Goals—Read 52

I guess it's pretty obvious by now that we are book lovers, and I guess it doesn't necessarily follow that we love to read, but we do. There are times when I have to force one or more of us to put a book down in order to get outside and experience the world, run some errands, or do some chores. Everything with at least some moderation. There are several things from which I derive great pleasure, like sewing, cooking, and running, but nothing gives me so great a feeling of relaxation and fulfillment as reading a good book. I'm mostly a fiction reader, usually not so much pop-fiction as literature or classic fiction.

At any given moment I am "reading" at least two books, because I'll have one going on my iPod, which I listen to if I'm by myself doing any of those other things I mentioned above, and one actual, physical book as well. I love listening to books when my hands are otherwise busy, but if I'm sitting and reading I need the full tactile experience of running my fingers down the words, fingering pages, turning from one to the next, measuring my progress, and I love the smell of a book. You don't get that from an iPod.

I bring this up because when I read a book I want to share the experience with someone. Jon is used to my book antics, my verbal abuse of books I don't like, or passionate adoration of those I do. He has known me to get tense at the very best, or worst, parts of a story, and have to exercise that tension physically in a jump, a bounce, or a wave of the arms. I have been known to squee on occasion.

So begins Read 52. I have set a goal for myself. It's good to have goals, and I have been so busy between the blog, photo editing, planning stuff, other stuff, that I haven't taken as much time to read as I've wanted to, so that goal is to read 52 books in as many weeks. That's 52 books in a year. And I want to share my reading experiences, and was thinking that this section of the blog would be a fine place to do it. I am, after all, living and learning every day just like my son. I will count down to my goal here with posts about the books I read, after I've read them. My year, since i started counting late, will be from March to March (plus one book from February), and that means I'm now seven books in. Look back to see their posts if you're interested, or find them by the "Read 52 (2011)" tag or the "book reviews" category. Now on to book number eight.

Making knights armor

Playing around in the middle ages this week Calvin has been on a knights quest. The instigator was a book called King Arthur's Knight Quest, which I picked up a while back at our library book sale. It's a hidden pictures kind of book and on his quest he's been finding the armor he'll need to rescue all of King Arthur's favorite knights. It's been fun, especially since he decided that finding the armor in the book wasn't enough and decided to make his own.

We started with a shield, which is merely an oval cut from corrugated cardboard. He painted and decorated it, then I added another strip of cardboard to the back, secured with hot glue, to act as the handle.

The helmet came next. This was a doozy of a project. Basic instructions came from the Usborne Knights and Castles activity book, but our first attempt at the helmet didn't go so well and we ended up scratching the job and starting over again the next day with some of our own ideas.

I used a measuring tape to measure around his nose to the back of his head then we marked and cut a strip of posterboard to length, plus an inch for overlap, and 3.5 inches thick.

We folded it in half and Calvin punched a hole, through both sides, about a half inch in from the long edge and almost halfway along the length. I then marked two cutting lines along the folded strip: a line starting at the bottom corner of the folded edge and arcing up to an inch from the bottom and finishing straight along the length, and another line staring about a half inch from the top corner of the folded edge and arcing smoothly up to the top edge. Calvin cut these out and they became the pointed tip at his chin and the slight dip below his eyes.

After the cuts were made we opened the strip and glued it together in the back, gluing the overlap front to back.

We used the tape measure again to measure the length in the back between the two holes, then cut out seven strips of that length plus one inch, six at two inches wide and one at four inches wide, and rounded at the ends. We punched holes in each strip, a half inch from the ends. We added the two inch strips to the helmet one at a time, lining up the holes to the ones on the helmet and tilting the strips until the bottom edge just touched the top edge of the strip below. Calvin held each strip in place while I hot glued it around the hole.

Calvin cam:

For the face mask we folded the four inch strip in half and drew the slits, then I cut them with a box cutter. Calvin then threaded silver colored pipe cleaners through the holes on the helmet, glued them on the inside, then threaded the face mask onto them on the outside and coiled the end of the pipe cleaners to hold them in place. This way the face mask can be raised and lowered.

 

The sword was made with the remainder of the gold poster board, which was silver on the other side. Calvin traced the shape then cut it out twice. I cut a long, thin strip of heavy cardboard and we glued it to the insides of the sword shapes, lining them up. We then glued all the way around the edges of the sword, and Calvin traced and cut out a hand guard using more of the leftover pieces. He decorated it to match the shield.

We still haven't worked out a way to make armor just yet, but if we do we'll be back. 

The Lost Princess of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (our reviews)

This rates at the top of the Oz list for me. I enjoyed all the books, but as with any series some will inevitablly be better than others. The Lost Princess of Oz is the tenth book in the series and it brought back every single one of our favorite characters. Calvin loved it. The first few chapters were almost like a roll call and every time another of our best loved friends arrived for the story Calvin would giggle with joy. And we met some delightful new ones, too.

