Shakespeare portrait project

My own personal project for the year is to read and see more Shakespeare works. Since the kids share the same space as me, they have been caught in the tide. Mr 9 and Miss 7 and I decided to sit and copy one of the classic portraits of William Shakespeare. 

Droeshout portrait. An engraving by Martin Droeshout as frontispiece to the collected works of Shakespeare (the First Folio), printed in 1622 and published in 1623. (from Wikipedia)

We were aiming for a caricatured, fun impression. This is mine. I love the line drawings the kids did, but they are a bit shy about me putting their artwork online (which is a good thing!).

We wanted to have matching Shakespeare themed tshirts for a Shakespeare festival we were going to. Since buying was expensive and time consuming, we decided to design our own. 

The kids did two drawings each, so altogether we had five. I scanned the drawings into the computer. Then, I edited them in Picasa and put them into a photo collage. I then had five portraits in one file to send off to a tshirt printer. Our lovely local printer, Eco Shopper, printed our little batch of five shirts (extras for friends) on the same day. The photo below is used with the permission of Miss 7 and Mr 9.

It's a fun way to appropriate and display our artistic collaboration.  

The value of the chalking wall

Until the recent string of public holidays, we have had a large wall covered in maps. It has been a good reference (and had a lot of visual punch when home school inspectors came to check us out). It has been a nice thing for visitors to look at and talk about-everyone comes from somewhere on a map. Most days there is a reason to look at the world map or the anatomy charts with the kids.

On an impulse, I sent the maps to the hallway and painted the giant wall with chalkboard paint.

Everyday since, I have found a new surprise on the wall. Every visitor has left their special mark. It is an invitation to play in our space; to teach and learn with us; to remember useful things.

It is also an easy way to encourage written communication for the kids. When they want me to remember something, they can write it on the wall. My husband drew up a plan for the week and we both knew what we were working toward. When I wrote my own task list of housework, I was delighted to find Steve had crossed a few jobs off the list for me.

There have been some spontaneous lessons between father and children about perspective drawing. When one visitor drew a rose, one of our kids copied it. Another visitor introduced games based around writing words backwards. !gnilleps rof noitavitoM. It has encouraged drawing on a vertical surface which is good for some low muscle tone among our children. The wall is a place to draw temporary things, which is good for perfectionists who are paralysed by permanence.


I used Murobond Society Inc Chalkboard paint in Ship Chandler (a delicious chocolatey brown). The chalk wipes off effortlessly with a damp cloth to look like a normal wall. I am very impressed with the product. I am tempted to paint a few more walls with it. I have limited myself to a handy rectangle of chalkboard in the laundry for listmaking. The cubby house will get a dose of some of the fruity chalkboard colours available at some stage. It is lovely to start the new year with useful novelty!

Image from here

The studio evolves

Here are some photos of the studio, just to document the changes and the reality. A reminder that this is what we started with:

Below is a glimpse of how it looks most of the time. Since the kids appreciate the space, they are generally alright about cleaning it up. Our next step is some display wires running across the room, to hang artworks and objects from. No one has quite settled into a particular project. We are in the "experimenting with materials" stage. We need to keep tinkering with the storage so that space can be clear for making.

The kids' studio

Inspired by Project Based Homeschool; Mentoring your Self-Directed Learner, by Lori Pickert. I've been brave. I'm learning to say "yes" to my kids' creative projects. My reason for saying "no" was usually because the materials were packed away in a cupboard. I am mostly doing fifteen things at a time and didn't want to multiply my work. I didn't want to deal with what might happen when five children and new media find each other in a confined space. If I'm going to be a "yes" mum and stay sane, then our set up needed to change. Our dining room is now a studio.

The floor is tiled. It is next to the kitchen, so I am able to work and be near the action. The materials are all visible and reasonably easy for the biggest kids to reach. The floodgates of inspiration can open as we gaze on those jars of paint and brushes and wax and paste and buttons and markers and empty frames. 

The tv cabinet is now storage space. The four biggest kids have a desk each in this room. My old favourite lounge is there for when I want to read aloud, or nurse the baby, while they make. There is a series of boxes ready for collage and crafting. It is an easy way for the kids to sort and put away scraps. Everything is old, reclaimed, or from the charity shop (which is the case for most of our furniture). After using the space for a while we will add in any necessary shelving and hanging/drying/displaying racks. It's a living design project for the kids and us. 

The fun thing has been letting the kids take ownership of their own little studios within the studio. They have chosen what they want on their own desks. The label printer was discovered and most objects have been labelled. This was a good little self initiated exercise in writing for Miss 6. Mr 8 is keen to build a bit of a cage around his desk to keep toddler fingers out. We're still discussing the terms on that one!

