Drawing Calm -- Book Review

Drawing Calm:  Relax, Refresh, Refocus with 20 drawing, painting, and collage workshops inspired by Klimt, Klee, Monet and More.

Written and illustrated by Susan Evenson with a foreword and commentary by Mary Rockwood Lane, R.N, M.S,N., PhD, Creative Healing Educator.

I find it relaxing just to look through the book.  Drawing Calm will teach you the importance of taking time away from your busy life and calm your brain with any of the workshops within the book.

After the Getting Started section, which includes setting up your workshop, tools and materials to gather, your soundtrack and the fine details, there are 8 chapters.

The chapters include:
Warm-Up Exercises
Delight
Quiet
Warmth
Harmony
Calm
Light
Rhythm
Maintaining the Calm

Throughout the book you will also find what they call Sidebars.   To me they are inspirations---the reasons these workshops are so important for you and your life.  They are written by Mary Rockwood Lane and include subjects such as Creative Repose, Concentration and Mindfulness, Communicate and Connect and more.

My daughter flipped through the book and seen that some of the workshops include using magazines.  Right away she said she wanted to work on those and start getting good use out of the magazines she has stacked up.
She liked the Catalog of Dots in the Maintaining the Calm chapter.

I see several workshops that I would like to give a try, but as a quilter, I was immediately drawn to the Doodle Quilt in the Rhythm chapter.

I am definitely adding this book into my craft/sewing room.  As I work to clean out and reorganize, I WILL be setting up a corner for my "drawing calm" work space!   I need these.










Disclosure:  I rec'd a copy of the book for the purpose of this review.  I was not compensated in any other way and any opinions are my own.  Post contains affiliate links.

Homeschool Journal---The End of the School Year is Closing In

I've not written a "journal" entry blog post for our homeschooling in some time now.
It seems that since Christmas we have had so few days that we actually got in a good amount of book work in a day.

It seems it's just so much unschooling now!  Let's see if I can give a lot of examples.

Jasmine has been doing a lot of exercises as well as learning about "super foods" and more.  This would be health/PE.
Exercising with the Slim in 6 dvd's that I purchased as well as still dancing with the Wii, but also with the Playstation game as well.  She's even tried some exercises that she's read in magazines.
The Slim in 6 dvd's came with a booklet all about exercise, eating and health---we've read it cover to cover twice.  We've tried different recipes etc.
On nice days she's been taking walks.  This last week she walked to the public library (just over a mile from our house)...read half a book while there (language arts) and then walked back home.

Jasmine has taken it upon herself to watch some of the science shows through netflix---such as the How It Works and How Stuff Works series.  She then tells us, and others what she learned from each show.

She is still attending Bible study each Tuesday and youth group each Wednesday.
Recently youth group attended the Winter Jam concert.  This prompted her for days to look up bands and lyrics, and do some sharing of both on facebook. (music)

I pulled out the Thresholds to Adult Living textbook and we've been reading it out loud with discussion.  I love those books!  I picked this one up as well as a few others at the public library book sale.  They are all from the 1960's but still very much (if not more) pertain to how a person should live today.  All of these texts cover every aspect of life from friends, dating, marriage, fitness, cooking, health, jobs, budgeting, decorating, and so much more. (I love the photos within the books)

Jasmine, on her own, had been making herself a budget/goal book.  She has made specific goals of things she is saving for and how much (what percentage of) she will save for each goal out of any money that she earns.  Other math would include grocery shopping with me.  We have been working also in an Everyday Math Survival Skills workbook.

Of course she is still drawing all of the time.  I am going to end this post today with a picture she has recently drawn.  I've also used this picture as the intro photo on one of my squidoo lenses.

I am linking up with:
 

Homeschool Journey--Making Use of the Public Library

Again last week we only ended up with 2 days of what I call full school.  By that I mean that all of the books got pulled out and we worked every subject.

I am super busy with my crafts.  I've decided it's a must to up my income.  They won't sell if they aren't made!

We always go to the library each Tuesday after Bible study.  Right now we still have 5 books about Greece to read.  I'm building a squidoo lens highlighting the books we are reading, photos, and what we are learning.  I will share that once we get through all of the books.  This last week we went to the video section.  For now, watching educational videos throughout the week is going to be part of our routine.
We only watched 2 last week.  One was on Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes and the other was Alex Anderson Teaches You to Start Quilting.  Ok, the quilting video was for me, but she really paid attention to it.  So much that I'm sure she will be reminding me a lot of what the lady was teaching.  Yep....home-ec.

I need to work harder at cracking down on her to work on things that she can do on her own.

I have a software to review called the Algebrator.  I hope to get that done tomorrow.  Along with the review will be a giveaway here on my blog.  Jasmine is actually excited to give it a try and see if seeing the problem worked in front of her will help her understand it better than me working problems on the board for her to see and reading how to do them out of a book.

I will leave you with this photo of Jasmine holding up one of her chalk pastel drawings.  
 

Homeschool Journal--Jasmine's Drawing

For a birthday gift, one of the lady's at church gave Jasmine a $30 gift card to Hobby Lobby.  She spent it buying a sketch pad, drawing pencils, blending tools, and chalk pastels.  Jasmine loves to draw and is good at it too.  She is self taught through books and the internet.  I'm thinking of a squidoo lens to highlight her drawing as part of my homeschool series there for this year.  Here she is drawing this past week:

In other news this past week---I feel we had a pretty good week.  
Another thing that Jasmine bought with some of her birthday money was a Belly Buster.  This has her actually doing daily physical activity according to the instructions.
Sunday she was still at camp until after noon.
We made it through every subject throughout the week.
I checked out a lot of books on Greece from the library.  They are from the children's section, but have wonderful pictures.  We are reading through those.  They will also turn in to a squidoo lens.
She's enjoying the Introduction to Business textbook.  I'm glad as it will help her understand a lot more than business.
In home-ec we read through the section on doing laundry.  It's prompted her to want to get back to doing her own laundry--now if it would just prompt her to put it away instead of leaving it in piles in her room!
She's making sure to write in her journal on a regular  basis.
Math is math---we were studying rates and ratios last week.  We will continue with that this week as well as she will work in the Algebra 1/2 textbook.
And, only Jasmine would do something like this---she is reading the ebook of How To Raise Up A Child.  She chose to read it since we are having so many behavioral problems with my 2 yr old grandson.  Last night she asked me if I would read it out loud to her instead though.

I'm going to hop along for this week.  We will be leaving soon for our weekly Bible study at church and our weekly trip to the public library.

I am linking up with: