Arbor Day sketches

Yesterday being Arbor Day we did a lot of talking about trees—about how they invite wildlife to our yard, about how they provide us with shade, about how they clean our air and beautify our space—and we did a lot of looking at trees, too, so we decided to try sketching them. With lead and colored pencils in hand we set up our chairs in the front yard and started sketching. In her illustrated version of Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, Susan Jeffers wrote about growing up with her artist mother, about learning from a young age that shadows are not simply black, that the tea kettle on the stove was not a solid color after all, the reflection in it not merely a rectangle. What we actually see is difficult to commute onto our paper, and to get started we first have to see. To actually see. We talked about shapes—is a tree really a ball on a stick? We talked about colors—is a trunk really brown? I haven't sketched like that since my days of wildlife observation in college, but it was something I always loved and it felt special to share it. We had a good time.

Weekly book shelf, 4/29

I am trying something new. Since we enjoy reading so much, and since it is such a large part of our lives here, I am going to start listing our reading materials from the week every Friday so I can link up with a group of moms who are doing the same thing. I want to become more involved in the wider internet community, get some great new book ideas in the process, and hopefully also give some.

This week we're discovering volcanoes, so we spent some time with volcano books, of course. We have the DK Volcano & Earthquake Eyewitness Book and the DK Incredible Earth Inside Guide (an older book). We also have the Usborne Volcanoes book.

Calvin also discovered (or rediscovered, now that he can read them to himself) the Nate the Great series, and between his dad's old books and the ones we got from the library he's read at least seven of these.

Calvin is also reading his way through the Magic Tree House series. We discovered this one by accident when we used their Knights and Castles Research Guide when we were traveling through the Middle Ages. Once he realized there were story books to go with the research books—a whole series of them—he was in love. This week he read the first book from the series, and he's now in the process of rereading the second book. He's determined to read all of them in order.

Together we are reading Glinda of Oz. We've been reading our way through this series since we discovered it together last October. This is the 13th book in the Oz series, and the final one written by L. Frank Baum. We are both very fond of all of these books. They make great read-alouds.

And on my bookshelf this week...I finished Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline and have started on The Monk in the Garden, by Robin Marantz Henig.

The Magic of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

The penultimate book in the series as written by Baum. If there weren't another twenty-some more books widely considered as part of the Oz canon I think I would be very sad. As it is, I think I still am. I think it's possible to make these books feel fresh and new, even twelve books into the series, because anything, and I mean anything, can happen in Oz, so there are no contraints, natural or artificial, binding the author's creativity. Of course the plot line doesn't change all that much from book to book—there's only a handful of those to choose from here—but the intriguing and unique characters that fill in the bare bones of the plots are what make the books enjoyable one right after the other. The Magic of Oz is another winner for me, full of just enough adult-size humor to give depth to the child's fairy story. This is children's fantasy at its best.

Natural Easter Eggs

I avoid artificial colors in the things that we eat like the plague. This year I decided that should apply to our eggs as well, not because I'm concerned about leaching through the shell, and not because I feel the need to control every bit of food that we take in, because I don't, but because it seemed like an easy thing to get on top of, and the more natural we can be, the better. So last year when we dyed eggs the house smelled of boiled eggs and vinegar, this year it smelled of cabbages and beets.

The colors weren't as brilliant as I thought they might be, and our results were different from others I've seen online, we did the project as a family and we had a good time. A really good time.

Natural Egg Dyeing

Red: Three beets, cut into slices. Bring to a boil and simmer in four cups of water, 1 tablespoon vinegar, for 30 minutes. Strain and reserve liquid. Cool.

Blue: One pound red cabbage, shredded. Bring to a boil in four cups of water, 1 tablespoon vinegar, for 30 minutes. Strain and reserve liquid. Cool.

Yellow: Four tablespoons turmeric dissolved in 4 cups water, 1 tablespoon vinegar (it dissolves easiest with a little heat).

The natural dyes took way longer to really work than the standard dyes. I anticipated this by putting the dyes in big bowls so we could get them all done at once.

We decorated them with crayon first, just like we've always done. Though I thought the red would be my favorite, the blue actually worked the best. And they were all fun.

Exploring the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages, March 21–April 15

This started out as a look at the renaissance, and before that it was going to be a FIAR look at The Clown of God, by Tomie dePaola, but neither of us liked the book and Calvin was more excited about the concept of the middle ages (especially knights) than about the renaissance, so that's where we ended up. I think this was my favorite exploration so far, or maybe I'll be saying that every time. I hope so.

A note about our book lists: we are not librarians or experts in the field, and while I make some book choices based on recommendations from people who are one of the above, more often than not we simply use that we happen to have in our collection, or books we come across at the library. Many of the books that we have in our collection are odd-balls and aren't easily tracked down elsewhere, but I list them here because similar books are always easy to come by.

Topics of focus:
Medieval life

Europe (England, France, Italy)
Timelines, and math counting concepts up to the thousands
Medieval castles and cathedrals

Antique glass blowing

Knights

Vocabulary—castle, knight, jester

A peek at the Renaissance

Book list:
Cowardly Clyde, by Bill Pete
The Knight at Dawn (Magic Tree House #2)
Knights and Castles (Magic Tree House research guide)
Don Quixote and the Windmills, by Eric Kimmel
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, by Margaret Hodges
King Arthur, by Howard Pyle
King Arthur’s Knight Quest, by Andy Dixon and Felicity Brooks
Parliament of the Fowles, Geoffrey Chaucer (downloadable resource)
A Chaucer Reader, selections from Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dunn editor
Saint George and the Dragon, by Margaret Hodges
Medieval Life (DK Eyewitness)
Built to Last, by David Macaulay
Knights and Castles, Things to Make and Do (Usborne)
Arms and Armour, by Ewart Oakeshot

Video list:
The Art of Making Glass, part 1 (YouTube)
The Art of Making Glass, part 2 (YouTube)

Activity list:
Building a castle from cardboard
Making knight’s armor from poster board
Make-believe play (of course!)

Drawing and labeling castles, knights, etc.
Illustrating the glass making process
Writing about the middle ages (I suggested a story, he wrote a factual summary)
Playing chess

Playing The Great Mammoth Hunt
Listening to Renaissance music (thank you Pandora)

And he assembled a folder about the middle ages. Really he just wanted a place to keep all his artwork and writing because, as he put it, he might want to look back at it some day. I am sure he got the idea from previous lap-book style folders I've had him make, both for Katy and the Big Snow and for The Two Cars, but I like it this way better: his own idea, his own impetus, all his own work.