I am so far. What about you?

Oh sweet!!!! Sounds cool man!!!

I'm usually too boring to chat, lol.

Lol. Why do ya say that?

Hardly anything of similar interest with anyone.

really? what things interest you?

Quite a few things, but never really gotten to do any of them on a regular basis.

Wow! We're exactly alike

That got me to hit your profile page. Two of my youngin's used to make paper soldiers and little paper villages. They haven't in awhile -- they got into stop-motion video, and it has been consuming all their creative energies. Your soldiers are really cool, and I'm going to point them and their siblings to juniorgeneral.org. It might be something we can, in fact, incorporate into our homeschool on "art day" -- tick off art and history in one activity .....

lol. that's one thing I love about being homeschooled, the fact that you can make almost anything an opportunity to learn, like going on a vacation or stuff like that.

Indeed! And ... my pups don't get slammed by peers for just being themselves ... which can sometimes be a little ... odd ...

yeah. are they furries too?

Two have a definite furry streak. They don't know there is a community around anthropomorphic animal arts/crafts, so they don't express an identification with "furry", but they certainly embody furriness.

My most furry daughter has drawn various scenes from Lord of the Rings as My Little Ponies. She said to me once, "what should I draw next?" I said, "Treebeard as a pony." She exclaimed "What?!" and then pulled it off beautifully. She said she was quite proud of it, but that she'd never draw Treebeard as a pony ever again. She's done a couple of characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender (not the movie) as ponies. I think she can turn anything into a My Little Pony. You've not seen anything until you see a rather wicked looking Ring Wraith alicorn stabbing Frodo pony in the shoulder on Weathertop with its horn. Someday, when she's older, she'll find the fandom and be all over it and in it, I'm sure.

wow, she sounds very talented!!!

She is.... All my kids have something creative like that -- one does comics, another has gotten into stop-motion video, another decided she wanted to pick up piano (I'm hoping she'll start trying to compose songs, but no sign yet) -- my pony artist is just the one with a furry-related creative gift. I sound like an overly-proud papa, probably. But they're good kids, they try hard to be the best they can be, treat others with respect, grow in the faith -- they deserve accolades, even if they don't know they are getting them

Yeah, they do. I teach a Sunday school class at my church and the kids in it are all super creative. It's hard to encourage there creativity and stick with the lesson at the same time. XD

LOL! That can be a problem sometimes!

Oh yeah.

Oh, and I think it is excellent that at your age you are teaching a Sunday School class for kids. That says a lot about your character.

Thanks man!!!!

At least they're still homing their creative art skills, lol. Myself, I had to re-learn art after a 15-year hiatus (gave up drawing in high school, but that's a long story).

And thanks for the compliment! Here's a link to the site itself: http://www.juniorgeneral.org/ Besides the artwork, there are also rules for different time periods to which you can play games with! One of the senior members of the group found a history teacher's blog talking about the site and used our soldiers & a set of rules to have his students recreate the Battle of Marathon between the Greeks & the Persians! http://www.mrmatera.com/2013/02/tak.....eate-a-battle/

So last night I printed out some pirates and whipped out the captain and said, "Here, look, a pirate!" I got, among other things, "Cool! A little pirate!" I left the rest of the sheet of pirates sitting out. I think this will be a hit, but that's the test: if I get home from work today and find not a sheet of paper but little pirate figures standing around, it's a winner!

I checked out the blog you referenced and watched the video the teacher made of his class recreating the battle .... that is way beyond just cool. This quote from one of the kids says it all: “I’m sweating in History, you know it has to be good”

Lol, awesome! Glad they like them! Most of my works can be found from WW2 to modern times, with just a few (maybe one) in WW1.

It's not often a teacher would come to our site to make use of our items for teaching. Some of the artists, still in school, had tried to offer the paper soldiers for future classes, but the teachers responded in a negative way.

Some of us are now trying our skills at animations (including me, so I can create a video game from scratch) using the pixels. Hard work, but fun.

It's a shame that teachers would not see that value in this sort of thing. I think without a creative/hands-on component it is really hard to get information to stick and impossible to truly master -- in the sense that it can be applied in a non-academic, "real-world" situation. It's the difference between repeating a martial arts kata and interpreting components extracted from it in partner combat exercises. You find so much more in the kata as you interpret and apply it. I think it's the same for information learning.

Hey there, Levi! You do want to chat sometime, right? You had some questions for me...if I remember right!

And I would love to just get to know you better anyway! YOu're a good kid!

I'd love to chat. :)

ok, when I'm done with school i'll send ya a note.

thank yas. *hugs*

*hugs*

*hugs back*