FIAR, sorta

I was very slightly better prepared today, in that I'd dug out my oil paints last night. So this morning we started with looking at the pictures of night and darkness and rain in the book, and then they got their crayons and drew some dark, rainy things on medium-dark blue paper, while I hung laundry (the laundry situation is somewhat desperate due to having a 3.5-week-old in the house, which is one reason I hoped to postpone starting this until after we come back from our holiday). I dropped in a few times and showed them different effects with different, er, crayon-strokes, for want of a better word, and how to make the impression of "dark" come out of the contrast of different shades surrounded by light. I've just remembered that the gibbous moon I painted on the wall over their heads was a good example; I might point it out tomorrow (the photo shows it without its current very dark blue surrounding circle). Then we looked again and they painted with different shades of blue to make a dark background. Tomorrow we'll paint over the top to do rain and lightning.

What we didn't do today was to read all the words, because they weren't desperate to hear them, and it was somewhat frantic.

And now I'm going to look up tomorrow's ideas, and next week's book so I can make a list of things to hunt up in the library. I feel sooooo behindhand and rushed, but we're having fun, so that's what counts, I think!