Homeschool, MDO and Rainbows

Since I work from home, Knox is typically inside all day long.  That makes for a slightly "cagey" 2-year old.  He'll be starting MDO on Fridays next week, but we needed something else.  I researched some different homeschool curriculum ideas online and found one that I thought would work.

The curriculum works off of the public school calendar, so this was the first week.  The theme for the first month is "God made the world around you and me."  We were focusing this week on day, night, sky and water.  The shape was circle, and the color was red.

We started by identifying the color red.  He's pretty good at most colors, so he knew red right away.  We went around the house on a "color hunt," finding different items that were red.  He loved this activity, but really loved painting the red apple.  I wanted something really bright to hang as a reminder of the week's color.

My lefty.

His "cheese" face.

Knowing we would have a lot of handmade items week after week, I needed another solution to hanging them, other than the shadow box that holds his random art.  My friend Abbi has canvases for each child to display their art hanging near their playroom.  I thought this would be a great idea for us, too, so we ran with it.  

Knox loves pointing to his designs and telling us "I made that!", so I knew he would love a giant homage to his work in the kitchen.  I moved the shadow box to the living room and added this gem to the kitchen:

Easy peasy.  I bought the canvas, used paint that I had around the house to get the perfect gray, and then used painters tape to make the diamonds.  It's not perfect, and definitely not symmetrical, but who cares?  You don't see all of the design when his art is hung, so it really didn't matter.

See?  I think it's pretty cute!  His art is, too!  He colored the sun and stars to represent day/night, and he used watercolors for the water and sky.  Then we glued cotton balls for clouds and goldfish for the fish in the sea.

He had a great time, and loved the first week of homeschool.  I'm not a Duggar yet, but we're getting there :)  I'm loving being able to do 30-min lessons with him, and getting to teach him the stories of the bible while incorporating art is right up my alley!

I mentioned MDO earlier in this post.  We're so excited for him to start, and am looking forward to the growth and "away time" on Fridays.  We went to "Meet the Teacher" yesterday, and he loved it.  So much he didn't want to leave his classroom...and has been asking to "go to school" all day.  

While at the information meeting, everyone else in Dallas (my hubs and Knox included) got to enjoy an amazing rainbow!

I was told by Stephen and a few friends in the 'hood that it was the brightest and most beautiful rainbow they'd seen in a while...sad I missed it!  

I'm thinking I'll start a "Weekly Wrap-Up" on Fridays to go over what we did in homeschool every week.  I might bore you guys, but it's our family journal...so hang in there and feel free to scroll down!