Easter Eggs and Dark Chocolate

We don't always do much for Easter.  The last time we did anything for it was two years ago, so it's time to decorate the eggs again!

We tried a few different methods of dyeing our eggs, with mixed results:

1. direct painting with food colouring - didn't work too well
2. direct painting with coloured pastes made of food colouring and bicarbonate of soda - didn't work either
3. marbling with nail polish - worked ok but very messy
4. marbling with ink - worked ok but the marbling ink stinks
5. soaking cracked eggs in coloured water - worked!

Needless to say, we were slightly disappointed to get little success compared to the amount of effort we had to put in to get a few half decent-looking eggs!  However, since I had the marbling ink out, Tiger then went on to do some 'proper' marbling on watercolour paper.

Tiger found the texture of the ink and the semi-random (one can manipuate the patterns made by the ink to some extent) patterns that it makes fascinating.  We both found the smell too strong and unpleasant though, so the pieces of marbled paper were left to dry outside for a few hours to get rid of the smell.

Since our dyed eggs haven't turned out too well, we thought we might have better results drawing them.

While we were drawing, Tiger wondered what the connection is between the chocolate eggs and Jesus.  We had talked about this before but he obviously needed some reminder, so I pointed him to the videos that we had watched two years ago.

As we watched the video about how the festival of Easter has evolved from the fertility goddess of ancient Mesopotamia through to the Anglo Saxon times, Tiger was intrigued by a piece of obscure information about an ancient manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus. 

He then took it upon himself to look through the ancient Greek text on the British Library website, and spent the next hour and a half attempting to translate it from ancient Greek to modern English.  I did suggest to Tiger that he has a better chance of success at translating ancient Chinese texts since I can give him a hand at that but I can't help with ancient Greek.  Despite my offer, Tiger decided to have a go at translating the Codex anyway, and he got as far as translating the first stanza in 1.5 hours.  It was a slow, long-drawn process by the looks of it, but I think he's off to a good start.  In the process, Tiger taught himself much about ancient Christian history and theology, translation techniques, texts comparisons, and language rules (grammar, syntax, sentence structure).  It is all quite fascinating to watch.

Once he has had enough of translating, we resumed our happy research on Easter chocolate eggs and how they are made in the factory:

From the consumer perspective where we see chocolate eggs stacked along the shelves of supermarkets, we then moved slowly along the supply chain and traced the source of the main ingredient, cocoa beans.  What we found is not a happy situation at all:

Tiger was slightly upset -- as any naturally uncorrupted human being would be -- by what he saw in the documentary above, but I think it is important for him to start becoming aware that our relatively safe, first-world existence is not to be taken for granted, and that many people suffer injustice and exploitation every day.  Although we may not be able to offer a solution, at the very least we should not become part of the problem by sheltering ourselves in apathy and igorance.

Art Summer School: Mixed Media

Our first mixed media exercise was Lab 43: Painting with Paper Inclusions.

We found that mixed media projects are much more involved than single-media projects.  Not only did Tiger have to sketch his drawing on a canvas board (photo 1), he had to cut out pieces of papers to fit into shape and size of his image.  After several unsuccessful attempts at trying to fit the cut-outs -- originally cut in a freehand style -- into his image, I suggested that Tiger use a tracing paper to trace his drawing (photo 2), then use the shapes on the tracing paper as templates to have a precise cut of the magazine papers (photos 3 and 4).

With the papers cut and put aside, Tiger started to paint the background of the canvas board with acrylic paint.

The cut-outs were glued on using a matt medium (which acts like a strong form of watery glue).  After that was done, Tiger did some touch ups on the board to blend the colours more and to make sure that there were no white spaces left on the board.

Somewhere along the lines, he discovered that he could paint with a palette knife, which he has been using for colour mixing, so he gave that a try as well.

 

Lab 45: Acrylic and Ink Abstracts was the final project we did.  It started with Tiger dropping a few drops of diluted Indian ink using a pipette onto a canvas board, then blowing them around with a straw to create criss-crossing lines.

While the ink was drying, I asked Tiger to look at the lines and shapes created on the board, to decide what colours felt right to be used.  He then proceeded to mixing the colours that he wanted to use for the abstract shapes that he had identified.

