Art

This Week at Our House: Winding Down

~ Angel ~ 2 Comments

This week we began winding down into our summer “break”.  We take a 6 (ish) week break from required schoolwork (like math, or for the younger kids, formal reading lessons) about this time every year so we can start our “new” school year in July.  I got in the habit of doing this when we lived in Missouri and the local elementary school had a year-round calendar.  It was just easier to work when the neighborhood kids went back to school.

Gareth and Katydid worked on math, Latin, and some “exam” questions I gave to them to try to help them synthesize their other, non textbook-based studies this year.  They also had some extra archery practice to prepare for a tournament next week.  

Actually, “winding down” is a bit of a misnomer as far as subtitles go.  I’m not sure we ever really “wind down”.  Really, I required less traditionally academic work from people, but there were more sports (including a weekend baseball tournament) this week, and there was quite a bit of ornithology going on, and linguistics research, and the exam questions that were meant to not take up too much time (a written page per question) morphed into longish writing projects that included epic poetry and something resembling a long report on different planets in the solar system.  And Gareth’s geometry includes trig.  Did geometry include trig when I was in school?  Have I just blocked it out of my memory?  I don’t think so.  Anyway, I’m struggling to remember sin and cosin and tan, and it turns out that both of us do a little better in grasping these concepts when there is actual, factual data upon which to use it, like figuring out the distance to the moon.  The syllabus we’re using — Dr. Callahan for Jacobs’ Geometry — has the student doing almost none of the application problems and all of the simple drawings, and Gareth is getting frustrated because it seems all x’s and abstractions and there aren’t any real reasons for punching the keys on the calculator.  He and I are both big picture thinkers, and I confess it drives me nuts to learn formulas without reason, too.  So we sat down this week and dug into the real world problems a little, and I think both of us got a bit of a better handle on what — and why — we were doing what we were doing.    


The little boys decided they wanted to paint and did so on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The boys still don’t paint pictures of actual things.  Painting is all about experimenting with color for them, and to a lesser extent, form.  I find it interesting that my most math-interested/math-gifted child made paintings that consisted almost entirely of straight lines.  Speaking of geometry.

 The toddler wanted to paint, too.  So I let him.  This is a nice picture of him right before he spilled the entire jar of paint all over the floor, the chair, and me.  



One morning Chipmunk decided to make a robot.  He used a scrapbook punch to make two holes for eyes, then drew a nose and mouth with orange marker.  He painted in the rest of the face, and then, since it was supposed to be a kitchen robot, he glued on a couple of pictures of food.  Since a real robot exists in 3-D, he glued his robot face onto a box using a gluestick. 

I also took him to the eye doctor this week.  The happy news: only a little nearsightedness, which he may grow out of.  No serious binocular difficulties requiring 36 weeks of vision therapy. Shew.

Thankfully, George is almost done with his vision therapy, but although his reading has improved somewhat, it hasn’t made the great leaps predicted by the doctor.  He’s having some success with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, but he’s also not excited about reading.  Thinking that maybe summertime would be a good time for a more relaxed, natural approach to keeping his reading going while also taking a break from a more formal program, I pulled an old book off my shelf, Teach a Child to Read with Children’s Books, and read through it again.  I never actually used this book because I think that Gareth’s (or Katydid’s) reading finally took off before I had a chance.  The program outlined by the author includes both sight reading and phonics and uses actual, real, living children’s literature for reading practice — none of those contrived, controlled readers.  I thought this sounded decent, so I made up some folders to keep track of each kid:

    

I got the Dolch printouts (lists and flashcards) here.  All I wanted to do this week was to get a sense of what kind of books George and the twins might actually be able to read so I could get some books together on those levels.  We had one great success with George, and a couple of screaming failures.  


