Does anyone experience this, or is just us? Suddenly we seem to get into the groove of getting the hang of putting entries into our nature journals!
After reading a chapter from an old Enid Blyton nature book that talks about recording weather, Tiger and I made our first weather record chart in his journal, and he has been diligently entering his observations into it. Weather recording is so obvious that it completely slipped my mind that it can be a totally valid subject for nature study!
Also included in the pages are weekly observations of animals, birds, and plants.
It was meant to be a robin, but maybe Tiger was thinking of a hedgehog when he was drawing...
When it comes to formal writing lessons, Tiger has never been a big fan. He tolerates them but will not do more than what is absolutely necessary for each lesson. He finds the act of writing tedious on the physical level, and he often thinks much faster than he can get his ideas down on writing. However, he loves to write short notes, messages, and lists so he does write something everyday outside of our formal lesson time.
In the past few months, Tiger has been writing in a notepad that he keeps by his bedside every morning. On the few occasions when he showed me his notepad, I saw that he has been writing out one to two sentences about what he planned to do each day. It was done entirely on his own account, so I was very encouraged to see him doing it. In order not to squash his budding interest in writing, I did not correct any error in his notepad.
A few days ago, Tiger was in a particularly restless mood. He was bouncing off the wall for the entire day, not feeling satisfied with any activity that we did. By late afternoon, both of us were exhausted by his restlessness so I left him to entertain himself while I cooked dinner. He got into his "time machine" (Tiger has been very interested in the concept of time and on the topic of time travel lately), and decided to keep a travelouge of his 3-day adventure in what he calls his "time car".
Title page: Adventures in the Time Car
When Tiger showed me what he has written, I suddenly had a brainwave: art journal! I had thought about doing art journals with Tiger before, but it never came together because he was not ready for it. Perhaps part of the reason it did not happen was because I might have turned it into an academic exercise -- I am much more relaxed these days about how Tiger learns.
After dinner, I asked Tiger whether he would be interested to try out art journaling. I gave him a journal book that I had bought for him a few years ago when the journaling idea first came to me, but since that never happened the journal has been in the cupboard until now:
Tiger is a big fan of the Winnie-the-Pooh characters.
I then took out my own journal and said we would work alongside each other. I think having me work together with him on this, at least at the start, has been very useful in a few ways:
Tiger does not see this as being yet another academic exercise that his mum-and-teacher is making him do;
he gets to see one example of how art journaling can be done;
he sees and experiences for himself that art journaling is a liberating and enjoyable activity.
So we got started. In order not to overly complicate the process at the beginning, I just set out the dry materials (felt tips, markers, coloured pencils, and ballpoint pens). I explained that there are basically no rules (yay!!) to art journaling, but to get us started I laid down a few simple guidelines:
use any materials;
write, draw, doodle, scribble, do whatever you fancy in the art journal;
it can be about anything, everything, or nothing at all;
it can be about feelings, facts, records, anything that you feel you want to put down on paper.
Once Tiger got started, he carried on page after page, and did not stop until he had completed 8 pages in his journal. That took 45 minutes. Wow, compare that with the 15 minutes of daily coaxing that happens in our writing lessons! More importantly, he enjoyed the process so much that he did not want to stop and wanted to do it again the next day.
Our first session has been a huge success for us and we intend to do more of it together. There is certainly a lot of potential to explore and much scope to expand into in this area. For example, we might try a themed session next time, or include other media..... the possibilities are endless!
I have done very little mixed media work in the past, but trying out art journaling has sparked my curiosity and interest in this area. Hence, for my own development, it would be very interesting to try out something new. Even if it does not change my style (which I am sure it will, in some ways) it will at least give me a break from my own art making and training, which tend to lean towards the academic/serious side, and allow me to experiment and have more fun in art making.
This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with. It is also linked to the Homeschool Showcase #94.
