Parkerkids Homeschool News

Welcome to our winter edition of the Parkerkids Homeschool News! We've had some strange weather this January. We've had lots of snow and lots of ice storms, and we've had 50- and 60-degree weather too. Right now the snow is melting, and it's wet and muddy outside. It's almost like spring! And we've been busy in our homeschool, learning lots of new things.

Van Gogh was one of the greatest artists who ever lived. He went to a lot of different cities and met other artists, and no one knew that they would be great artists someday.

Van Gogh's very first paintings were of the poor, and when he saw Japanese paintings, he found out that his colors in the "poor" paintings were not as bright as the Japanese ones, so his paintings got brighter. He made them orange, red, yellow, and blue.

It was a big mistake when he and Gauguin met, because Van Gogh thought it would be good to paint with other artists and talk with them about the differences in their paintings, but they had a lot of arguments. Van Gogh and Gauguin had a very bad argument, and Gauguin decided to leave Van Gogh. Van Gogh was so angry that once he cut part of his ear off, and he made a painting about how he looked. He called it Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear.

He loved painting so much that he started buying paints instead of food, so he wasn't very healthy. He didn't always mix his colors, and he painted right out of the tube. The swirls he made in his paintings made them look like they were moving. He sold one or two paintings while he was alive. And then he was angry because the people didn't understand his "moving" pictures, so they didn't like them.

Wheatfield with Crows was maybe one of his last pictures. After he painted it, he shot himself, and two days later he died.

By Dulcie

(Editor's Note: This is a narration of the book Van Gogh, by Mike Venezia, a part of the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series.)

Wandering down, the snowflakes fall,
Icicles hanging from the wall,
New snow covers the frosty ground,
Then the sky brings ice around.
Every day I look outside,
Really glad that I can sled-ride!

By Dulcie

By Dulcie

Our Kendra has been practicing a new skill since December...

We went on a field trip to the fire station and met Firefighter Jim and Sparky the Firehouse Dog. We saw a movie about fire safety too, and looked at fire trucks and police cars and got to see the inside of them. We got to control a hose, and we put on a firefighter's coat, pants, boots, and helmet. It was heavy! A fireman wears a mask to protect his face from a fire too. These are some of the safety rules we learned:

Drop what you're doing.
Crawl to a door or a window to get out of the house.
Feel the door before you open it.
If the door is locked go out a window.
Stop, drop and roll if your clothes are on fire.
Don't go back into a burning house.
Put smoke detectors in your home.

By Dulcie and Keni

We have been studying the oceans this winter. Here is a sketch of the floor of the Atlantic Ocean that Dulcie made for her science notebook, showing the continental shelf, the continental slope, the abyss, and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge...

Dulcie likes squids, and her favorite part of the ocean is the Mariana Trench because squids live there. This is an essay she wrote about the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world. It touches the continents of Asia, Australia, Antarctica, North America, and South America. The Mariana Trench is in the Pacific Ocean. It's the deepest part of the ocean. It is seven miles deep. The Great Barrier Reef is in the Pacific too, near Australia. It is a coral reef, and it's busy. Many kinds of animals live there, like clownfish, angelfish, anemones, wrasses, and coral groupers.

By Dulcie

A mother bird sat on her egg and it jumped, and she said "My baby will be here, and he will want to eat! I will go and get some food." And the egg jumped and jumped and out came a baby bird and said, "Where is my mother?"

And then it looked up and it looked down, and then it went to look for its mother. And it stopped by a cat and said, "Are you my mother?" and the cat stared. And then it went to a hen and said, "Are you my mother?" And it said no. And then it went to a tail and the tail was connected to a dog and it said, "Are you my mother?" and it said no. And then it went to a cow and said, "Cow, are you my mother?" "No," it said.

And then it went to a car, and the bird ran! And then it went and looked down and saw a boat, and said, "Are you my mother?" But the boat kept on going. And it saw a plane and said, "Hey, are you my mother?" and the plane kept on going. And then it went to a big machine, and it walked over and said, "Hi Mother!" And the big thing said, "Snort!" And then it put the baby bird back in the nest and the mother came back with food and they lived happily ever after.

By Kendra

(Editor's Note: This is a narration of the book Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman)