Our STORIES AND STUDIES session from last night – same novels, same amphibian unit. Not much new to report, but I have been meaning to mention something cool we have been using for handwriting practice:

Rainbow Mini Scratch Art Notes!

If you had a decent elementary school art experience, you must have spent some time with “scratch art”.  Remember crayoning colors with a vengeance onto paper and then covering the color-filled page with India ink?   After everything dried, you used a pin to scratch into the ink any sort of design, and lo and behold, there was your drawing in a random rainbow of colors, too splendid for words.

Well, hey!  There is now a company that makes scratch art cards!  We get all the fun of scratching into the cards without any of the India ink mess.  I’ve found the product in upscale toy stores, and I’ve found it on Amazon.  Each card is about the size of sticky note, and a box includes 125 cards and wooden scratching tool. We have been using rainbow scratch cards for lettering practice, and now handwriting drills have been taken to an entirely new level. No matter what you write, or how you write, you want to keep writing, because watching each color reveal itself is curiously fascinating.

Last night’s classical music theme: Surprise Endings!

• “The Wild Bears” from Sir Edward Elgar’s nursery suite, “The Wand of Youth”.  This is one of our top ten favorite pieces and we listen to it often. A rollicking three minutes, it makes us think of a great family game of hide and seek.  Smashing ending.
• “The Moldau” by Bedrich Smetana. This exquisite piece brings to life a river in Smetana’s native Bohemia.  The final minute is so beautiful and descriptive, and the abrupt ending is perfection.
• “The Imperial March” by John Williams…you know, the Darth Vader theme.  Seriously imaginative composition with an in-your-face ending.

Welcome to the best part of my day!

– Jane BH