It is so much easier to let the kids be creative when the space is committed to it. Once again, time is also the factor. Pulling out paints only works pleasantly when we are not going out soon after. An uncluttered schedule makes space for so many good things.

Unexpectedly, I have found that I am happier with a creative space nearby. It is less predictable, but I get to watch the kids do beautiful things. I'll keep you posted!
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An accidental curriculum

The other day, we wandered through our lovely, old, understated, unpretentious town centre. We stopped to chat with the lady who works at the leather shop. As we left, she kindly sent us away with a free bag of scrap leather. All sorts of hides from all sorts of creatures, in many colours and textures.

Since then, we have been plaiting whips, wearing leather head bands and collaging leather artworks. We now need to go back and ask a few technical questions about tanning and manufacturing.

This accidental experience has added another coat of mental paint to our understanding of things we've been reading lately. It's fun to stumble into learning and experiences we weren't expecting.

Similar, but different, is the "curriculum of curiosity" in this post. I would love for our learning life to be more like this. But my sanity is only welcoming so much curiosity at this stage. And that is fine. It's nice to have a picture of what we'd like to grow toward.

Zines: Kids taking charge of their own writing

I hardly know a thing about zines. I was never cool. It's pronounced, "zeens", if you are as ignorant as me. Zines are little, independent, low budget, self-publications. A bit like a photocopied blog, from an era when blogs didn't exist. They can be about anything, usually combining images and text, and then run through a photocopier. Black and white mini magazines ready for an audience.

In trying to understand the zine, I found a handy little tutorial on how to make one from a single piece of paper. The idea is, you can do the layout of the entire zine on one page, whip it through the copier and fold into a booklet. It fits in an envelope, ready to post to all your eager, cool fans. Ours are micro, as I only had A4 paper. Click here for a complete tutorial.

image from experimentwithnature.com

It appears that children write best when they initiate and care about their own project. I have started folding a batch of zines so the kids can make up their own little publications. One child in particular is quite into it.

I wonder if we can make an Advent Calendar out of 25 zines...or maybe Christmas card zines?

Make your own Ranger cloak and cross bow

As I mentioned here, we have stumbled across all sorts of interesting things from reading the Ranger's Apprentice series. The eight year old is keen to make his own Ranger cloak using this pattern,

 

Soon after starting archery, the eight year old found a design for making a (harmless) paper cross bow. Here his finished product.

Here are the instructions

An 8 year old's accidental history of weapons and warfare

Our 8 year old started archery classes earlier this year. Dozens of home ed kids have a class for an hour and a half each Tuesday. He had been desperate to learn for months. I had postponed the activity for some time, feeling like it was a bit obscure, and not really one of those essential life skills. But, it is so cheap and convenient, that I thought we could afford to have a go.

On the eve of starting, some friends (who also home educate and do archery) suggested he read the Ranger's Apprentice series, by John Flanaghan. So we found the first book and he started reading. He ploughed through them, and Steve set about trying to catch up, to 'supervise' the reading experience. The joy of reading races between father and son are the stuff of another post.

The boys eventually persuaded me to join in. Ranger's Apprentice is a real page turner. The first book starts like a fantasy, with some mythical creatures. As the series progresses, Flanaghan switches into a much more realistic mode. The settings are all fictionalised, but resemble the environments, races and cultures of Europe, North Africa, Asia and the British Isles.

It is set in a pseudo medieval time frame, but with post modern values and politically correct attitudes (and quite a few Australian idiosyncrasies). So, a whole lot of anachronisms really! The writing and descriptions become repetitive, but each plot and setting in the twelve part series is so different that I couldn't resist them.

The great thing about this reading experience was the ongoing conversations between Steve, the 8 year old and I about the books. Even the weaknesses were a catalyst for learning and developing our own thinking and writing.

One thing we all especially loved were the details and explanations about weaponry, training, tactics and strategy in warfare. Flanaghan managed to teach us a whole lot about real historical developments and technologies through a completely fictional world. It so happens that the bow and arrow are the primary weapon of a Ranger, so it has fitted beautifully around our new archery class.

Quite conveniently, last week, we enjoyed a morning with a medieval re-enactment group. Kez documented it here. It was fun to have all sorts of weapons, fighting and technologies demonstrated which were familiar to us from our reading. It added another dimension to our web of learning.

Then, we have jumped on YouTube to find more of the same. Here is a favourite.



Ranger's Apprentice has inspired some creativity. I'll share that later this week.