Meet potato person! This is the person figure that L draws when he wants to draw a person. He draws a "potato" and then fills in the details.
I love potato person, and I wanted to encourage L in his drawing, so we sat down this evening and I had him draw potato person onto a lino block. With some pointers and carving tools from my friend Megan (a wonderfully talented artist- thanks Megan!), I carved out the little person as exactly true to his line as I could. It worked pretty well, thanks in part due to L's lack of detail!
By that time it was bedtime for L, but I couldn't help printing up a little test run by myself. I will let him help me with the brayer and the ink tommorow, and we'll print the little potato person a few times, and try a few different surfaces.
K has started work carving a heart block. I gave her some help, but she did manage to do some carving my herself!
Now I will always have this little potato shaped stage in L's artistic development!

K had eye make up, so L wanted some too. Everyone got to wear make up in Ancient Egypt- guy or girl, so I painted his eyes too. He wore his white play silk like a cape, and that was Egyptian enough for him.

So instead of going all the way to Chicago, we stayed home and dressed up to do our homeschooling.
I ironed pleats into a length of cotton (didn't have enough white linen) and K arranged it to suit as a robe. We did her hair in a "side lock" and I put some eye liner on the corners of her eyes, ancient Egyptian style.
She loved it and kept in character all day!
We measured with cubits today, which was fun. All over the house, with L trailing behind, writing down things and then measuring them. We have also been talking about time lines- B.C., A.D. etc..... so we made a time line of our lives, which made for a sweet afternoon, recalling fun events and times that were memorable enough to illustrate and note in the time line. We made two time lines, one for K and one for L. K's had the year of her birth as the central event, and she related everything else she wrote down as to how many years before or after her birth it took place. L stuck with us for a while on his time line, then he started using it for a race track for his cars. Oh well, he's 3.
: )

We had Megabus tickets today, to Chicago. I thought hard about using them, because although it has been warmer, it’s still pretty cold up there! But we’ve been studying Ancient Egypt, and the Field Museum has a great Ancient Egypt section. So I packed up the backpack last night knowing that it would be a cold trip, but I thought it would still be a lot of fun.

This morning when we got up at 5:50am, K announced that she didn’t want to go to Chicago. She wanted to stay in her warm home, she didn’t feel adventurous at all. She was on the verge of tears with the thought of going.

When we field trip to Chicago, L gets the stroller and K has to walk, and we walk for miles. She has always been great about this in the past, and I have always felt lucky about her sense of adventurous travel, when we do so much walking and it must feel so tiresome to her little legs! I tried to talk her into wanting to go, but sensed that she really didn’t want to. So I let her make the decision that we wouldn’t go. I really thought that if she was in a grumpy mood to start the day, it was not going to bode well for having to walk around in the cold and wind. I felt like it had the potential to be a really tough day, if I had to force my children into happy-to-be-adventurous moods. Sometimes you just don’t feel up for that.

So we shuffled of back to bed for a while, and when she woke back up again, closer to the time the bus would have been getting close to Chicago, she was in tears again. She had changed her mind, now she wanted to go. Too late!

WellSpring celebrated Chinese New Year at our house on Monday. We ate a lot of food, used chopsticks, made crafts and had story time and gave out lei se (traditional red envelopes with play money in them!) Then we ate more food.
: )

We wish you prosperity in the year of the pig!