What's the time, Mr. Wolf?

To start off this topic, Tiger read a book that we have on the shelf for many years and that which was used a few years ago in his preschool years:

As a revision to what Tiger already knew of reading the clock, we worked through the Telling Time activity by making a clock face and reading various times.

To make sure that Tiger knew how to tell time both in numbers and words, we played the What's the Time? game.  First we matched the words with the time shown on the clock faces, then we turned the pieces of paper over and played a memory game with the same set.

 

After the basic telling time exercise, we proceeded to work out a few problems that required carrying over between hours and minutes.

We then worked through a few maths games:
1. Clocks
2. How Many Times?

3. The Time Is... For this game, Tiger started out sequencing set A, followed by set B.  He then combined both sets and sequenced all the cards.  The interesting part of this game is the mixture of analog and digital times, so that the analog clock is open to interpretation as to whether it shows A.M. or P.M.  I told Tiger that as long as he could provide a valid reason to the way he sequenced the cards, it's entirely up to him how he interpreted the analog time.

4. Two Clocks

5. The trickest of all was the Wonky Watches, which required quite a bit more thinking, as well as applied division.

To take another perspective on the concept of time, Tiger read this book,

followed by a related clip:

All of a sudden, our maths topic took on a turn into physics, so we watched two more clips which led to more discussions about the concept of time, how it came about, using maths to represent observations and natural phoenomena, the correlation between the initial hypothesis and the mathematical proof, etc.

Did we understand everything from the two clips above?  No.  Did watching them generate some interesting questions and discussions between us?  Yes, and that's good enough for us for now.

This post is linked up to:
1) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #7
2) Hobbies and Handicrafts - March 8
3) Collage Friday - I wouldn't Trade This for the World
4) TGIF Linky Party #66
5) It's a Wrap
6) Creative Learning Link Up #5
7) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One where Most of the Kids were Sick
8) Share it Saturday - Exploring Color
9) The Sunday Showcase - 3/9/13
10) Math Monday Blog Hop #90
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/12/13
12) Look What We Did!  

Translation, Reflection, and Rotation

As a follow up to learning about symmetry, we looked at a very similar and much related concept of translation, reflection, and rotation.  Afterall, there are three basic types of symmetry: horizontal, vertical, and rotational.

The concept is easily shown by taking a half-photo of anything.  In our case, I have Tiger trace out three copies of the half-photo of a lion.

Then place the traced images next to the original half-photos to show the three concepts.  We also did a short quiz to make sure Tiger has understood the concept.

We played a simple game of writing in different ways using a mirror, testing out the concepts we just learnt.

The final application of the concept was more complicated, as Tiger was tasked to apply all that he has learnt to copy the original design from one quadrant to three other quadrants.  That took a bit more time.

The ideas for the lessons come from the following books:

After the book lessons, Tiger hopped onto the computer and tried his hands at the following games:

1. Putting Two and Two Together
2. Nine-pin Triangles
3. Transformation Tease 

This post is linked up to:
1) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #6
2) Homeschool Mother's Journal: March 1, 2013
3) Hobbies and Handicrafts - March 1
4) Collage Friday - Sharks, Titanic, and Handel
5) TGIF Linky Party #65
6) It's a Wrap
7) Creative Learning Link Up #4
8) Weekly Wrap-Up: The Strangely Bittersweet One
9) Share it Saturday - Dr. Seuss Features
10) The Sunday Showcase - 3/2/13
11) Math Monday Blog Hop #89
12) Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/5/13
13) Look What We Did!

It is featured on Look What We Did! 10 Great Resources: Math, Science, History, and Art.

Before and after the Magna Carta

Before we jumped into a full blown study of the Magna Carta, we visited several places associated with King John.  First was Old Sarum, which King John once had a new hall built.

We walked around the whole site, surveyed the ruins and were fascinated by how much changes took place at the site since the Iron Age.

We wanted to learn more about the character of King John and the circumstances that led to the signing of the Magna Carta, so we played the King John: The Decision-Making Game.  Tiger enjoyed this activity very much as it gave him an insight into both situational factors as well as personality considerations that determined how anyone (in this case, King John) makes decisions.

We also discussed the importance of reading different sources and contrasting interpretations of historical accounts before making our own minds up about historical events and characters.  This view is supported by reading this particular article that suggests an alternative view to the usual 'bad King John' that almost everyone has of him.

