A Gothic Halloween

Halloween Goth Ornament by Loopy Boopy

I LOVE Halloween, I live in Kansas and our small town has a Neewollah festival, it was created in the 20's to stop rambunctious youths from tearing up the town.

We get a small carnival in, bands play, we get a mixture of rock and Christian groups and country in to please everybody, and we have three different parades.

Last year I was in two of them, the Do Dah parade, where mostly adults are all dressed up scary, our library staff went on this one, we were all Zombies.

It was funny, I walked in all Zombie fied and some of the staff was thinking about not doing it because it was a long hard day, I was a page so my hours are short.

I was tired too but wanting to get all fixed up.

When they saw what I looked like they got enthuised about it so we went.

I just wished I had a severed arm with an overdue book in the hand.

Halloween Vampire Bat

I have collected some items in my Etsy favorites that are Halloween inspired.

Loopy Boopy above is one of my favorites.

The Goth dolls remind me of Tim Burton's work.

This bat boy is a cutie too.

Who said Halloween has to be all blood and gore and scary stuff.

Why not the cute items.

The other parade we have in our town is the Kiddie Parade

Which is of course parents and their kids go for this one.

My kids got to ride the AWANA hay cart though the town.

I don't know what I am going to do this year, don't know if the library director is planning anything.

We walked the last time, it would be nice if we had a car pulling a hay bed 

or something like that.

It was hard walking after being on your feet all day.

Big Juicy Tears of Blood

Ok so here's a little blood, but it's a cute one, only a little gory.

I get a kick out of Trick or Treating

Love the decorations and all

Have to pick up a book on Halloween crafts before they disappear from the library.

I love the book that tells how to used recycled items to make neat decorations.

Saves me some money on art supplies.

Halloween Full Moon

I love this photo, it reminds me of the Library's Ghost Stories in the Park.

They started this some time ago.

First it was the staff, me and two other ladies

reading off a script some creepy stories.

After that we were able to hire professional story tellers.

We have been able to get more outside people to perform at our library.

I still would have loved doing a performance again

or else just read from a creepy book

it's so much fun and my daughter loves how I read.

I often don't sound like I'm reading, I go at it so smoothly.

Halloween is ever sneaking closer.

My daughter wants to be a black cat

I am not sure what I want to be

and my husband put Trick r Treat on Netflix

a really well done multilayerd scary movie.

Sweet Spooky Dreams!

Teaching the Unfocused

I think we all know kids can be very unfocused, though some are more focused on others, often they are considered gifted because one of the hallmarks of gifted children is having intense focus.  My daughter is nine and very unfocused, she has many ideas banging around in her head and I am trying to help her to get that in line, I know how crazy it gets because I am a creative and when I am busy on ONE project I get ideas for TEN more, which is why I keep a small notebook nearby to keep things on track.

However, my daughter gets upset with me when I try to help her.  Mostly that's because she's so focused on her idea but doesn't SEE how to work it out and gets mad when I tell her she has to start with this, than that and basically go by steps.  It's like she wants thing suddenly NOW.  BELIEVE ME I know the feeling, been there done that.  My other problem is having so much to do that I can't get started and I sit around the apartment being bored, silly but it's like that and my daughter has the same problem.

She has this great idea of doing a book on the New Moon, ok so I show her the steps to writing such a thing, I show her mind mapping,  using a big circle to write the main topic then spidering out the other points.  She gets that fine, but then when I ask her about how many pages she will need she said 500!!!  WHAT?  I explained to her with her narrow subject she will NOT need 500 pages, got into a tiff on that but got her to agree to have 10 pages to start, if she needs more then she can have more but the first ten must be done first.

Well, last week we started on this, she got the cover done, but hasn't done anything else on it.  I worked on a homeschool structure I can follow.  Something easy to keep with, getting the main academic works done in the morning.  Mostly her Sylvan Reading comprehension book, A bit of math which she is very good at, and a good workbook that's handy Words Every 3rd grader needs to know, I do a grouping of it along with a lap book theme, it goes by subjects, we are going through the math words she needs to know then I will have her do the Language arts portion.  She only has focus enough to do two pages, but even then I have to sit next to her to walk her though it.  I don't have to do that much when she is on her math.

What is it about kids when they are HIGH in math but tend to be low in reading, I have done tutoring in Americorps and saw a boy like this.  I was low in math but exceptionally HIGH in reading.

Elsewhere I have read an interesting article on how those who are high in the aptitude for engineering are often bad spellers.

My daughter comes up with great ideas but seldom follows though with it unless she has someone to 'mind map' her through and keep her going.  I was more of once I knew what needed to be done, leave me alone and let me do it, I wasn't much of a team player either, but it seems that my daughter needs a 'team' to get her work going you know?  Crazy, so how to get it to work with her?

When we got done with our workbooks today (only three) I wanted her to have her reading time but she said she wanted a nap.  She had a nightmare last night and lost some sleep so I didn't contest it.  Mental work takes a lot out of us in different ways, she needed a break.
She did lay down but she eventually straightened up the bedroom, which was good.

The girl is constantly on the move and wants stimulation.  Her favorite show is Avatar the Last Airbender, a show I actually like but she could easily end up watching hours of it.

I am having Avatar and computer game time as her fun time when she gets her work done.
She says ok to that.  But today instead of computer or Airbender she wanted to go over to my parents house.
She likes to help straighten stuff up over there.  Fall is hitting us and they have a few big trees there, peacan trees and their driveway will be buried in the mass of leaves.  Her heaven, she loves raking.
Her favorite activities has always been active things, I'm the opposite, I have little energy, I'm skinny as hell but have little energy, I have a massive amount of airborne allergies, not to mention grass and other things that can make my skin break out.  I spent most of my time reading NOT running and playing, any time that I did I was exhausted. In a way my daughter reminds me of Marley, yeah that 'bad' dog from the book and movie, can't believe they are making another one of just the puppy years.  Getting her focused in the kitchen stirring or kneading bread dough keeps her from walking up the walls.

She has more physical energy than mental energy, now how to work with that?
I go to Sizzle Bop, a homeschooling mom with sizzlers, or what we call high energy kids (or ADD ADHD)
She has got awesome ideas, but does anyone else know of helps for this high energy kid and low energy mom?

The ART of the HORSE

Fire and Ice Horses

I love horses, this is one of my favorites from Etsy and there have been a steady influx of painted horses.

Red Devil Horse

I love the design of this piece.  This is a print of the original batik design.

I have never done batik but I love artists who know how to use this unique medium.

I like to stick with my regular oil paints.

Horse and Swirls

I like this one, painted on gessoed wood I love the shaded blue areas on the horse.

The swirls are neat as a background, it's different.

Epona by Akemanartist

Of course here is mine.  Epona is the Celtic goddess of horses, water and childbirth.

She is here featured with two white horses, I wanted to make the eyes of the horses more expressive like humans.  I want to do more horse paintings.  I have been working on realistically drawing horses but when I paint I seem to go into a more stylized mode.  I really love to express with the paint it just flows so my paintings have a flow.

Horses defiantly deserve to be revered in art. 

Homeschool Awaiting!

ooohh so soon my daughter who is nine will be coming home from the vacation RV trip with my parents.  We can start our homeschooling and I want to get on a creative start.  With my daughter a lot of the work has to be movement.  She gets bored and tired when sitting still too long and I have been trying to figure out how much seatwork (writing, math sheets) she can do before she's snoozing.  I have had the snoozing problem with school on occasion but it was partly the allergy medicines at the time (the 80's) I was stuck in special ed (Asperger's was not heard of then so I was thought of as a troubled or disturbed child)
I was just plain bored.  LOVED to read so much of what I learned I got from reading, not listening to teachers, hey I do respect the teachers I have had but honestly I cannot sit and pay attention long enough before daydreaming, sorry, even with more interesting speakers if it goes on longer than my limit I'm zoning!

Here is the ideas for my Homeschooling

1.  Supercharged Science  I cannot afford this great lady's curriculum but she has a newsletter and I constantly get free stuff and tips and very interesting science projects.   Ariel loves it and the free science project ideas are usually easy to do with things found around the house.

2.  Discovering Great Artists  This is a book I found for cheap on Half.com, a great resource for book lovers like me.  This has got a short bio of each artist then an artist activity to do the art like the artist and it ranges from super easy to a bit challenging and it's great for a wide age range and the page lets you know by stars how easy or hard it is.

3.  Spelling games   I have Boggle Jr to start out with, it's mostly for pre schoolers but she's weak in spelling and I am looking for more spelling ideas.

4.  Journaling,  Writing is hard for her, as well as spelling so we are going to work more on that through journaling at the end of her session, she writes using some of the words we worked on in spelling games.  I have to be really focused and limited on this till she can expand her spelling range then we can have more journaling ideas.

5.  Reading Streak  this idea is based on a book I read of a daughter and her relationship with her father, he read to her since she was young even when she could read by herself.  I let Ariel pick out the book and we read every night from that book.  We were reading Under a blood red sun, a book in sixth grade reading level about a boy who is Japanese, in Hawaii in 1941.  Very interesting talks with her about WWII and prejudice and fear.

6. AWANA and CARAVAN   Two Christian clubs she goes to.  AWANA has not started yet but the CARAVAN has, Caravan is like the girl and boy scouts, you earn badges though the year learning about God and Jesus, AWANA is like that but I pay dues to this one while Caravan is though our church and is free and they have pickups so I don't have to drive my kid there, but I MIGHT join to help out there.  I incorporate the AWANA into her homeschooling, it's a lot of reading and memorization for her, I have her copy verses for recital so she practices writing.

7.  Seatwork  this I want to keep minimal but that's the writing, math pages stuff to do but I am changing that a bit.  For the math she gets overwhelmed with a page full of problems so I am going to choose four problems from that page, have it written neatly in her math journal, then she can do the work.  I will use the page from the math workbook as a final test.  THEN she will do all the problems but she should be able to recognize them as ones she has done and be able to focus.
I will start her on cursive, slowly, using words she has trouble spelling.  Maybe she will get the hang of the fluidity of the writing and be able to write faster.  At my parents house she learns typing, they have a computer typing program.

I have other ideas that are not written in detail here, but I'll say one half is Home Ec, she loves cooking and recipies and the other is learning Etsy and how to be a crafter.