The Great Backyard Bird Count

The Great Backyard Bird Count took place this weekend. On any given day we have six or more bluebirds in our backyard. Sometimes we're lucky enough to get a junko or two as well, and godfinches are not uncommon, either. Our front yard is a popular hangout for neighborhood sparrows, a variety of finch species, grackles, bluejays, and sometimes even a cardinal or two.

Here are our misleading counts for the weekend, though:

Extremely high winds plagued us for the first two days, and heavy snowfall for the second two. At least we had a good time looking for them.

Week-long painting project

We spent all of this past week eating either at our kitchen counter or on the coffee table in the sitting room. Our dining table, far from missing us, has been strewn with painting supplies and projects. We started the week-long process after Calvin expressed interest in the layered look of the art in his book Train Song, by Diane Siebert. All we had on hand to work with was the washable poster paint we've been playing with for years, so no oil paints for this one, but we got out our supplies and covered the table with the wipe-able heat-resistant cover I usually put under the table cloth when we have company. I was worried that our usual art paper wouldn't hold up to so many layers so I cut two sides off a cardboard shipping box, one for each of us, and we sat down to start.

Calvin loved being able to sit down and add something to his art whenever it suited him, and I loved that he spent a week in planning and creating towards one goal.

 We visited our paintings at least once each day the whole week long, even if sometimes just for a few minutes to fix little things. I expected them to be done by Saturday but we had a few finishing touches that we added just this morning, and now we are done. Calvin put more into his than I put into mine, and there were a couple of times that I probably should have let the dishes or the laundry go in order to join him in painting.

It's fun now to look and see bits of the whole week in our paintings, which started as night scenes when we were reading Susan Jeffers's illustrated version of Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, were continued with foot prints after we hiked in the field with Crinkleroot, and gained some clouds, and even a little rain in Calvin's case, after yesterday's inclement weather. I enjoy the similarities between our images (both of us included owls like the ones in Jeffers's book) but love even more the differences (Calvin's is flying toward the viewer and is much closer, and he's got such a great house).

This morning, after adding some clouds, we both initialled our work to make it final. Tonight we will eat at our dining table again, but we'll do this again some time, probably sooner rather than later. I kind of liked eating picnic style in the sitting room with a fire lit anyhow.

I am linking this to Saturday's Artist at Ordinary Life Magic. It's a couple of days late, but art just can't be rushed.

Tik-Tok of Oz (our reviews)

We finished our most recent in the Oz series yesterday, The Tik-Tok of Oz. I have to say that this was my least favorite of the series so far. It fits in just fine, but it borrowed heavily from previous books, to the point that I felt it was just a rewriting or a recombination of earlier stories he'd already written. That being said, all the stories are really formulaic and that might be part of what makes them so enjoyable to the younger set—they know what to expect, and they are all equally fantastical and enjoyable. Calvin, for one, was not bothered by repetition.

Since I thought the book was somewhat of a bust I think my favorite part is Calvin's journal entry. When we started with this half a year ago I was spelling everything for him and still helping him form letters and the sentence structure to get his ideas out. He wrote this entry entirely by himself while I was running on the treadmill. I am completely in love with it.

color-by-number 100s chart

It needs no more description than that, I think. To give Calvin a little more familiarity with numbers I printed a handful of hundreds charts and thought up a few blocky pictures to go on them, then every once in a while when we're bored I take one out and we play for a while. I call out a number, which he finds, and tell him what color it should be. Sometimes, as the game progresses, I'll add a little math (find 58, subtract 10, make that square blue). He thinks it's hilarious (mostly because my picture designs are from stellar) and he's becoming more and more comfortable playing around with numbers, which adds to and supports what he's getting from the other games we play.

We took a chart with us to the library today for him to do while I was sorting books. Not a particularly good idea, as it turns out, since in the end it took me twice as long to sort books and I told him wrong colors a couple of times, too. Plus he probably would have been just as happy helping me with the books, but there was only a handful today anyhow. And we brought home two great ones for our freebies (a thank you for helping), one was an Usborne book of knights and castles, and the other the Audubon field guide to North American animals.

We also spent some more time on our paintings today. I think we're close to being able to eat at our dinner table again. We'll see.

Poetry and painting

We've spent a lot of this week hanging out with Robert Frost. We like Robert Frost, especially Calvin, and being winter it seemed appropriate to spend some time with Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening as illustrated by Susan Jeffers. It has us writing our own poems, and illustrating some New England-esque winter scenes.

Calvin's own

A joint effort (alternating lines)

It's a week long painting project. We're trying our hands at long term planning—painting the background first, letting it dry, adding some scenery details, letting that dry. Dinners at the dining room table are on hold for a while.