The other book I’m reading this week is  The Dyslexic Advantage: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of the Dyslexic Brain.  I’m ranking this book as #3 of the most important books I’ve ever read as a parent.  I’m a little over halfway done with it, but I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who thinks they may be dealing with dyslexia.  It makes so many things about our family suddenly make sense — the spatial abilities, the problems reading and spelling, the distractability and disorganization, the creativity, the narrative talents, the late talking… the engineers, mechanics, artists, and fiction writers.  

So that was mostly our week… well, those things and the mouse invasion, which we are battling mightily, but I doubt you want to hear about it.  I feel a little bit like Elmer Fudd with Bugs Bunny.  But when mice invade my books and my kitchen drawers… this means war.

Armed and Dangerous: A Trip to the Art Museum

~ Angel ~ 1 Comment
On Saturday we finally got a chance to visit the Armed and Dangerous: Art of the Arsenal exhibit at the Brooks Museum in Memphis.  I had the exhibit on my mental list of “stuff that we really need to do” since I learned about it the fall, but for one reason or another (sickness, holidays, museum was closed on Monday, etc.) we hadn’t made it yet.  This Saturday the museum held a “family day” with activities for the younger kids and free admission for everyone, so I was determined that we make it. The Boy Scouts scheduled a Camporee practice for the morning, but we managed to get Gareth to the practice for a few hours before we swung by and picked him up again on our way to the museum.  He didn’t want to miss it either. 
The activities began outside, with swordfighting displays from the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA).
George told them, “We do that at home, except without armor.”

Inside, there were stations in every part of the exhibit where kids could make their own paper and cardboard armor.  

The breastplates were just paper bags cut into vests with a piece of colored construction paper glued (with glue dots, which don’t last too long) to the front.  Onto that piece of paper, they glued a flattened foil cupcake liner, and in the center of the liner they glued a circular cut-out of a printed emblem the kids could choose and color, like a dragon or a griffin or an eagle.  The boys didn’t get to make a shield, because they wanted to see the real shields and swords first, and by the time we made it back to the shield station, they were cleaning up.  (Note to self: 10-2 means “10 – 1:00 or so when we will start cleaning everything up so you will not know it ever existed by 2:00.  Live and learn.)  They did, however, get to fool around with the embossing tools provided to “make your own coat of arms”.  All the boys (including the 15 year old) enjoyed that.  
Embossing materials are now on my mental list of stuff that would be good for us to do.
At the end of the exhibit, there was a room where you could try on various helmets and see what you looked like wearing samurai armor.  The kids were all surprised at how heavy the helmets were.



Katydid decided that the samurai looked better in black and white
We were also surprised at the size of the Japanese swords, at least one of which was longer than Gareth (who is at least six feet tall).  Photography wasn’t allowed in most of the museum, so we have no pictures of the plate armor or the intricately forged Indo-Persian knives or the maces, which were a little sickening to look at when you contemplated what they were for.  Until you see all these weapons in person, it’s harder to imagine what warfare before guns was really like.  
It bothers me when field trips like this get crowded out by too many scheduled activities.  It’s not that activities like Scouts and archery and baseball and voice lessons are bad, in and of themselves.  In fact, they are very good, especially since they all stem from interests that the kids have and want to develop.  But trips to the art museum (or other museums or natural areas or hands-on events) aren’t “extras” for us.  They’re essential for the kind of learning we do.  They illuminate and solidify the learning that comes from books, and in turn, they spark new interests.  After attending this exhibit, now I can say, “Do you remember how heavy that helmet was?  Think about how heavy it would be to wear a whole suit of armor! And how strong you would have to be to fight in it!” And the boys will know exactly what I mean.  Gareth, Katydid, and I snuck away to the Renaissance paintings for a few minutes before we went home.  Katydid, who has been studying the Renaissance, analyzed the use of perspective in all the paintings she saw.  Seeing those paintings in person was totally different than looking at paintings in a book… no matter how faithfully printed the plates.  
So it’s a fine line.  I’m not sure I’m walking it well, but we all enjoyed our Saturday at the museum!