Today my son turned 15.
He is the greatest.
I tried to tell him his birth story yesterday picking him up from high school. He had a bit of a trapped child look. But I barreled on. He was born after a night they delayed his birth. I waited for the AM arrival of Dr.Alvarez. Luca had the umbilical cord around his neck, contractions stopped his heart. When I delivered, the moment I dilated to the correct amount I had one push to get him out safely. It was a very touchy thing as the contractions to dilate stopped his heart so this was an AM of debate and the Dr. made sure I was extremely hydrated and all in all there was a lot of tension. After lunch in one push he arrived a really lovely baby. He was an easy baby. A welcome one. Luca has been a marvelous son. Angel's fan by two! He loves Bret Favre, he was a die heart Greenbay fan but...it's leaning Vikings. Loves baseball, loves sport. He's a wrestler. Luca likes history. Especially learning from other's suffering in wars. He's a bit addicted to his XBox 360. He likes to skateboard. Luca has a great sense of humor, torments his sister Sophia and told me yesterday he loves Italian food. His grandmom spoils him and they love each other. And he's just recovering from a hateful flu.

We got Luca a Martin guitar as his present. He sort of allowed me to film him playing it. It really has a nice sound, this is a series of movies of his playing.

(I may be sitting on a blob of oatmeal, I'm too tired to really look.)

I had a long week, but it was shortened by a day off to celebrate Columbus.
In that shortened week we also had a training day for teachers. Worked on getting things ready for the new math adoption.
Several days off for my kids then meant Wednesday they weren't so interested in everything going "my way." A few days off often results in a long day back, I forget that over and over, and it amazes me every time it reoccurs.

Just the same we did study sunflowers, a bit. Made several artworks.
Had a real rainy day. And the week ended in a room over 95. It would be nice to have AC.
There were two projects we did that are pretty nice, though incomplete.
I'll share them as slide shows.

I introduce Van Gogh, and heliotropism, as well as some basics about growing plants, seeds and harvest at this time every year to my 1st graders. I'm feeling "like a dog" because I couldn't afford and get a bus and trip lined up to go to the pumpkin farm. Awful. I can't talk about it. Perhaps I need to write the parents with at least the directions if they want to go on their own, many might make the venture down to Simi to Underwood Farms. It's just a wonderful thing to do.

We made "Sunflower Bags" to hold our I love Reading and library books. Turned out cute but next week we will outline with "Puffy paints" and see if this doesn't make them extraordinary.
After drawing in the sunflowers they took acrylic paints and made the sunflowers. Very beautiful overall.



Then the children on Friday in some of the hottest heat I've ever work in, made sunflower paintings. Many aren't completely finished so the gallery isn't yet up of finished paintings. This is the work in progress:



In the past I've blogged about helitropism and the wonderful math within the sunflower.
I have really enjoyed taking this out to work with this year. Introduction to the Fibonacci numbers seems natural at this time. I like this site, click here.



I found this in Flickr and like reading here about it.

Well, mybe I'm better off just putting in some links:

The Fibonacci Numbers and Golden section in Nature - 1

Home School Articles and Advice

Growing In The Garden had a wonderful set of plans and ideas with lovely books to incorporate.

I remember Farquot from Shrek:

Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio

I use the same book by Anna Comstock sited on this site so that was very exciting:

Handbook of Nature Study: Corn Study, Fibonacci, and Our Garden ...

World Mysteries - Science Mysteries, Fibonacci Numbers and Golden ...

This page is a kind of de-bunking one, I'm still reading it, take the time ...hum.

Well anyway we enjoyed making sunflower artworks.
There is a lot going on in the sunflower.

Truthfully it took a toll on me to get things painted, collected, cleaned up while trying to log the data and record the tests equired that take away the instructional time, and organize the week's work "to the mandates." I'm 50 going on......
but it was very nice work to do with the kids, and they did it in a lovely way.

I have a student reading and doing math at the 8th grade ( or higher ) level and finally went and got her a collection of Roald Dahl which she seems to be enjoying reading, and need to get her higher level math work. The thing I enjoy about this is watching how it promotes better work all around in the classroom. She reminds me of my own kids....very nice it is. She's become the room secretary. We have assistants that work as pencil monitors, librarians, journal checkers, painting monitor, and so on because of their capacity to do this well, in time all will have these extra tasks, but she has shown clearly that she can peacefully aid the room while I work with groups on reading-great. She told me wednesday she wants to become an artist.

That kind of blew me away. So few people really think that matters.
If she brings this kind of capacity into her artwork, I can't imagine how it might then be transformed. Amazing to work with her.
And a class of very wonderful children.
So for her...

Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh

The Paintings: Sunflowers