While the unit study approach appeals to me for its wide coverage of topics based on a single source book, I was not sure whether the lapbook aspect would appeal. We made a few lapbooks in Tiger's preschool years and I thought they were too much trouble to make since I was the one doing most of the cutting and pasting back then. This time round, I approached the lapbooking slowly so as not to overwhelm Tiger with the amount of work involved. Surprisingly, this time Tiger took to it like a fish to water! I think the success with lapbooking this time is due to the following factors:
1) Tiger being more developed in terms of fine motor skills so cutting and pasting do not tire him as much as they did when he was little;
2) Instead of putting the lapbook together in one go, as I did before, we put each part together as we worked through the unit. This way, the project became manageable components rather than an overwhelming whole.
3) Tiger has been more involved this time in terms of designing and organising the lapbook. After I explained what the lapbook templates were for, he had full control over the project.
So far so good.
Working slowly through the unit, we have touched upon geography when we had to find out the meaning behind the flag of France.
An interesting discussion came up when we examined the feudal system as part of understanding how society was structured in the Middle Ages. Using the diagram, Tiger finally had a visual understanding of where knights were placed in the social hierarchy. That led to us examining how and whether social structure has changed as much as we would like to believe. It was slightly grim when we realised that we were just a little better than the peasant class.
Peasant or not, we moved along to appreciate great art in the form of a child-friendly version of the Book of Hours. The stunning illustrations were done by the Limbourgh Brothers, whom we had studied previously. The book gave a detailed description of each illustration, which helped us appreciate the artist's skills and use of symbolism. We also looked at each picture to find details that we had missed when we studied the artist in Year 1.
After reading through the book, I took out the copies of art postcards that we used in Year 1 for artist study. The cards were used to match against the pages from the book.
We both watched an excellent interactive demo of how a medieval manuscript is made. The demo helped to cement what we know so far about the manuscript process.
Another superb example of medieval manuscript is the Book of Kells which is currently held in Dublin:
Compared to filling out workbooks, this approach takes a long time. We seem to get side tracked at every point as we follow our interest before returning to the lesson plan. So far we are still working through Chapter 1 but the process of learning has been immensely enjoyable, especially when we are being led into fascinating areas which would otherwise have been missed. If we were just using this approach for Language Arts, I would be worried about whether Tiger is covering enough grounds for his basic skills such as grammar, writing and spelling. Since those areas are being covered at other times in our week, we can indulge ourselves by taking an interesting route to reading and literature.
This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with. It is also linked to the Homeschool Showcase #93.
'Fra' is actually a term meaning 'Brother', since Angelico was a monk as well as a master artist in the early Renaissance period. I must admit that I am not overly excited by religious paintings, but they were the main types of art work produced for hundreds of years when the Church was a part of everyday life so it makes sense for us to learn something about it.
Picture Study
The first place I go for artist study is BBC Your Painting site. It is very relevant to me because this site lists the art works that are held in the British art museums and galleries. Even so, there is not much information on Fra Angelico there, although we did spend some time looking at the paintings there, and discussing about the prevalent style, symbolism, and the use of Biblical stories in the Middle Ages.
After the generic introduction, we focused on a specific painting, The Adoration of the Magi, for further exploration and discussion. The online tour of this piece of art work, used together with the accompanying notes, was very helpful in this regard.
However, we still did not know much about Fra Angelico until we watched the following two clips:
Hands-on activity The only thing that Tiger found exciting about the art pieces in this period was the use of gold leaf to highlight significant figures in the paintings. The suggested activity in Discovering Great Artists was to use 'silver leaf', a.k.a. alumnimum foil.
Tiger first sketched his picture on a black card with a pencil. I suggested to him to make a big drawing so that he would have enough room for the foil. He decided to draw the head of a holyman, so that he could use the foil as halo around the man's head.
Once the sketch was done, it was time to glue the aluminium foil onto the card where the halo was going to be, followed by painting the rest of the picture.
The end result turned out to be something very different from what I was expecting to see, but Tiger was happy with how his work turned out. I thought (to myself) that the final result seemed more appropriate as an Expressionist work than an early Renaissance work, but as long as the artist himself is satisfied with his own creation, I do not feel I should criticise his creative efforts. Afterall, I may not fare any better if I were to do it myself.
This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with. It is also linked up to Homeschool Showcase #90.
