Glass making, a pictorial how-to

Last week, when we were exploring castles and cathedrals on our trip through the middle ages, using the book Built To Last, by David MacAuley, we ended up taking a side trip through this video (and its second part) to find out how the glass for those glorious windows was made. Although I'm sure there are betters ones out there, we had a lot of fun with those videos. This week, as Calvin was gathering all the drawings, writings, and other paraphernalia of our medieval meanderings, he was slightly aghast at finding nothing about this glass blowing side trip and decided to write up a sheet of instructions for future memory jogging. There are many different ways to chronicle, and I love that he is exploring all of them, from journaling to sketching, and now a colorful combination.

The Tin Woodman of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (our reviews)

There are only two more books, after this one, left in the Oz series as written by Baum, and I am sad to see the end so obviously in sight. While there are yet another 26 books in what is considred the Oz canon, I am a sentimentalist, and it will be hard, and a little nerve wracking, to break into the Oz world as imagined by other authors. I am hoping that, if so many other Ozites consider these other books to be canon, we will be just as happy with them as we have been with Baum's vision, and certainly there are far more than 26 other Oz books out there, so selectivity did come into play. My fingers are crossed and my breath held as we near the end of Baum's road, though.

The Tin Woodman of Oz, though, was also a slight variation from Baum's usual, and I've heard that this, and the last two books in the series, are dark by comparison to his previous books of wonder. In the Tin Woodman, in fact, the reader is reminded of the Tin Woodman's somewhat gruesome past, and also meets his severed head, on the tinsmith's shelf, and many of his former body parts, now glued back together to create a different being. And, if these anomolies are not enough, there is definitely a thinly veiled question here about makeup of a soul, and the value of a body. Which, after all, is the real Tin Woodman, Nick Chopper? Is it the head, with the brain, the body, with the heart, or the new tin creation, with the memories, the creature we have all become accustomed to? There is really a lot of symbolism and imagery in all of Baum's work, much of it being politically motivated by the situations of the early 20th century, but this is perhaps the most striking, and the most demanding, of them all.

For all of that, however, much of this is naturally over a four-year-old's head, and since I did not see fit to draw attention to these complex themes, although I'm sure we could have discussed them, Calvin enjoyed this book as he has all the others: deeply and with great excitement.

Math-U-See

I mentioned in a journal post a week or so ago that we'd ordered, and received, the books and blocks of the Math-U-See curriculum. At the time I mentioned it in relation to my fear of a strict curriculum and an inability to find a way to use it that was loose and open. In retrospect I laugh, and I also chide myself for not knowing better. It's not like anyone was saying to me "hey, you bought it, now you must read and follow the directions." And it's not like I don't have a mind of my own. And when the the pages upon pages of study, test, and review seemed a little daunting at first I just let Calvin do as he would with them and put it out of my mind until I was more comfortable.

We picked the blocks back up this week because while we were exploring the middle ages I wanted him to have a better grasp of the time difference, and he also seemed interested in this. If this is to be a review I will first say that, just as I suspected, the books are both unnecessary and a little dry for my taste. That being said, Calvin seems to enjoy having the practice work sheets to play around with and if I just let him do what he likes with them they get at least a little use so they aren't a total waste.

The blocks, though, are exactly the manipulative I was looking for. They provide a very visible, tangible element to conceptual learning—ten units make a ten, ten tens make a hundred, and you can be absolutely sure of this not because someone said so, but because you can see them, feel them, count them, compare them, and snap them together. Calvin took to the concept quickly and smoothly, and he really enjoyed the exercise as well. The blocks are relatively nice. I love their weight and feel and, though I'm usually a bigger fan of wood than plastic, I like how well these blocks snap together, which is something wood blocks wouldn't really do.

My only real disappointment is that we paid good money for the storage boxes which we were assured had been made especially for these specific sets of blocks, and all of them fit in nicely, albeit with a few gaps in some of the partitioned squares, except for two of the tens. Really? You're selling custom made wood boxes, at $40 for the pair, and you couldn't even custom make them to hold all of the blocks in your double set??? Even I can look at the boxes and see where a partition could have been shifted in one direction just enough to make room for those two tens, and these blocks are not my livelihood. It may be a little thing but I think I'm going to harp on this one for a while, and the company will probably get an annoyed letter.

So we'll see how things continue to play out, but for right now the blocks themselves get my A vote, the books get my B vote, and the boxes are an utter failure.

Illustrating the Middle Ages

Jon was working from home yesterday, and to take advantage of the extra adult at home Calvin decided he wanted to stay home while I went to the library to do the Monday sorting in the sale room. I left him with task of drawing castles, and for the whole hour I was gone he was busy at it.

Castle with battlements, inset picture shows same castle from slightly farther away.

Castle under attack by a catapult.

Diagram of the inside of a castle tower, with decorative plants and a spiral staircase. He drew this one to be made into a cylinder, as seen below.

King on throne inside castle, with artwork hanging on wall.

A balance scale, and it looks like there's either a person or a duck on the right side so this very much makes me think of Monty Python's witch weighing in the Holy Grail.

And my very favorite. I love this picture. A knight riding up to the castle drawbridge (closed) with sword and shield and the visor on his helmet down. He's a little hard to see here because both he and the horse or a sort of neon yellow, but I love him.

Journal entry—waterfowl hike

After their waterfowl hike yesterday, Calvin came home and wrote about the experience in his journal. I still think we maybe need to make him a nature journal, but for now it's all in one.

This one, obviously, is completely unedited. When we first started the journal last fall I helped him sound out all words and get them spelled correctly. Over time he gained confidence and proficiency, and a desire to shrug off all outside interference, and a couple of months ago he started writing the entries on his own. When he finishes I usually read them out loud to him, in part to enjoy them together, now that I'm not part of the process anymore, and also to help him catch any glaring phonetic errors. My goal is not for him to spell everything correctly, but for him to have a good grasp, over time, on the general rules. This one I didn't read until today, and it is clear to me that he has made a lot of wonderful progress all on his own. It's hard to say which came first and encouraged the other, the reading or the writing, more they were simultaneous and co-dependent, but I am so happy about both his progress, and how it has happened—not with lessons, or practice sheets or even with many easy readers, but mostly just with practice and use. As my dad always says, nobody told him he couldn't read, and nobody implied that it was a difficult process that required systematic help, either, and so he just did it.