As my son (age 13) starts Latin this year (with The Lukeion Project), I am out of the grammar business with him, and starting anew with my two youngest. I’ll post about our grammar progression at a later date, but I really enjoyed these “art” projects they created today. The assignment was to take the sentence, “The bird eats the worm,” and add modifiers.
The red bird gorily eats the poisonous worm. (boy, age 10)
The rainbow bird majestically eats the sparkly worm. (girl, age 12)
A combination project of art and science. After studying the water cycle, we painted watercolor pictures of landscapes that included rivers, mountains, sky, and plants. Clouds and precipitation were added with white and gray acrylic paint after the watercolors were dry. Labels were written with Sharpie pens.
Materials
*Scratchboards are the most durable but expensive. You can also find scratch art paper with white backing, rainbow backing, or clear backing. All available on Amazon. We used clear backing.
Directions (Original idea at Inside the Lines.)
Summer art project. Size is 3 feet across by 4 feet long.
Project time was approximately 6 weeks, working 10-15 minutes per day.
Nature Mural, ages 9-12
Supplies:
Instructions:
(The wax paper prevents any paint from seeping through. If you have a large roll of butchers paper / freezer paper with the waxed backing, that can be used as well).
I suggest only one child working at a time, unless they are feeling particularly chummy!
Early Elementary Dictation
What does early dictation look like? Here is a current snapshot of dictation with my two youngest students.
We practice dictation 3 days a week, usually M/W/F. I work with each child to choose a sentence from a book they are reading. They have a moment to study it, then we dictate. The kids love using dry erase for this. I don’t know why, but it works!
Step 1: Dictate the sentence. After they complete their best work, I give them the book to proofread the sentence. We talk about errors. In the picture below (8 year old boy), we discussed the use of capital letters.
Step 2: Quick grammar lesson. We start with “circle the nouns” and move through the parts of speech slowly, over a year or two, depending on aptitude. The picture below is my 10 year old daughter. She can identify all 8 parts of speech, with the exception of some tricky adverbs. However, her handwriting skills have been slow to develop, so she is still doing very short sentences.
I keep Grammar Concept checklists for each child to remind me which concepts they might need to learn next. I will often guide them to a sentence that suits the checklist.
If you don’t like the idea of choosing sentences from a book, I have some links to sentences on my main Dictation page.
Learning about area and/or perimeter is a lot more fun with these little guys:
The original animals are here: Животни от хартия в квадратчета (Google Translate tells me this says, “Animals of Paper Into Squares). It’s in Bulgarian, but the images are great and easy to use.
After doing this project on plain flimsy graph paper, I would recommend printing large-square graph paper on cardstock, like this centimeter graph paper.
For younger ones (under 7), have an adult draw the animals. Let the kids color them, then cut out. Exposure to the concept of a gridded drawing is ample until they are older. If they are ready, ask leading questions like, “How many squares are in the body? How many are in the legs?”
For older kids you can do a guided drawing:
Cut out and play!
I’m currently purging the schoolroom, starting to prepare for our move this summer. While cleaning out, I found these pictures I created long ago with my oldest daughter.
Ten years ago she was almost 7 years old. To say she was struggling with math is an understatement; no matter how much we worked on math, especially facts, the next day all would be forgotten. Zero retention. I began doubting my ability to teach her, especially since she was also struggling with reading.
Fortunately for both of us, around this time I also stumbled upon a yahoo group run by Cindy Gaddis at The Right Side of Normal. I learned so much from her and the other moms on the group. (The yahoo group has pretty much died out, but the Facebook page is still active, and her book and website contain wonderful information.) My child was absolutely a “resistant learner,” and thanks to Cindy this was the beginning of learning to work with my daughter, rather than against her.
We dropped all formal math curriculum and began to play. These pictures are the very first thing we created, a treasure for me as they mark the beginning of my journey as a teacher of (and learner with) my children, not just an instructor.
This “division tree” is similar to the multiplication leaves from last week. The first step in this project is to cut circles of different sizes from varying types of paper. If the student struggles to cut circles, circle punches can be used, or they can be cut ahead of time by the instructor. (Some of my students wanted to make their shapes more like leaves than circles.) Next, arrange the circles in stacks; use the term “divide” as much as possible: “Divide your circles into 3 stacks? What about 4? How many circles are in each stack? Can you divide them evenly without any leftover?” Once the student grasps the concept of dividing, proceed with the project.
*We used scrapbook paper for the background, colored paper for the tree and circles, and some origami paper for the decorative bits. In the picture above, origami paper is used for the top 2 layers, which makes it difficult to distinguish that there are 2 layers!
This week in Math Art we created an art panel to illustrate a multiplication fact. Our plants had leaves broken into 2 sections; each section was doodled differently. The students multiplied the 2 sections by the number of leaves they created to figure out their math fact.
*It is important to use a permanent ink pen, or the doodles will smear when mod podge is applied.
Directions
Our project this week was based on the book “Picture Pie” by Ed Emberley. Picture Pie helps the reader create simple pieces of art based on the fractions of a circle. While these look simple, the execution can be quite tedious. Below are the details for a simple bookmark.
“Fraction Fish Bookmark”
Teach a short lesson on the fractions of a circle. Have kids use the circle punch and scissors to cut up and sort fractions.
Choose pieces for the Fraction Fish bookmark. This project requires 12 quarters and 2 eighths.
Arrange pieces in desired configuration. Glue onto bookmark.
Let dry. Laminate if desired. (If you choose not to laminate, press the dried bookmark until all pieces are nicely flattened).
Eclectic Ed 