Lapaz Home Learning

Andy Warhol Pop Art Project

We had some fun learning about Andy Warhol and Pop Art last week and took the opportunity to do a fun project inspired by Warhol’s colorful portraits and prints of famous folks.

I’m not sure from where the inspiration for this project came, most likely several sources since it is a fairly common type of project to do. The idea is fairly simple. Take a picture of yourself, print it multiple times, and manipulate each image in a unique way. Here are the kids’ results:

As you can see, a couple of the images are manipulated by the computer, pre-printing, and the rest are done by hand. I think it made a great combination of styles, especially since each of the kids added their own special twist to their work.

Pretty cool, eh? I’d definitely encourage you to give it a try as it was a lot of fun for the kids to manipulate their own self-portraits. I think it was one of their favorite projects yet.

And stay tuned for yet another Pop Art project inspired by this iconic Warhol image:

© lapazfarm for LaPaz Home Learning, 2011. | Permalink | One comment

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Categories: Planet Home Education

Spooky poetry for Halloween

And still on a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a gypsy’s ribbon looping the purple moor,
The highwayman comes riding–
Riding–riding–
The highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

(That’s an excerpt from one of my very favorite “spooky” poems, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. We read poetry every friday and this is one of this past friday’s selections.)

We don’t do unit-studies any more. Not that we think they are bad or wrong, it’s just that we have sort of grown away from that way of doing things.

But we do sometimes do “themes” and one of the more fun themes to do is a spooky theme for Halloween. It is one of our favorite themes and we look forward to it every year. So some (but not all ) of our work will revolve around this theme the month of October.

I’ve already written about Superboy and I reading Frankenstein as this month’s literature selection.  Also on theme, his computer graphics project (on Blender) is a zombie head. Very creepy indeed.

Art will be pumpkin carving, sugar skulls, and other dia de los muertos-inspired projects. And maybe this spooky-looking tree project.

And poetry? That’s where the real fun is this month.

Just think of all the spooky goodness out there! Why, Poe alone provides enough frightful fodder to last a month or more!  The real trouble comes in trying to choose from amongst all of the many delightfully devilish poems out there. They are always such fun to read aloud in your most spookified voice. But, much as we’d love to, we just cant read them all. So, here are our selections of spooky poetry for the month of october:

The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes

The Raven by E A Poe (of course)

Annabel Lee by EA Poe

The Haunted Oak by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Hag by Robert Herrick

The Night Wind by Eugene Field (This is a fun one)

(And I am sure we will come up with some more when we hit the library this weekend.)

Tell me, what are your favorite spooky poems to set the Halloween mood?

© lapazfarm for LaPaz Home Learning, 2011. | Permalink | 9 comments

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Categories: Planet Home Education

Update and book post

Here is just a little update to let folks know we are still alive and kicking.

Lets see. First thing is that the little boys have gone back again to live with their mommy, which is a very good thing, but which always  leaves us here feeling a bit disjointed. I keep thinking there is something I am supposed to be doing… something I am forgetting…. But no. It’s just that life is so much more quiet now. We are still adjusting to the slower pace.

(our local wildlife)
Books.

We have time for those now!

Superboy and I are both reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and had a funny “What in the world???” moment when we were discussing chapter one and our stories did not match up at all. It was a puzzle until we realized that he and I were reading two different editions and that Shelley had made a significant change in the storyline between the two editions. For a while we each thought the other had gone a little mad!

JBug and I just finished Edith Nesbitt’s Book of Dragons (free on Kindle). What a great read-aloud! It is a collection of eight tales, all containing dragons but each very different and unusual. I read it to her one chapter per day and she couldn’t wait for the next story. To tell the truth, neither could I!

And now the time has come for JBug to experience Redwall, which all of my children have loved at one time or another. So far JBug is following suit. Only problem is reading that book always makes me hungry! Perhaps a Redwall feast is in order? We already have the perfect cookbook!

