Lancaster Music Camp Program

 

2025 ChoralFest Link from the Shenandoah Christian Music Camp

We had a wonderful time with wonderful people, wonderful music, and wonderful food at the 2025 Shenandoah Christian Music Camp.   HERE is the link to the2025 ChoralFest. 

Vibrant Words

       Now that it is summer I finally have a little time to breathe, and I'm already planning for next year.  In the meantime, I'm catching up on posts from this last year that I never got around to posting.  Aren't teacher summers wonderful?  

     

      I got this idea from Cassie Stevens (cassiestephens.blogspot.com).  Many students used their names, but others chose verbs or hobbies or interjections.  I appreciate the creativity.  The younger students used markers while the rest of us used acrylic paint.

 

Lighthouse Art and a Real Lighthouse

 

    This delightful project was gleaned from Art Projects for Kids.  She has an amazing collection of sketches which use quadrants.  These are great for students as they give more definite parameters, and I have seen my students' perspective, spatial awareness, and art in general greatly improve since I've been using a few of these a year.  

     And, it is fun to visit real lighthouses, and we do whenever we have a chance.  During a recent family vacation, we had the opportunity to tour the Turkey Point Lighthouse near North East, Maryland.  The view of the Chesapeake Bay was lovely, and the ladders and stairs inside the lighthouses are always enchanting.  

Registration is Open for the 2025 Anabaptist Orchestra

 The orchestra will practice at Legacy Christian School in Holmes County August 14-17, 2025.

The program is at Dover High School in Dover, Ohio, August 17th at 3:00 p.m.

Yay! Enroll here.

LAMA Concert! Lancaster Academy of Music and Art

 

Russian Mystery Day

Our Mystery February Fun Day got delayed because of snow two weeks ago, so we decided to have it this week instead.  The teachers donned scarves, aprons, and shawls.  We played Russian music and enjoyed a delicious lunch of borscht soup, beef stroganoff, wheat rolls, layered wafer cakes, and Russian candies.  Then we played vishibali, a Russian form of dodgeball.  This was a great immersion into the culture for the middle grades which have been studying Eastern Europe, and a lot of fun for the rest of us.  

 

Give a Mouse a Cookie; Give a Student a Lamp

                                                   

      After collecting several lamp bases and shades (purchased for $1-$2 half price at thrift stores for a few months), I made a slide show of several different creative lamp ideas and showed it to my students.  They were required to write down a few ideas that they liked, and then sketch the one they chose to do on paper.  Once that was approved, they got to choose a lamp and a shade and begin working on their design.  I found anything they asked for, and some of them found their own stuff.  The results ranged from airplanes to semi truck horns (yes, that's a real one!) for the guys, and books, lace, trim, and kitchen gadgets for the ladies.  We displayed these at our Christmas program open house, and I overheard one of the adults ask, "Did the students make these?"  Yes, ma'am, they sure did.  

Helping Happy Homeschoolers Prepare Appealing Pottery

 

I enthusiastically planned to make pottery for two of my homeschool art classes, figuring that if it was a big flop, at least we had tried and hopefully had had fun smushing the clay with our hands.  

It was not a flop, instead it was a wonderful experience that we all enjoyed.  

The first class period,  they were given a slab of air dry clay.  I ordered this on Amazon.  (The younger ones got Crayola Model Magic which is much easier to work with.  I got that at Dollar General.   They come in little packages just the right size for each student.)   I got all white clay so that we could paint it later.

      

During the first class we learned to wedge, roll, shape, make a pinch pot, and make coil pottery.  The younger ones made pinch pots; the older ones made coil pottery.   I gave them several ideas: pencil holders, cups with handles, adding coils to the top or sides, etching designs on the sides, etc.  Then I set them loose.    

When they were finished we let them dry on paper plates with their names written on them.  The teachers retrieved these two days later and wrote the students' names on the bottom of their creations after they were fully dried.  

The second class we painted them.  We let the paint dry while we had a P.E. class (hair dryers sped up the process).  The moms helped with that while I ran relay races with the students and jumped through a hula hoop with a funny hat on my head.  

Next, we glazed them with water-based Minwax varnish.   I stressed to the students (and had them repeat me several times) that they are not safe to drink or eat out of.  But, I have a dream of having a real kiln and making stuff that we could really eat out of some day . . . 

Related Posts:  

Fire Up the Kiln! -- Oops!  Explosion

Fruit Loops in Our New Pottery 

Students Make Magnificent Ming Pottery 

Korean Clay Pottery