Ready or not… Here come the holidays!
Give the gift of bones.
Not real bones.
Put together a kit containing Qtips, a bottle of white glue, a stack of assorted handcrafted pre-cut imaginary dinosaur skulls, and a stack of black construction paper. Make a sample to put in the kit. And be sure to include a book or two. Here are some ideas recommended by the Smithsonian and others:
-Kim
I've never understood apple pie and cheddar cheese.
For me it's apple pie and books.
One day, after a long walk, John sat under a tree to rest—an apple tree, of course. What better way to begin pie making than reading about John Chapman, the nurseryman who seeded much of our landscape with apples. From there, my recipe calls for Apple Picking Time by Michele Benoit Slawson about a girl named Anna who cares deeply about the tradition of gathering apples from those trees that Johnnie Appleseed so carefully cultivated. But it's still not time to go to the pantry. Not yet…
My recipe calls for How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Pirceman. An apple is easy to gather from the market, but where did that apple come from? And the butter? The sugar? The spices? The answers call for a journey. And this little story guides the way.
Once back…
N o w it's time to go to the pantry. Peel some apples, remove the cores, and slice. Add a sprinkle fresh lemon juice to enhance the apple tang. Toss with sugar, cinnamon for spice, cardamom for warmth, and a happy pinch of nutmeg. Set aside. Cut the butter into the flour until the butter makes the flour sandy. Add water to the flour mixture, form a ball, then roll the top and bottom crusts. Fill the bottom crust with prepared apples, cover it with the top crust and crimp. Bake. Enjoy.
Nothing like apple pie and books.
-Kim
I love fall. I love the sights. I love the scents. I love the texture of leaves crunching beneath my feet. I love the snap of ripe apples being twisted from branches.
And I love the stories of fall. With my youngest, Søren, I worked through our Earlybird Fall Literature and Discovery Guide three times (once at the beginning of kindergarten, once at the beginning of first grade, and once at the beginning of second grade)! Count them, three.I'm totally serious.
Three is an important number.
There is so much happening intellectually in the primary years—Kindergarten, First, and Second Grade. These first three years of school are when children are learning the basics of reading (decoding) and writing (encoding).
My son the kindergartener loved stories and he loved to draw. Copying words became an extension of this fun. We would read the stories together and chat our way through character descriptions. I used a hand-held whiteboard to capture his ideas so he could happily copy them as art into his journal. We enjoyed a fall craft each week, that was a given. When we read, How to see an Apple Pie and See the World, we made miniature apple pies. When we read the Scarecrow, we made a scarecrow doll. When we read Apple Picking Time, we drove for two hours to pick apples, taste apples, and after that, we made apple prints.
The second year, and the third after that, when I brought out the books, my son did not groan. My son was delighted to see his seasonal friends! The only thing that changed during these second and third passes was that my son was able to utilize his knowledge of language so far to encode his own ideas with me by his side. When we talked about the characters in Apple Picking Time, he was able to write a single words like "brv" for brave, and "frind" for friend to describe Anna. He was able to complete sentences from the word bank on his own. His journal time became an independent exercise too. We expanded our crafts to include a full-sized scarecrow, but we still made our traditional mini-apple pie.
During our third, and final pass at the unit at the beginning of 2nd Grade, Soren came loaded with ideas, "Mom, when we read Barn Dance, can I make the characters out of Legos? And when it came time for apple pie, he peeled and cut the apples on his own (with me hovering close by), measured the flour (dusting the kitchen with twice as much required for the recipe), and rolled the dough "all by himself" (for the most part). That year character descriptions included a deeper ingrained knowledge of phonics—friend was at last "friend" and "brave" was at last brave"—and a peaceful sense of independence. I knew that this would be the last fall we would work through the guide. Third grade would bring a new adventure with our Level 1 guides.
Soren did not work through any other Earlybird selection more than once. But he did work through them ALL during the primary years (kindergarten and 2nd grade). And I'm so glad he did. He worked through Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4 too!
My son is now seventeen, and, looking back, I can say with certainty that it took all those years for him to develop and percolate his reading and writing skills. Literacy is an immensely complex, nuanced art. This year Søren is a high school junior interested in philosophy reading the likes of Kierkegaard (his namesake), Hobbs and Locke and Whitman. Who would have known back when we were picking apples? But I have no doubt in my mind that he is able to wake through the work of these wordsmiths because of the traditions we began back in kindergarten.