(JBug’s blobby-birds. directions here)
As for independent reading for JBug, she has plowed through a dozen or so Magic Tree house books, plus  Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and now has discovered the library’s stash of Asterix and Tin Tin comics. She’s had her nose buried in one or the other all week. Can I just say how much  I LOVE that she is finally actually reading for pleasure? So nice to see her pulling books off the shelf that I honestly wondered if she would ever read. But she is!  I caught her browsing through our old copy of A Child’s History of the World just yesterday. Warms my heart remembering how our older daughter Emily would read that book over and over and over. Now Emily is in college and JBug is reading that same beloved book, 15 years later. *sigh*

(JBug working on her geography journal. More on that later)

As for me, I have been doing some light reading myself. I finished The Help (LOVED IT!) and now am on to Gunn’s Golden Rules by Tim Gunn. That plus re-reading Frankenstein and Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. Feels good to finally see my TBR pile shrinking a bit instead of ever growing. Plus I finally caved in to peer pressure and started watching Dr Who (beginning with season 5). So far I like it but don’t love it. Maybe the love will come, it certainly is quirky enough to suit me.

In addition to Frankenstein, Superboy is reading the new Brian Selznick novel Wonder Struck. Hope he finishes soon because I want to read that one myself.

Oh, and he got himself a pony. I think I know how project days will be spent from now on.

And that is it for now. Hope things are well for everyone else.

© lapazfarm for LaPaz Home Learning, 2011. | Permalink | 16 comments

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Categories: Planet Home Education

Gluten-free pumpkin muffins

Fall has fallen (kerplop!) smack dab onto the Lapaz household, and I don’t know about you, but for me, this always means it is time for all things pumpkin.

Pumpkin pie, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin bread…mmmmm…can’t you just smell the pumpkiny goodness? (Me too, and that’s because I’ve been baking!) I’ve always enjoyed fall baking so much because whipping up a batch of pumpkin, blueberry, or cranberry muffins is as easy as pie. Easier, really. But since going gluten-free, things have gotten suddenly more complicated. Recipes with 10 different kinds of specialty flours, difficult techniques, weird flavors and textures that are just a little…off. *sigh* That can put a real damper on the urge to bake, let me tell you.

But, there was a can of pumpkin in my cupboard and it was calling my name. Taunting me. Challenging me to come up with something so the family and I could enjoy it’s pumpkiny contents.

I resisted its siren call for quite a long time. But I finally caved. And I’m so glad I did (and so are the kids).

Because I’ve been foolin’ around making a mess hard at work in the Lapaz test kitchens and I have at last come up with a gluten-free pumpkin muffin I think is a winner. Easy, tasty, uncomplicated, wonderfully aromatic pumpkin muffins!  And I’d like to share the recipe with you.

Dry ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup gluten-free flour blend ( I use Gluten-free Mama’s Almond blend. No more mixing of 25 different exotic flours. This has simplified my life like you wouldn’t believe.)
• 1t baking powder
• 1t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 1t cinnamon (or more)
• 1/2 t allspice (or cloves)
• 1 t ginger (YES!)
• 1/2-1 t nutmeg, depending on your feelings about nutmeg. I use as much as I can get away with.
• 1t xanthan gum

Wet ingredients:

• 1/2 cup veggie oil
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup unsweetened pumpkin (fresh or canned)
• 1/3 cup water
• 1t vanilla

Heat oven to 350. Whip up the wet ingredients, stir in the dry. Pour into muffin tins (I used paper liners  in one batch, and just sprayed Pam in the muffin cups in another batch.They both came out fine, though the Pam batch rose higher and looked nicer for some reason). Bake for about 25 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Made about 16 muffins.

Enjoy!

A note on gluten-free flour blends: I’ve tried a few with mixed results (ex: Bob’s Red Mill GF all purpose baking mix tastes like barf). I’ve tried mixing my own with several different recipes (way, way too complicated).  And I have definitely settled on Gluten-free Mama’s Almond blend. Easy-peasy and tastes great. I highly recommend it.

© lapazfarm for LaPaz Home Learning, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments

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Categories: Planet Home Education

What’s that boy up to now?

