Netta's art

One thing about being a homeschooling family in Seoul is we do not have a very busy schedule. At home we were always out and about at class days or field trips or playdates but here our weekdays are pretty quiet. I am really seeing the advantages to kids having time to create. Netta is doing an amazing amount of art. She is not a big reader - yet - although her reading has grown so much while we have been here and in two languages to boot. But she loves to listen to books and while she is listening she has been doing loads of art.

I also have a student who owns an Art Academy which is basically an after school art program. In addition to taking lessons with me she has generously allowed Netta to participate in her art classes for free. She even picks her up and drives her there! She is very sweet and Netta loves the days she spends there. They are often long days as my friend has to stay during other classes and Netta waits for her to get a ride home. So she gets to work on many projects and my friend says she stays focused for long periods of work time.

So here are some of her works. This is a lovely tree she made - I love the details in the clay work.

A nest on the tree.

Some origami she did on a calendar that she made me.
Crayon and watercolor.
More origami - I like the animal print paper.
She made this one for Olive and we hung it over our bed. Olive likes to look at while we get ready for bed. Sorry I can't turn it....
Nice shadowing here.
Color study.

I hope I can post more soon. Today she made a birthday cake and muffins out of clay. The cake fit in a cute little box from John's Valentine cake.

I am so thankful that Netta has the time to practice art.

Long overdue

Hi all - it has been awhile since I have posted. Sometimes it is hard to wrench the computer away from other members of the household. Also we were sick and all my energy was going to helping us all heal. We are mostly better now - Netta and I still have some gunk but we are mostly better. We haven't been doing much with the cold weather and the sicknesses but we did celebrate lunar new year before we all got sick.


We went to a folk village and saw an amazing shamanic ritual that is performed for the new year. This lovely old woman played the drum for the ritual.

This is the main shaman from the ritual. It was cool a lot of dancing and chanting with music. She did some amazing things with long ribbons and twisting while she was dancing. She also did a thing where she held out flags to audience members and the person would pick one and the color would tell her something about good or bad luck for the year ( or at least that is what it seemed like to us).


They also threw food out into the audience. It was really crazy - people went mad - it was like they were starving or something. Olive was in the stroller close to the stage but during the frenzy we had to get her out or she would have been crushed. It was madness !


Netta made this kite. She flew it quite a bit. It worked pretty well but has since sort of disintegrated because it is made of paper. She did get some good runs on our hill outside the house and at Nakseongdae Park.This is the pond at the village. It was frozen over and everybody was walking on it. Very cool - except in the places you could see bubbles from the water below - kind of nerve wracking.

So that was our lunar new year - on to the year of the rabbit!

I have some other posts about Netta's art and some trips we made with her friends but I will let them wait until next time.

Hope everyone is well - we are thinking about coming home. We are over halfway through our year here and have set a date to return home June 28 although we have not bought our tickets yet. We are all looking forward to home.