Making a castle

While exploring Italy this week we found ourselves in the Renaissance, and it wasn't a big leap from there to the general medieval era. We'll go back to the Renaissance some day but right now I have a little boy who is fascinated by the fantastical side of the middle ages, the castles, knights, lords and ladies, and jousts. Knowing this day was likely to come, a few months ago I picked up the Usborne Knights and Castles activity book at the library sale for 25 cents and it is serving us well now. It started us down the castle building road last weekend, when Jon and Calvin constructed a castle tower, and over the course of the week it grew into a two towered, multi storied play castle. I knew all that cardboard I'd been putting away would come in handy eventually.

Calvin was part every part of the planning except for my idea of the shoebox for the center piece. He assisted with every step, including measuring, marking, gluing and cutting. Here's the run down of our process.

We decided on the size of our first tower, and later I built the second tower to match, but the size doesn't matter much. After selecting the cardboard and size for the towers Calvin painted the outside and we lightly scored the folds on the inside with a box cutter, four equal sides and a small overlap for gluing it closed. With Calvin's help we measured and cut the battlement edge and an opening for the door.

For the draw bridge we used lighter cardboard, cut to a rectangle shape twice the height of the door opening and folded in half. We spread hot glue around the inside of the tower door and glued the bridge to it so that it was adhered on the inside and would fold up over the door opening on the outside. We then cut the door space out of the lighter cardboard, leaving the doorway open and the bridge adhered to the tower by two tabs inside. We poked two holes opposite each other on the walks perpendicular to the door, slightly above the top of the door opening, and threaded a straw through them, trimmed flush on one side and attached with a brad while left long on the other. We poked smaller holes, through the bridge and the castle wall, on each top corner of the bridge then treaded waxed twine through these holes, knotted on the outside to keep it from puling through, and tied it to the straw with the bridge fully open. I then used hot glue to secure it.

When the straw is rotated the twine is wound up and the bridge pulled closed, when twisted loose the bridge drops open. The turrets were made from wrapping paper rolls and attached to the main tower by sliding them into short slits made in the tower body. The flags and windows were cut from construction paper.

The central part of the castle was made from an Asics shoe box. I love those boxes for crafts. The lid is attached so that it will swing open, and while the box is printed on the outside it is all one piece and assembled using only slits and folds, no glue, so it can be completely turned inside out leaving the clean inside on the outside for painting and decorating, which Calvin did to match the two towers.

We also painted an extra strip of cardboard and cut it to create a battlement look, then attached it using hot glue. We used a second extra strip of cardboard, attached with hot glue, to make a second floor. We cut a double door into the bottom of the box so that when the box lid (now the back of the castle) is open it provides access to the inside of the castle and creates access to the inside for play. The two towers are attached to the central castle with hot glue.

We plan to cover the "floor" of the castle with felt and create some medieval furniture as well, but it's already proved a delightful toy for my knight obsessed little boy.

Join the art parade at Saturday's artist.

Africa–an exploration

February 25-March 21
After attending a stage performance of African folk tales and legends Calvin was curious about their origin, so we started on an exploraton of the continent that lasted for over three weeks (fit in around hiking, piano, pretending to be in the Land of Oz, etc., etc., etc,). This is a run down of what we did, what we talked about, and what materials we used.

Topics of focus:
Continents, countries, states, cities
South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Egypt
Mt. Kenya, Victoria Falls, The Nile
Animals and biomes of Africa
Vocabulary—biome, rainforest, desert, savanna, continent, waterfall, pyramid
Ancient Egypt

Book list:
Africa, by Mel Friedman
Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, by Verna Aardema
Dedan Saves the Day, by Teha Feldman
Deserts, by Angela Wilkes
Egyptian Pyramids, by Kate Riggs
Egyptology: Search for the Tomb of Osiris, by Emily Sands
Honey... Honey... Lion!, by Jan Brett
I am the Mummy Heb-Nefert, by Eve Bunting
Mumies & Pyramids (Usborne), by Sam Taplin
Pinduli, by Janell Cannon
Pyramids, by Fiona Macdonald
Tembo Takes Charge, by Thea Feldman
Wangari's Trees of Peace, Jeanette Winter

Video list:
Anansi tales
Planet Earth, Jungles and Grasslands
YouTube videos of Victoria Falls, hiking Mt. Kenya, African animals, and exploring the Pyramids

Activity list:
Attending a stage performance of traditional African folk tales (the impetus for our exploration)
Playing Mancala
Playing The Great Mammoth Hunt
Building Pyramids out of Legos (and playing with them)
Listening to traditional African music (thank you Pandora)
Making a traditional Kenyan meal: Mtuzi wa Samaki
Dressing up as elephants

Arts/Crafts list:
Coloring the flags of the countries we "visited"
Drawing the African biomes
Drawing African animals
Making cut paper images of Anansi stories
Painting a landscape of the Savanna
Making a Book of the Dead scroll