Art and maths

Yesterday was sunny and my kids got excited about having an 'art' lesson outside.

The only problem is, I had planned to do maths. 

Problem was easily solved though, because it turns out, if you think about it carefully enough, art and maths overlap quite a lot. 

First lesson was pattern recognition. Cosmo loves patterns, but lychee has struggled with being able to repeat a pattern in the past. 

With a bit of help though, we coloured in a huge area of paving slabs using chalks in a repeated rainbow pattern and talked a bit about colour theory (primary colours blending through secondary colours... etc...)

Cosmo helpfully brought up colour temperature too, so we discussed that briefly, because this term our co op is focussing on light, so I figure wavelengths will be worth knowing a little about. 

Then we made a giant number line, by writing one number on each paving slab of our path. I used our 'mathematical reasoning' book and had the kids work out exercises by running along the line instead of drawing arcs on a page. 

It all went pretty well, and there was also some fun naughty and crosses, pictures of hearts and people's names scribbled around. 

Who knew you could fill an entire day, just playing with chalk? 

Drawing Lessons For Kids

I recently picked up a book called 'Drawing with Children: A Creative Teaching and Learning Method That Works for Adults Too' by Mona Brookes and it is fantastic! 

She gives examples of the differences in children's drawings with 20 minutes of tuition, an hour of tuition etc... and it's really hard to believe. In all honesty I thought the pictures might be a little exaggerated.

I was wrong. 

But let me take you back a little. Initially, despite my concerns that the pictures were probably 'enhanced' by adults, I really liked reading the first chapter on how to conduct a drawing lesson. Simple things like pointing out symptoms of visual fatigue helped me realise why cosmo can do twenty math sheets with 40 questions on, but struggles to complete one with 100 (the font is too small). 

This week I asked Lychee if she wanted to do her own lesson with mummy. We spent all of approximately three minutes with her completing a drawing exercise from the book. I was actually quite impressed with her ability to copy. I've never asked her to before, so she usually just scribbles. 

Here is what she produced (mine in black, hers in yellow).

Not bad for a two year old, right?

She then went on to do her first ever recognisable drawing. It's a picture of her cousin.

I'm not going to pretend I knew who it was, but it is definitely a face! 

More interesting, is that since then, with no prompting, she has started colouring inside the lines. So when we made Daddy this card for Father's day, she would usually just scribble over my writing and picture. She took great pains this time to keep inside the heart.

Not only that, but she was able to draw X marks for kisses under her name. 

Both my kids, after a few minutes of 'teaching' went on to spend hours and hours the next day drawing hundreds of pictures using the symbols from the exercises we had done the day before. Their enthusiasm for drawing this week has been incredible. 

If anyone is wondering whether or not to buy this book, I highly recommend it. 

Illustrating a Book

I have a hard time getting Cosmo to enjoy art work, but this project grabbed his attention immediately.

We had picked up an exercise book that has blank space at the top of the page and lines for writing underneath. I'd hoped he might like to write a story book or something, but he had an even better idea. 

'Let's make a book to teach my cousins about Shavuot and we can give it to them!'

Awesome. 

He wasn't keen on the idea of doing the writing himself, he didn't think they'd be able to read it, so I agreed to do that part if he helped me remember how the story went. We ended up using a video to remind us from YouTube - how did people homeschool before google? 

His illustrations are brilliant and I'm so pleased he had the confidence to do it. 

We are going to take the book around to his cousins this afternoon so they can enjoy it this evening. 

Happy holidays! 

Milton Keynes

This week Matt's class at school were doing a project on Milton Keynes. It came up in conversation at the dinner table, so Cosmo decided that he too would like to do a project on Milton Keynes.

 

Unsure of exactly how to proceed I decided that I would ask him what he'd like to know about Milton Keynes and see if we could find out the answers using google. Some of his questions weren't answered exactly (e.g. 'how many parks are there?' turned into 'how much area is devoted to parklands?') and some of them I flat couldn't find the answers to ('how many cars are there in Milton Keynes?') but there was plenty there to work with.

 

I'm also really proud of his drawings. For a long time he has refused to draw anything other than '1's or 'l's. I think this is a real confidence issue. He has just been unwilling to try to draw anything he wasn't confident he could succeed at.  He drew a railway track and a bridge (unfortunately I wrote on the picture upside down, but once he told me what it was I realised it was actually pretty good!) and trees that were incredible. I still had to talk him through how to draw each bit ('draw some brown lines to make trunks, not do some green scribbles at the top') but once I had taught him to draw a tree, he was drawing them all over the place!

 

We also found someone called the 'Milton Keynes Guru' who answers (publically) any questions you might have related to the city. Will composed a lovely email for him including questions like 'Are there any cars in Milton Keynes that are as fast as Lightning McQueen?' and 'Are there any car companies, like DinoCo, based in Milton Keynes?'

 

We put it all together in an A3 presentation to show Matt and Cosmo talked him through it when he got home.

 

You can see our booklet here.

Cosmo's first picture!!!

I've been particularly interested in watching my nieces drawing recently. They colour away with abandon and tell me great stories about what they are going to draw for me and the wonderful letters they are writing me.

Cosmo on the other hand seems to be incredibly aware of his limitations regarding hand eye co-ordination. He can hold a crayon, and is willing to colour in something you have drawn, but if you ask him to draw something specific, he says 'no, I can only draw one and seven'. Which is partly true. Most of his drawings are lines, some of them with a kink, which can then be rotated until it becomes a seven.  He will usually at this point pass me the crayon and ask me to write a word or draw a picture for him.

I do think it's sad though that he is unwilling to try and draw anything else, so I was extremely excited when he came bounding into the kitchen to tell me that he had drawn a helicopter!! I'll be honest, my first thought was 'what have you drawn it on...?' but I was overjoyed to find it in chalk, on the chalk board. He just wanted me to come and write the word helicopter next to it so that we could show daddy what it was.

He was incredibly proud of himself, and I was pretty pleased to.

So here it is... Cosmo's Masterpiece!! (age 2 years 5 months)

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="604" caption="Cosmo's first recognisable drawing!!"][/caption]