Four performances, four or five numbers each time. It was a crazy weekend, but she emerged motivated to add even more dance next year, to immerse herself further in life at the studio, in training her body, in learning
Permission to Christmas
I give up. Now that Voices West is over, now that the first snow has fallen, now that Fiona is into the thick of preparing for holiday performances, now that plane tickets are booked for the grown-up kids to get
Front Room
Oh look. I did some things. The front bedroom was uninhabitable when we took possession of the Nelson house. Over the summer Noah, Sophie and friends stripped and then repainted the two gyproc walls, but the ceiling was flaky acoustic
Pergola
Our “new” deck is almost five years old now. I always had bigger dreams for the square apron that extends towards the trees, but at the time we opted to put up a minimalist railing for safety reasons. Of course
Temari
I’d never heard of them until a couple of weeks ago when a booklet of college extension courses and workshops showed up and mentioned a weekend class teaching this “beautiful Japanese art of decorative embroidered thread balls.” I was curious, so
A working summer
Last year we managed some spectacular alpine hikes to cap off the summer. This year, so far at least, has felt much more like a working summer. There have been a few afternoons at the beach, but little hiking (yet)
Shibori
Inspired by the introduction to shibori that Fiona got at her homeschoolers’ art class, I began sewing and tying a couple of dozen squares of cotton fabric to do my own experiment with the technique. I started this in July
Creative Arts vs. Pure Sciences
It feels like things are starting to fall into place for Noah. He’s in his final year of high school, and hadn’t until recently been terribly forthcoming or taken much initiative concerning his plans for the future. Part of that
Dance
When I watched Fiona’s participation in the high school dance elective before Christmas I realized that her persistent desire to get involved in some sort of dance class needed to be brought to fruition. With her gymnastics class now on
365 in 2014
Fiona has been interested in photography for a while, but in the past month or two she’s become more active and intentional in learning more about it and improving her skills. She’s been reading on-line and from books about composition,
Snow sculpture
I am in awe of this guy, created one night over a period of five our six hours by the light of headlamps, by Sophie and Noah and a friend.
Cherry-picking
We’ve enjoyed unprecedented flexibility and co-operation from our local school for many years. At first we were merely registered homeschoolers with no official school affiliation, yet we were welcome to attend special events, use the library and participate in assemblies
Theatre camp
Sophie had been doing occasional dance classes at school all year with the high schoolers. It was an experience Fiona was really pining for, but she was too young. So when the same teacher was offering two weeks of intensive
Spice jars
I found some pigment water-based chalkboard markers. They handle like traditional marker felts, but produce brilliant opaque colour on black. In this case, I’ve used baby food jars with lids spray-painted matte black. They don’t smudge, but can be washed
Between the subjects
One of the things I love about homeschooling is the way the boundaries between subjects don’t need to exist at all. I know that many schools pride themselves on making “cross-curricular connections,” but those are more like threads connecting otherwise