The diorama queen does it again!

We are studying Rainforests in this unit for History/ Geography in Sierra's homeschooling, and she had so much fun making the first diorama she HAD to make another one! So, one can of play-doh, one box of air dry clay, and a bunch of paper and paint later, her masterpiece was revealed:
If we weren't already running out of boxes as it is, I would make one myself. I am actually pretty jealous I couldn't! My favorite thing is hard to see here, but she has a cool little lake full of fish surrounded by real rocks! You can see the line of rocks that makes up the front of the lake. Nothing went unnoticed, and there is a ton of detail up close. The research for this went way beyond Rainforest Cafe, thank you very much. Hey, in this house, learning is fun!

I have had such a good time teaching Sierra lately, that I went ahead and added on to my long list of services: art classes!! For the less than the price of your typical park district art class, I now teach privately in my studio!! How can you beat that?

My daughter, the diorama genius

Some of you may know that in addition to all my other roles, I also homeschool my daughter, Sierra. This is both rewarding and humbling, as you realize how much you really do forget from grade school. I am a little more qualified, since at least I have taught before, and hey, I get to do art projects! We all need an excuse to bust out the glue sticks, clay, and crayons every now and then. I highly recommend it. Of course, I still color kids menus and draw on placemats. If you don't, you're missing out!

So here are the fruits of Sierra's labors...a diorama (remember making those?! They are still fun!) of a desert. Her unit in science and geography kinda fused into one project, and after alot of research on the wonderful library on my lap that is the internet, we both learned alot. So, this is not just ANY desert. Oh, no. Meerkats only live in the Kalahari desert in Africa, and Sierra HAD to include their cuteness in here. There are two pictures because I got this little light out of a quarter machine for her at Gino's East in Chicago (which is a great place to go if you like to draw on stuff!). She really IS my daughter- she had to add a sweet light feature to make it the moon!

I'm a proud momma.