art class: make a hat out of nature

em's homeschooling has been going unbelievably well! she's loving it and learning at a much faster pace than we expected. and not hating spending all the time with us either! but today was one of THOSE days. you've had them i'm sure. she was just out of sorts, resistant, asking dumb questions, purposefully annoying, just not at all open to anything. so to get her out of my hair for a bit (sorry, being honest!) i told her to make a hat out of nature, but that she could only use things she found outside. no glue or string or anything from inside. she went out for 2 minutes and came back in whining and i said no, you need to spend about an hour, just look around, get ideas, i'm sure you'll figure it out. dad said you know she won't even try right? i said yep, but she's outside, that's good enough for me right now. (hey, i gotta work sometime!) so, no expectations, no worries!
we hear her singing away out there and are glad she's at least cheering up and enjoying it. after a while she comes in and we're both shocked to see her looking like a cute little fairy from a movie with a very creative hat! she'd found a huge leaf for a visor and carefully tied the stem and sticks all together with blades of grass. it was very well done! i said wow em, if only you got grades at homeschool, you'd get an A+ for sure!
just amazing that one of THOSE days actually didn't end up so bad afterall! of course maybe it's just her awesome teacher?? nah! :)