Acrylic paint was applied to the canvas board to 'draw out' the shapes that Tiger wanted.  After the initial shapes were drawn out, we spent a little bit of time discussing whether to leave the abstract painting as it was, or whether to use the Indian ink to draw the outlines of the shapes to make them 'pop'. 

Tiger decided that he wanted to use the ink for outline.

This concludes our Art Summer School where we have done exercises on:

• drawing
• painting
• printmaking
• paper
• mixed media

This post is linked up to:

1. Virtual Refrigerator - Refrigerator Art
2. Hobbies and Handicrafts - Aug 16
3. Collage Friday - Hitting Our Stride and a Field Trip
4. TGIF Linky Party #90
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One at the End of the First Six Weeks
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal {August 17, 2013}
7. Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/20/13

Advent: Christmas cards

Compared to last year's cards which were made mostly using stickers, this year's card-making process seems to be significantly more complicated, involving more steps and numerous different techniques and materials.

The materials used were:

• watercolour
• Christmas-theme stencils
• poster paints
• glitter paints
• toothbrush
• Christmas-theme foam shapes
• Christmas/winter-theme stickers
• gel pens
• markers
• stamp pad
• glue stick
• salt
• masking tape
• watercolour paper
• white cards

My job was to lay out the materials, and to give Tiger some suggestions on the different ways he could make his cards.  Six lucky friends are going to receive the following cards this year:

This post is linked up to:
1)  Hip Homeschool Hop - 12/4/12
2) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Winter

When Mum gets off my case...

"You cannot teach a person anything, you can only help him find it within himself."

-- Galileo Galilei

Since I am very new to the idea or implementation of learning-without-someone-else's-structure, I have been very curious as to what Tiger does with himself when I am not actively trying to teach him something that I deem to be "worthwhile".

Here is what I have observed:
1) He plays chess by himself in the day, and works out strategies to beat daddy at the game in the evenings.

2) He writes his own mysteries, and tries to solve them.  He can do with some penmanship lessons though...

3) He draws.

4) He reads and makes models inspired by what he reads, using the materials found around the house.

5) He explores and finds his own answers.
Tiger tested out the Viking boat he built (above) in the bath tub to see whether it would float.  It floated for 2 minutes before it sank to the bottom of the bath tub and became very soggy.  Tiger was slightly upset by that but the "failure" made him question his design, the materials used, and the weight of the various items.  This led him to experiment further with using different materials and designs.  He next spent some time trying to float Lego rafts of different designs while figuring out why certain designs worked better than others.

Finally, he made another model that worked.  This time, it even carried one of his pewter soldiers!

Would Tiger have been so relentless and engaged in finding the solution to this 'problem' if it had been assigned by me or by a curriculum?  I do not know for sure but Oscar Wilde once said, "Education is a worthwhile thing, but it is well to remember that nothing worth knowing can be taught."  I don't necessarily agree with Wilde's slightly extreme take on education,  and I think perhaps he might be referring to things such as having a good attitude and self-determination, which are certainly things that one has to acquire for oneself.  Having said that, a little parental influence would not hurt.


This post is linked up to:
1) Collage Friday
2) Favourite Resources: November 23, 2012
3) TGIF Linky Party #55

A summer of artistic scratching...

By "scratching", I mean finding our way through trying out different ideas and/or activities.  This summer we have specifically done lots of scratching with art, specifically in the areas of mixed media and art journaling.  As with most activities that happen around here, the scratching process was as much for Tiger's exposure as it was for my personal exploration into these two areas of art.

We found there to be much overlap between mixed media and art journaling, in terms of applying multiple layers of medium and paint.  Tiger loved the process of making mixed media art because of the potential of making a mess...

Unfinished mixed media art

We then tried to use what we have learned so far,to another project.  The difference in the second project is that it involved random application of paint (similar to abstract art), rather than multiple layers of ephemera.  Tiger used a canvas board while I did mine on gessoed sketchbook pages.

Tiger's unfinished abstract art

Mine unfinished spread, to be used as the background to journaling pages.

Tiger also tried his hand at using layering and stamping technique in his art journal.

Creating art involves much scratching for ideas, playing around, and experimenting.  Almost all of the pieces of work shown above are incomplete.  At some point we will complete them, but the process of experimentation is just as useful as producing the final piece of work.  The most important part of it all?  We played!

This post is linked up to:
1) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Summer
2) Hip Homeschool Hop - 8/28/12
3) Collage Friday - All about the Haircut