Kidzaw.com Master Kitz The Starry Night

This (last?) review of the TOS Review Crew 2018 year is a fun one! Kidzaw.com has put together some fabulous art kits for your young (or older) artist, inspired by the Masters. We were sent the Master Kitz The Starry Night, which, if you know your art titles, is obviously from Van Gogh. This made me very happy, as well as his older sister, who is an Art Ed major, and a fan of van Gogh. As a matter of fact, one of her major projects last year was a collage of the precursor to The Starry Night, and right now she is painting in oils a pair of old boots. So it's a lot of fun to have them both doing Van Gogh inspired projects at the same time, albeit 7+ hours apart. ;)

Van Gogh on the Left, Eldest on the Right for both pieces

If you visit the Kidzaw Website you will find more kits inspired by Klee, Kadinsky, Klimt, Monet, Rouge, and Hokusai. Each kit comes in a very nice, self-contained, magnet closure box, as you see here:

Inside this particular box, we found two pieces of deluxe art paper and a large Starry Night Cyprus Tree (Both rolled up, the stencil is green...) Washable (Yes! It comes off hands very well!) Blue, Black, and White Acrylic paint, 4 oil pastels (white, yellow, orange, and dark blue~ apparently the kit has been updated with a 5th, light blue pastel as well), low tack star sticker mask sheet, a Van Gogh texture roller, a sponge roller, instructions and a colorful information sheet. The Van Gogh roller has a protective covering on it when it arrives (as you see in my unboxing photo), but it has a nice texture to give the feel of Van Gogh's strokes. 

So, we are * almost done with this project~ There are a few steps involved, not the least of which is getting the paper and the stencil to lie flat (Paper is easy~ tape it down. The Stencil was a little more tricky, and after having it flat on the table overnight with the box and a few things stacked on top of it, we still needed to use tiny rolls of masking tape in strategic areas to get it to lie flat on the paper). I'll go over the process as we followed the included instructions. 

First, the star masks are placed on the upper half of the paper, then the entire paper is covered with Van Gogh strokes with the roller using blue paint, followed by a "cloudy" layer with white paint.
The star masks are removed, and when the paint is dry the stencil is laid down and the sponge roller is used to apply black paint.

After waiting for it to dry (It really is very fast-drying paint), the stencil is removed, and it is time to apply the oil pastels.

This is one of the places where we have figured out how we want to do things differently on the second piece of paper.
Probably do a blue sponge layer of paint first.
A darker layer with the Van Gogh roller of blue and black paint mixed across the top, but stopping more halfway, because we found the oil pastels didn't cover quite as well as we'd hoped.

And this is as far as we've gotten at this point. The pastels definitely take a little more concentration and time. I will say, that looking at this as a photo, from a distance, it looks much better than looking at it up close in person, which is often the way of impressionist art. :)

I am always a fan of well-done art kits that engage kids in the process and create an interest in the specific artist. Because of my Eldest's major, we do have a lot of discussion and exposure to art and artists, and Youngest was pleased to be doing something that coordinated with his big sister. I think this would be a fabulous gift to give to any aspiring young artist.

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Kidzaw.com
• Product: Master Kitz The Starry Night
• Ages: ? with help, as young as 5, but even at 11, I was assisting some.
• Price: $29.99

You can visit Kidzaw on their social media pages: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

#hsreviews #art #homeschoolart #masterkitz

Balancing Diapers and Deadlines (A course in Working while Schooling from Home, with Kids of All Ages)

This next review comes from Lisa Tanner Writing. Lisa is a fellow TOS Homeschool Review Crew member, and she has written an online course, Balancing Diapers and Deadlines, to help busy moms be more productive. It is geared towards "mompreneurs" who are running a business from home but can apply to anyone involved in more than one thing (including writing a blog) on a more or less daily basis. 

Lisa has broken down her course into an introduction and seven units. 

• Building Your Foundation With the Basics
• Minimize Your Decisions
• Minimize Your Decisions: The Annual Meal Plan
• Sustainable Growth
• Growing a Business With Your Kids Around
• Boost Your Productivity
• Closing Thoughts

Now, we didn't have time to go through and implement the whole course (at a two or three lesson/week pace), but I did go through the first couple of units and skimmed through the rest of the lessons, to get an idea of what it contains. 

Screenshot of a portion of two units

Building Your Foundation With the Basics covers getting your family on board with your business, creating routines and basic structure. There were new ideas, like having a daily action plan that is created each morning, and basic reminders for when the plan gets off track. We were just talking about schedules at our homeschool meeting last night, and this concept totally relates to the back-to-the-basic idea of SIMPLE planning. It's a lot easier to adjust when one thing makes waves in one day, instead of having to adjust the whole week from one small blip.

Minimize Your Decisions is a huge Unit that tackles one of the major roadblocks to doing anything inside the home... the HOME, and keeping it organized. There are eight lessons in this unit that include tips on getting/keeping the house in shape, set chores/chore times, and an interesting reward/consequence system. There is a lesson on giving each child a day of the week to take some of the decision-making out of your hands and put it in theirs. We're still working on implementing some of the ideas in this unit, some of which we've used in the past and let slip by over the years, and others which are brand new but make sense~ Use Your Broom!

Minimize Your Decisions: The Annual Meal Plan is where I am at in the course at the moment, so haven't had an opportunity to actually implement it yet. The idea of meal planning is still something that scares me. :) I'm a what's in the fridge/what's on sale kind of person, but from my first peek at this unit, I'm thinking that it might actually work with my Fly-By-The-Seat-Of-Your-Pants style. It also includes lessons on planning for breakfast, lunch, and snacks, and creating a master shopping list.

Sustainable Growth appears to cover how to actually grow a business without burning out, including how to handle time and technology.

Growing a Business With Your Kids Around gives tips and suggestions for being able to work around or with each age group and even special needs kids, if that applies to your family situation. Lisa includes integrating homeschooling and a business, so if you ARE a Mompreneur, this will be a particularly interesting unit!

Boost Your Productivity has five lessons that appear to continue the "Make a Plan" idea as well as provides suggestions for things that help you to use our time wisely.

Closing Thoughts offers encouragement as you are planning your work, and working your plan (and sometimes getting tripped up when the plans fall apart).

There are things in this course that will apply to almost everyone and others that may not. For instance, "Let's Talk About Laundry" in the Minimize Your Decisions Unit relates much more to large family logistics (I can't imagine having to do three loads of laundry each day, but when you have 10 kids... that's the reality). However, everyone needs to do laundry, and it's good to have a plan to get it done so you don't have to think about it.

Not everyone has kids in all stages, so Growing Your Business With Your Kids Around may have a lesson or two that don't relate to your current situation. However, for the most part, there are things that will apply to most family situations in every single Unit.

Not So Nutty Nitty Gritty 

• Company: Lisa Tanner Writing
• Product: Balancing Diapers and Deadlines
• Ages: Moms
• Price: $50

Visit Lisa Tanner Writing on her Social Media pages...
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest

Please click the banner below to visit the TOS Homeschool Review Crew and see what others had to say, and find out how they implemented this course. As always, I hope that this review was useful to you as you choose where best to spend your homeschool budget.

Blessings~

#hsreviews #mompreneurlife #workingfromhome #productivity