I am convinced that the longitude of utilizing our approach—the Blackbird & Co. approach—gave him the stamina and the skills to think deeply about great books and to formulate original, well-versed culminating ideas.
It's still fall. Why not begin today? Snap an apple off the tree. The harvest season is small and precious.
-Kim
For the past 30 days we've had bones on our minds. I don't know about your neighborhood, but mine is sporting bones on every lawn! And bones make me think of art. And when I think of art, I think of Leonardo da Vinci.
So how is it that Leonardo tricks us into believing that this 2D drawing is 3 dimensional? It looks more like he's carved those cranial cavaties, right? But it's just a mass of lines, textures, values, shapes. That's all.
Da Vinci would say it begins with observation: "All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions."
Beyond that, the magic word is simply this: work.
You know the old adage: Practice makes perfect. Turns out it's true. When it comes to tricking the eye, only the tenacious succeed.
That's where YOU come in (yes, you).
Truth is, anyone can draw.
So why not try? Let Leonardo guide you. Start by asking yourself," What exactly did he do with line, texture, shape, and value? Grab a pencil, an eraser, some quality paper and get cozy (art does not happen in a flash). And when you think you're finished, set the drawing aside and come back to it later with fresh eyes. I'm sure you'll see something new to add, some small space to revise. Keep going. You'll know when your drawing is complete. And when you know, you'll see. Your drawing will be a treat to the eye ready, like Marlo's, to mark your initials.
Introducing F is for easy. F is for foil!
But it's so much more…
F is of course for fox, fish, frog. But it's also for feather and fur, a forest on fire, a flock of flamingos. F is a fantastic friend.
F is also for books: The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel, Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni, and From Head to Toe by Eric Carle.
-Kim
It began with a hefty dose of imagination, a glass pearl, and some strands of fabric.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the very first microbiologist never intended to be the world’s first microbiologist. He was actually a tradesman who had never studied science!
From the time he was 16, he apprenticed in a linen-draper’s shop. Soon he became a merchant because he worked diligently. He developed a fascination for the small world that our eyes alone cannot see while working with fabric, using pearls of glass to observe the fine weave of linen.
He developed more than 200 microscopes during his lifetime and made many important discoveries including the first observations of bacteria which he called “animalcules” in 1674, “animals so small, in my sight, that I judged that even if 100 of these very wee animals lay stretched out one against another, they could not reach the length of a grain of coarse sand”.
During his lifetime, he made many discoveries and observations that he carefully documented and illustrated. He died a very old man who accomplished his important work, a work that inspired generations to follow in his footsteps..
So what better way to celebrate the birthday of this man of science (October, 24, 1632) than to create a close observation of something from the micro-world? You can begin with a microscope or, because we live in the 21st century, a Google image!
This amazing drawing of cocci (bacteria that can lead to diseases such as strep throat) was done by former apprentice Marlo. What makes this observation incredible is the detail she included. So did she complete this in 15 minutes? No way! Do you think it took over an hour? One sitting? Two sittings? The answer is unknown. But I can say with certainty that Marlo dedicated sincere concentration to this accomplishment. The reward is, well, obvious!
Anyone can create an observational drawing, think Dory’s song: “Just keep swimming!”
If you are adventuring through our brand new unit, Taxonomy of Living Things: The Five Kingdoms of Life, meander with me for a moment…
Echinoderm? Whoever said, "It's all in a name," sure got it right. Echinoderms got their name because they are spiny-skinned marine animals. They possess radial symmetry, and many possess 5 arms (or multiples of 5). Sounds oh so scientific, but we've all seen these animals- sea stars, urchins, and sand dollars.
Collagraphy is printmaking process that is related to the art of collage. Do you see the connection between the words? It is sometimes called "relief printing" because the subject to be printed is raised from the print block. You can print anything this way, from fiber to sandpaper, feathers to paperclips.
Stopping to think about the word origin, one comes from the Greek word koala, meaning "glue" and graph, meaning "write". I thought to myself: "Glue…? Write…? …WORDS!"
So our collagraphs were made by glueing words backwards and in reverse onto chipboard to create our print plates. The more words the merrier. Simple enough. From there, the possibilities are endless. Offer a variety fun colors and let students cloud words onto large scale paper in the style of pop artist Sister Corita Kent. The results will surprise you.
-Kim