Following our visit to Salisbury Cathedral where we saw one of the four original copies of the Magna Carta, Tiger read through the book that gave a full translation and interpretation of the document:

Then we spent a long time looking through the resources on the Magna Carta available from the British Library, where two of the four copies are kept.

We also had a good read here which details the history of the Magna Carta.  The map is particularly useful in showing the significance of various places in the UK in relation to the document.

Not all was peaceful after signing the Magna Carta, as shown by the Key Magna Carta Battles.  Battles and warfare are the parts that interest Tiger the most, so we watched the following clip about the Battle of Bouvines:

King John also besieged the Rochester Castle in 1215, shortly after signing the Magna Carta.  The siege is described below:

We visited it to see for ourselves the structure of the castle as well as how the siege would have occured there:

 

Another castle siege was at the Dover Castle in 1216-1217.   Once again, we were able to visit this magnificent and historically significant castle to understand its structure and design.

The following documentary tells us more about the defence structure of Dover Castle:

A well researched and well illustrated book to learn about castle is the following:

Just out of curiostiy, we thought we would find out what King John's castle looked like:

To conclude, Tiger did narration and map work from the following books:

and read a few supplementary stories relating to the House of Angevin in the following books:

This post is linked up to:
1) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Winter 
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #6
3) History and Geography Meme # 64
4) Homeschool Mother's Journal: March 1, 2013
5) Hobbies and Handicrafts - March 1
6) Collage Friday - Sharks, Titanic, and Handel
7) TGIF Linky Party #65
8) It's a Wrap
9) Creative Learning Link Up #4
10) Weekly Wrap-Up: The Strangely Bittersweet One
11) Share it Saturday - Dr. Seuss Features
12) The Sunday Showcase - 3/2/13
13) Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/5/13

It is featured on Share It Saturday!

Manet: Still LIfe and Portraits

We did our usual study at home using postcards and printouts of a few of Manet's work as well as looking through the collection here.

Once again, we relied on documentaries to (1) tell us more about the man himself (caution: both clips contain artistic nudity):

and (2) understand one of his masterpieces a little bit better:

After watching the documentaries, we decided to set up a simple still life.  Tiger first did an observational sketch in pencil:

We melted broken crayon pieces that we have saved over the years in a muffin tin, and Tiger used a Q-tip to apply the melted crayons on his sketch.  He had to work fast as the crayons solidified very quickly.

After this step, Tiger switched to using tempera paint to complete the background of his work:

Here is Tiger's masterpiece:

I often tag along in Tiger's activities, especially in art, so I did a sketch using ballpoint pen then painted it in watercolour.  Still life is more difficult than I had imagined.

Then we went to see the Manet exhibition and attended a portraiture workshop at the Royal Academy of Arts.

After going around the exhibition looking at Manet's masterly brush strokes, we headed to the workshop room to participate in a preliminary exercise to help us loosen up and to understand how brush strokes work.  We were each given three brushes of varying sizes and a black-and-white copy of Manet's work.

We were to use only black acrylic paint to copy the still life photo in 5 minutes.   No prelimiary sketches; paint directly with the brushes.  It was hard!

Tiger's version

My version

Next we repeated the exercise using black and white acrylic paint.  Again in 5 minutes.

Tiger's version

My version

Finally, we were given 8 minutes to paint a portrait of someone famous, using black, white and blue paint.  We were given photos of five famous people to choose from.  Tiger chose pirates:

Here is his interpretation of the man on the left in the photo above:

I chose a local politician's glamourous wife.  I was just building up my painting to a recognisable stage when the 8 minutes were up.  Oh well.

This post is linked up to:
1) All Year Round Blog Carnival: Winter 
2) Hearts for Home Blog Hop #5
3) Homeschool Mother's Journal: February 22, 2013
4) Hobbies and Handicrafts - Feb 22
5) Collage Friday - Family, History, and More
6) TGIF Linky Party #64
7) It's a Wrap
8) Weekly Wrap-Up: The One with the Busy Break Week
9) Share it Saturday - Feb 23
10) The Sunday Showcase - 2/23/13
11) Hip Homeschool Hop - 2/26/13
12) Virtual Refrigerator