Poetry and painting

We've spent a lot of this week hanging out with Robert Frost. We like Robert Frost, especially Calvin, and being winter it seemed appropriate to spend some time with Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening as illustrated by Susan Jeffers. It has us writing our own poems, and illustrating some New England-esque winter scenes.

Calvin's own

A joint effort (alternating lines)

It's a week long painting project. We're trying our hands at long term planning—painting the background first, letting it dry, adding some scenery details, letting that dry. Dinners at the dining room table are on hold for a while.

Hiking with Crinkleroot

The temperatures had been hovering in the low teens for what seemed like weeks. It kept our outings limited to visiting other indoor locations or exploring only as far as the yard (which has hosted the Himalayas for equally as long so it's been a good place to explore, especially for my little Panda). We've been playing a lot of games, reading a lot of books, dabbling in  art, flying around the house performing magic; Winter hibernation doesn't have to mean boring.

Now, though, the sun has been out for days, for longer than it seems we've seen it all winter in fact. The Himalayas are starting to look more like the rolling landscape of Vermont and my Panda is increasingly disappointed by his habitat loss. The best thing about this weather, aside from the warm sun flooding our front room every evening and Jon getting home before dark, is the hiking situation: with compacted snow covering what will soon be muddy fields there are animal tracks to be found everywhere, and it's warm enough to go looking for them. There's rain lurking around the corner and with rain the opportunity will be lost, so, with Crinkleroot's Book of Animal Tracking tightly in tow, we took to the fields adjacent to our neighborhood and discovered far more than just our own hearts thankful for signs of thaw.

We've been tracking before. Calvin's pretty familiar with the tracks of humans, dogs, and deer. He found lots of deer tracks today.

A deer path through the stream.

And a new treat, raccoon tracks.

And we listened for birds.

We found chickadees (and heard all three calls)

And a tufted titmouse.

When we go home he was eager for some hot tea and a chance to get it all down in his journal.

Now we're ready for the rain threatening the rest of the week, and maybe for a return of the rain boots.

I've linked up to Nature Connections, a link party for nature lovers. Come join the fun!

The Story about Ping

The Story about Ping, by Marjorie flack, takes place in China and is a FIAR book, so we played around with it a bit over the past two weeks while we were gearing up for our Chinese New Year celebration. As a book I didn't find Ping all that exciting, but it wasn't unenjoyable, either. We spent most of our time focused on China or on art because that's what Calvin was most interested in.

Like most kids Calvin loves drawing and creating. The FIAR guidebook suggested using Ping as a springboard to discussing the representation of water in drawing, so we tried our hand at reflections and ripples.

I have a wall full of these pictures now and I love it.

My favorite of the whole bunch—Ping swimming up to the boat from behind.

Happy Chinese New Year

Today we made fortune cookies

Yesterday it was paper lanterns

All week we counted down with Chinese characters

We've actually been talking about China for nearly two weeks now. Calvin is infatuated with the Great Wall. Earlier in the week we watched a handful of National Geographic short videos on this wonder of the world.

The Yangtze was another source of interest, especially the Three Gorges Dam. We tapped into an Eyewitness book on China to get a little more information on these, and watched the mountains section of BBC's Planet Earth for more on the Himalayas. Per Calvin, this picture is: "The Himalayas and foothills and the Yangtze River and buildings that are flooded by the Yangtze River because of the Dam. And Ping sitting in the reeds and a truck loading a shark to eat for Chinese dinners."

Pandas also took a good portion of our time. We got a National Geographic video about Pandas  from the library (which he watched 3 times) and we have a Nature Conservancy book about pandas. He doesn't draw pandas right now, though, as he says "they are too black and white."

The Two Cars and a hunt for more

Calvin has an inquisitive mind and, like most kids, an innate and insatiable hunger for knowledge. That's why, when we took him to the North American International Auto Show last year, I was sure he'd be awed, intrigued, rapt. I failed to realize, though, that the completely unknown is not automatically interesting, that our interest has to be piqued, that being surrounded by so many saturating stimulants—the people, the lighting, the colors, the sounds—can make concentration near impossible and can push our senses to a point of exhaustion, and that can make one very crabby. Calvin wasn't really crabby last year, and the trip wasn't a colossal failure, but he certainly wasn't rapt. So this year I prepared ahead. Since we'd rowed our first FIAR book the week before I decided to use that method as a template and found a great book about cars.

The story in The Two Cars, by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire, is the tortoise and the hare, only with two cars, and the art is typical d'Aulaire wonderful. We spent a week reading and talking about the book, exploring the art and the writing, and also exploring cars. The personified cars in the story conversationally mention the crankshaft, the pistons, the springs, and their white walled tires. Calvin loved it. We drew cars, we made a road and drove mini cars, we counted by tens on a speedometer, we checked out an Eye Witness book about cars from our library and drew our own diagrams of their inner workings. I think the best part, though, the project that worked the most magic come auto show time in Detroit, was the scavenger hunt we spent a day together creating and putting into booklet form for use on the day of the show. Calvin was determined to look for oddities like pink or orange cars, motor specifics like an in-line, a V, and a flat crankshaft engine, and book specifics like those white walled tires. Amazingly the only thing we weren't able to find was a pink car.

Lapbooking our way (less busy work, more collection of projects)

Diagrams, art, vocabulary, learning tools, all in one folder:

Inside the Auto show booklet, which we assembled using a sheet of cardboard for a cover and braiding floss for the binding (and to which we attached a pencil for use at the show). We had a sheet of things to see, oddities to find, activities to do, and, at Calvin's insistence, blank space for drawing logos and other interesting things.

He made all his finds except for the pink car (bummer!) and he drew several logos. Recognize Toyota, Tesla, and Corvette on this page?

Ferrari, Maybach, Mercedes, Cadillac, Mazda, and Audi, and a picture of an electric car plugged in, too. He had no qualms about sitting down and sketching the logos when he liked them.

Inside and outside diagrams and a speedometer for counting by tens, plus a list of new words and the prized ticket from the Auto Show itself.

Calvin's own imaginative view of a motor (which he asked me to label the way I'd had him label my print outs, and I needed quite a bit of help with this one!)

Trying his hand at blending with colored pencils.

And we built a road for acting out the story, practicing with cardinal directions, and just plain having fun.