Week 6: 2nd Guest Artist; Hard work & Simple Fun

We had another set of days full of inspired learning including the unexpected treat of another Guest Artist! Spramani E'laun, of Nature of Art, introduced our group to etching with her Colour Blocks which she makes from recycled crayons.

We finished reading The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh, and in response to the story we built a "lean-to" shelter with materials found in the backyard. We also gathered twigs to build a mini log cabin, thinking this would be an easy way to get a feel for building with natural materials as the Early American pioneers did. We discovered that sawing twigs is actually a lot of hard work, and the work of building a full-sized cabin with just an axe remains inconceivable.

 

Sarah Noble talked about playing pebble games with the "Indian" children during her extended stay with them, and these simple games still appeal to our kids generations later. The kids created an "Indian Pebble Game" by painting a set of 15 smooth pebbles with an X, O, or Z and placing them in a satchel. The simple game includes drawing a rock from the satchel in turns around the circle, and then the child with the most matching pebbles wins the round.The kids wanted to play the game again and again, and made up their own new rules as we played along. Another seemingly simple but actually quite challenging game was "leaf-catch" played between partners. I was refreshed to see how much fun our technologically-saavy kids can have with just a few rocks or a leaf.

 

We also enjoyed the simple relaxing treat of a stroll down the street for a picnic under the oaks and a bit of tree identification. We found a "mortero," or grinding stone in bedrock, that Native American women used for grinding seeds and acorns in centuries past. We admired some acorn granaries installed in fence posts by our neighborhood Acorn Woodpeckers. We identified the Coast Live Oak and the California Sycamore.

In honor of the changing seasons, the kids collected leaves from a variety of trees in their own neighborhoods and on our walk together. We studied the shapes of the leaves and drew examples of palmate, pinnate, lanceolate shapes as we discussed the features of leaves and how they support the tree's process of photosynthesis and water circulation.

We conducted a science experiment to answer the question, "Why do leaves change color?" The experiment was intended to capture the colors actually present in a green spinach leave through some simple chromatography using nail polish remover, alcohol and coffee filters. But some variable in our experiment failed and we were only able to capture the green of spinach.

Our leaf study also lead to a fun art project, using leaves and seed pods as stencils and for printing with tempura paints. The color wheels created in pie pans resulted in beautiful ephemeral art, too, as the kids mixed primary colors to make brilliant hues inspired by the colors of Autumn.

In preparation for our next Guest Artist, we read a story of "Sheep Shearing" from our Pioneer Sampler by Barbara Greenwood and tried our hands at finger-spinning as we made thread from a ball of cotton. This also became a lesson in the patience and hard work required of a pioneer family, including the young children, as our painstaking efforts resulted in just a few inches of bumpy yarn.

Finally, we experienced the patience and fun of writing with an inkwell and quill pen, pioneer style, as the students copied a pretty quote celebrating the beauty of Fall in their Main Lesson Books.

Did we really do all that --and more-- in just a couple of days?

Week 5: Nature Art with Our First Guest Artist

Last week we had a very special visitor, NYC-based artist Meghan Blair Fitzgerald, who lead us in delightfully creating art from nature in our own backyard. Meghan explained that she's recently ventured into new territory: after a year of living and painting in the Big Apple, she feels drawn to create art in parks and on hikes using found natural objects to sculpt and paint.  The kids explored conventional art elements like line drawing, contour, hue, and composition with unconventional materials such as sticks and dirt, rocks and leaves, acorns and cat-tails.

  

The artists transformed our backyard into a sculpture garden, featuring delicate stick sculptures, balanced rock sculptures, "windchimes" hanging from the oak tree, a river of oak leaves and a river of acorns, reed weavings, and a huge line drawing in the dirt. Check out our art gallery!

 

Week 4: Wonder and Awe in the Garden

I feel like writing one of those cheesy credit-card ads:

Weekend hours spent recruiting husband to haul straw bales and dirt: 6
Hours spent unloading dirt (alone and in the dark): 1.5
Money spent on bales, soil amendment, and organic seeds: $85
Patience expressed keeping children engaged in planting seeds on our last hot day: Maximum
Mornings spent hand-watering garden (so far): 21
Sound of wonder and awe as children discovered their first sprouts:  Priceless.

On Thursday morning the kids ventured to our straw bale garden to check on it and sprinkle with water. I had to forgo my plan to have them do an extension exercise on measuring and tallying--they were so delighted and enthralled by the new growth emerging from their garden beds that I had to stand back and relish their awe and wonder. It seems a rare thing these days to get kids excited by something that doesn't involve beeps and flashes or at least their best buddy. I wish I could have captured their voices as they discovered the tiny leaflets emerging from their very own garden beds.  (A note to any teachers who may read this: if you have the budget, provide each student with their very own plot. It makes all the difference to have each child feel a sense of ownership of their own seedlings.)

Other highlights of the week: We're continuing to work on musicianship through a game exploring the rhythms inherent in our names, and this week we added melody. (See if your child can sing you the "teasing melody" found in most children's songs over the centuries.)  We started a new chapter book about a colonial pioneer girl, The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh, and the kids wrote diary entries imagining they were either Sarah or her father. While in the garden we talked about what caused the seeds to sprout (water and warmth) and then through a Q&A exploration the kids concurred on a plant's goal (besides producing food for us or wildlife): survival of the species. The kids enjoyed a scavenger hunt, finding seeds throughout the backyard. We examined enough seeds in the open air to discover the four primary methods of seed dispersal: wind, carried by animal, weight, and explosion.

 

Back in the classroom, we examined all of the seeds collected and separated them into these categories as we tallied each type of seed. Some of the seeds required animated debate before the kids agreed whether their primary method of dispersal was wind or weight, explosion or animal, etc. We were surprised that despite all the acorns and cat-tails collected, most of the seeds fell under the explosion category.

Finally, I gave the kids a pile of materials and no directions except one: work together and figure out how to make a scarecrow. They rose to the challenge and made a scarecrow with striking resemblance to Kris Kiler! (Thanks to the Kiler family for donating the wardrobe).

Don't tell the kids, but this morning I watched as a Black Phoebe landed first on the scarecrow and then in the middle of the garden bed, where it scurried about for several bites before I chased it away.

Highland Learning Studio kids rock!