Tiger loves to make his own Christmas cards. Since the cards are hand-made, each one has a unique design. All I have to do is to put all the relevant materials on the table, then off he goes.
Below is the picture of last year's Christmas cards, which have entirely different designs from this year's:
Somehow last year's designs appear to be more controlled and orderly than this year's. I vaguely remember giving Tiger a few simple instructions last year. This year I have no input in his creative process, so perhaps that has made a difference. Nonetheless, they are truly unique in the sense that you'll be hard pressed to find another card that has exactly the same design as Tiger's anywhere in the world!
This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with.
We have finally started on making Christmas gifts! As far as Tiger is concerned, all his Christmas presents to others are hand-made. Tiger started doing this at three years old, when he could actually make something himself (rather than claiming credit for things Mummy had made on his behalf). Making things himself for others has encouraged him to be creative and resourceful, which I think is a more meaningful way for a child to show his appreciation of others in this festive season.
So off he went and spent an afternoon in the kitchen making Christmas biscuits:
Decorating the biscuits was a lot of fun:
Here are the close ups:
Pack a few into each bag, tie the ribbons, put some Christmas stickers on them and they are good to go!
After our earlier attempt at producing illuminated manuscript, I said I was going get us to do more. The more I look into the topic of illuminated manuscripts, the more fascinated I become with this labourious process of producing such masterful pieces of work. I can even see the link between this medieval practice that began in the monasteries and the illustrated journals of present day.
There are a few places in the UK where you can go and look at actual medieval manuscripts. Our research brought us to the V&A Museum in London. Our trip there coincided with a workshop on medieval art, with a specific focus on the manuscripts.
The workshop was guided by an actor dressed up as a monk. He gave the children a short guided tour in the Medieval gallery, while interweaving Norman/Anglo Saxon monastic history into the tour as he pointed out significant pieces of art work.
After the tour, the children were given 30 minutes to try their hands at illumination, using real quill pens, ink, brush and metallic paint.
Being an extremely sociable child, Tiger often cannot concentrate on his work in a group setting. In the presence of other children, he would be more interested to talk to them and/or to look around to see what everyone else is doing -- anything but completing his own task. Hence, his work in a group setting often show a lack of concentration. Well, at least I can console myself that I need not worry about Tiger's ability to socialise and make friends!
While Tiger was socialising, I had a go at the exercise too. Admittedly my output was not great either, so maybe I should not be too critical about my son's work:
The next part of the workshop incorporated drama. The children were split into three groups to act out different scenes of the Norman/Anglo Saxon period: (1) the decision of the Angles and Saxons to come to England, (2) a day in the monastery, and (3) the Saxon reglion.
It was an interesting experience for Tiger as it was his first time acting, in the sense of being coached by a professional actor, being given lines to read and having scenes to act out with other children. We were introduced to drama terms such as still scenes and improvisation.
Tiger found acting to be unnatural and was not too keen about some of the scenes that he had to do, but he participated in the entire session nonetheless. Back at home, we discussed about the requirements of an actor, which is basically to try to become the character that he is given while he is on stage. Having understood this point after our discussion, Tiger seemed to be happier at the prospect of future drama opportunities.
After the workshop, Tiger and I headed back to the gallery to have a proper look at the copies of the various manuscripts there. Truly, we need to get more inspiration from the masters!
While we were there, we also took the opportunity to look around the Gothic gallery, to learn more about the specific features of this period in art history. Gothic art is especially relevant to us at the moment since we have recently studied Giotto.
This post is linked up to several blog hops, where you can visit to see what other homeschoolers have been busy with.
Tiger has been very familiar with The Nutcracker since he was a toddler. I bought a child-sized nutcracker that was as tall as a one-year old when Tiger was that age; we listened to narration of the story on CD; read several versions of the story each December; and watched the ballet on DVD.
This year, we have been very lucky to get hold of tickets to go to the Royal Opera House to watch the actual ballet performance. It was a wonderful way to mark the start of our Christmas season at home.
The performance was magical, as we had expected. It was wonderful to have seen it in person, after many years of watching the ballet on DVD. Tiger said he enjoyed it so much that we should return to watch it every year. If we can get hold of the tickets again next year, we will surely watch it again. Otherwise, the recording of the performance is really almost as good as watching it live:
We try not to hype up Christmas too much here. It is probably the only festival that we pay much attention to each year. Therefore, even though the supermarkets started selling Christmas items as early as in mid-October, in our house we tend not to start any Christmassy events until mid-December. For us, two weeks is plenty long enough to fuss over a holiday.
Putting up the tree marks the start of our Christmas season. Life carries on as usual, but we'll also spend some time doing Christmassy activities from now on. For example, we caught up with Christmas-related science tidbits by using this Science Advent Calendar.
I like to try new food, so I marked the start of the Christmas season by trying out the eggnog latte. Hmm... it is not my favourite flavour, but at least I now know what it tastes like!
After studying about the Golden Age of India, we moved further east to look at the Golden Age of China - the Tang dynasty.
Instead of starting from STOW2, we watched a documentary produced in China about this period in history, covering how the Tang dynasty came about from its predecessor, the Sui dynasty:
The documentary gave us a very good foundational understanding of the topic, which helped Tiger with his narration of the relevant chapter in SOTW2. We had to refer to the internet again to have a better understanding of what a lacquer bowl looked like:
Our hands-on project this time was to make our own version of the lacquer bowl with air-drying clay. Working with clay was really messy but Tiger loved the tactile experience of manipulating it. He decided that he wanted his bowl to have a spout.
It took several days for the clay to be completely dry.
Our supplementary books for this period in China were:
As an extra treat, Tiger watched the following animation that was based on the Chinese classic, Journey to the West. This classic story was set in the Tang dynasty, based on the actual journey of a real monk, Xuanzang.
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 Carnival of Homeschooling.
In an attempt to understand more about art in the Middle Ages, we looked at Giotto, who is now known as "The Father of Western Art". We did not find much information about him apart from the short paragraph in Discovering Great Artists, as well as from the following book:
It was not until we had watched the following documentary about Giotto that we had a better idea of his life, his work, and the period during which he worked:
The project Tiger did this time was painting, but the interesting part was making his own egg tempera. We found a box of old chalk to work with. Tiger selected the colours he wanted to use, then ground them into powder.
Next came the egg separating process -- only egg yolk was used to mix in with the powder.
Since the main goal of this project was to have a taste at making our own egg tempera paint, the subject matter of the art work was secondary. Tiger chose to paint a portrait.
He started with an inital pencil sketch, but soon became a little frustrated at not placing the eyes on the face in the right place, so I quickly showed him the standard proportions of a face used by artists. He adjusted his sketch based on those proportions, then proceeded with applying his homemade paint.
The egg tempera was noticeably less drippy than other paints that Tiger has used before. As some chalk pieces were not grounded as finely as the rest, they added an interesting texture to Tiger's painting.
He was very satisfied with his painting but he decided, upon completion, that he could see a dragon emerging from his painting. I liked his choice of colours.