I am glad to report that our move back into unschooling for Superboy was exactly the right move. He is once again enthusiastically pursuing projects of his own choosing, and impressing me daily with his capabilities.

Anyone who has ever wondered what unschooling a teen looks like, here is one version. These are his subjects, totally his choice:

1. Spanish–taking a class at the local high school. He has had only one class meeting so far, and is very much enjoying it. His teacher is enthusiastic and welcoming to homeschoolers, he has several friends in the class, and I think he will do just fine.

2. Photography: This is an art form he has enjoyed as a hobby for awhile, but now wants to learn much more in depth. He got a sweet new camera for his 16th birthday:

So now he has no excuses!

He is using the assignments at Outdoor Photographer as his weekly assignments, and he is knocking them out beautifully, meanwhile building his portfolio. Here are his first two pieces:

This is for the assignment “abstract” :

And this for the challenge “summer flowers”:

All he needs now is Photoshop so he can learn to edit his images like a pro. We are currently saving up for that investment.

3. Graphic design–he wants to learn more about this art form/career option, so when I stumbled upon this book:

I knew it would be perfect for him. He snatched it up and is tackling the challenges with vigor. Challenge 1 had him design a logo for himself, which he did, and applied it to a business card and letterhead. I think he did a great job. It is purple and artsy and very much HIM.

4. Computer Animation: I had no clue how to help him with this, so we did a little searching and stumbled upon some open source ( free!) computer 3-D graphics and animation software called Blender.  We downloaded it and Superboy has been watching some excellent YouTube tutorials in order to learn how to use it. Pretty amazing stuff!

5. Literature: As long as he is reading something worthy, we are good and I won’t interfere with his reading choices. Right now he is reading Waiting For Snow in Havana, the memoir of an “Operation Pedro Pan” Cuban exile. Definitely worthy. I’m reading it next!

6. Calculus: Superboy and I will be learning this one together using the Teaching Company DVD set titled “Calculus Made Clear.” Lets hope the title is accurate! My old brain hasn’t tackled higher math in a while! But I am taking this opportunity to learn something I never got around to and am looking forward to it. We start this next week. Wish us luck!

7. Physics: Superboy is reading his way through the Flying Circus of Physics and picking out projects from Make magazine to gain himself a physics credit. I personally can’t wait to see what contraptions he comes up with! His first choice: a Wimshurst Spark Generator. Talk about ambitious! Yikes!

And that is about it! I have a few tricks up my sleeve I am going to entice him with after giving him time to get a bit more settled into his routine. But for now, all is well with the boy!

Tell me, how are your teens enjoying their new school year?

© lapazfarm for LaPaz Home Learning, 2011. | Permalink | 14 comments

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Categories: Planet Home Education

Slipping in, all quiet and ninja-like

In a bit of a contrast to our public school friends and family, who are all aflutter with back-to-school hoopla, JBug and I will be slipping quietly into the year by spending the first few days with just a few fun projects. Because we are all ninja like that.

The first thing she will be doing is to spend some time decorating her notebooks, composition books, and clipboards, etc to personalize and jazz them up a bit. Who likes a plain-jane clipboard, anyway? Exactly. Plus, it’s an excellent excuse to break out the art supplies on day one. (As if we needed an excuse.)

The other thing will be kicking off her geography studies with a fun project based on the book Me On the Map by Joan Sweeny. She might be making a little circle book like the one on this site: Finally in First, or she might just do the drawings in her geography notebook, to start that off with a bang. The rest of the notebook will be filled with drawings/clippings/maps, etc of geography goodness using the book Geography from A to Z as a reference, along with pics from Nat Geo magazines, the internets, and our travels. Should be fun and relevant, considering our various wanderings. (Can you name 2 archipelagos upon which we have lived??? How about the 5  major biomes we’ve called home???)

I have a few other awesome new resources I want to share with you guys, plus I want to tell you all about the fabulous stuff Superboy is getting into, but I’ll save that for another time. When you least expect it.

© lapazfarm for LaPaz Home Learning, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments

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Categories: Planet Home Education