisdom, and He hits me with inspiration.  i’m so thankful for those times.  yesterday was one of them.

years ago i taught a homeschooling art class.  i did crafts with the little ones; art history and intro to “real” media with the older ones.  in prepping for the class, i went online and looked up art history.  made a list of the “greats” and found google images to print off of their most famous works.  i then glued them to card stock and contact papered them.  in my folder i made a timeline and divided the artists accordingly.

so, yesterday i decided my kiddos needed exposure to the real stuff.  i pulled out my van gogh card, let them hold it and look at it, talked about where he painted some of his most famous paintings, looked at the brush strokes, talked about oil paintings, and then i went to my trusty map and drew out an eiffel tower, secretly stuck it to paris, and then looked up the eiffel tower site online (awesome kid games, by the way).   we read madeline and looked for the eiffel tower in the pictures.  discussed their names and talked with terrible awesome french accents.  madeline led to a discussion of what scars were and what an appendix was.  we talked about surgery and all things medical.  we talked about why the other little girls were sad and wanted to have their own surgeries.  we talked about being thankful and not wanting what others have or appear to have.

and we had a great school day.  and i felt good about what i’m doing again.