No Textbooks Required

Tonight we picked up a couple more books from the stack of books about Japan.

  

Little Oh - This book has beautiful illustrations. We really enjoyed the story about a little oragami girl. Parker wants to try his hand at some oragami of his own tomorrow.

 

Three Samurai Cats - I picked this book up at a used bookstore. I had seen it on Amazon when I was searching for Japanese folk tales. For a dollar I figured we'd give it a chance. Parker loved it and asked me to read it twice in row, something he hasn't done in a long time.

A couple nights ago we finally finished reading the book The Witch Family by Eleanor Estes. I picked this up in hopes to read it the week leading up to Halloween. We did get it started in time, but not finished.

Parker loved the book. Laughing all the time. And suddenly taking an interest in spelling correctly thanks to the spelling bee Malachi who talked by spelling. The two little girls in the story would sit and draw pictures and tell stories about the witch family. This continued to fuel his love of drawing and telling stories and he has plans to do the same thing.

One night while reading he drew little witch girl standing on top of the bleak, glass hill.

I set out a blank outline map of Japan. Parker asked what he was supposed to do with it. I told him anything he wanted. He chose to do this using the map in the book I Live in Tokyo and his atlas. He spent about 20-minutes working on this and wants to go back and make one of France.

We have been out on some nature walks lately. On the last one Parker decided to sketch a leaf to show what they look like here in California. But then he thought a dead, brown leaf would be boring so instead he chose one that was just brown on the edges and had a light line of yellow going around it. The rest was still green. It was trying hard to change colors.

 

 

On one of the beaches in Oregon a gentlemen kindly offered to take our picture. I didn't check what he took, just thanked him and went on our way to explore the beach. When we got home and I finally looked at our pictures I laughed out loud when I came to this picture. I do love it, but I am guessing he didn't quite know how to work my camera ;)

While reading the book My Japan Parker was interested in the Japanese characters called Kanji. With the help of Google I found a site that would translate our names into these characters. Parker decided to try his hand at painting his like the little girl in the book.

I set him up with some black paint and scratch paper. He practiced several times until he was ready to paint on the nice paper. I reminded him to write top to bottom and he set to work. This is the result, which he thinks I should matte and frame for the photo wall.

Art Gallery - October 2009

Pasta Skeleton: I saw this idea at Art Projects for Kids and knew it would be fun. It tied into our are time with the human body kit, are trip to see Strega Nona (she has a magic pasta pot), and of course Halloween. Parker loved working on his skeleton.

Art Gallery - October 2009 - Oil Pastels and Watercolors

Pumpkin: Using oil pastels I had Parker draw me a pumpkin. Then I introduced the horizon line and had him add that to his picture. I gave him the instruction to paint the picture with watercolors leaving no white on the page. His instint is usually to draw a line of blue at the top of his picture for the sky and a line of green at the bottom for the grass. But in talking about the horizon line and how it is where the sky meets the ground I could see it slowly click that there should be no white between the two.

Scarecrow: I got this idea at Deep Space Sparkle. We looked at pictures on-line of farmland then set out to draw with oil pastels. Added the sun and clouds, also with oil pastels. I asked him where his horizon line was and he was ready to draw one on. Then I told him to look closely at his picture because it was already there. He immediately noticed that the top of his hills were the horizon. I instructed him to paint with watercolors leaving no white. Then while the background dried we pulled out the box of scraps and made our scarecrows. We opted not to use popsicle sticks instead choosing to trace them onto wood colored paper. This allowed us to more easily attach the scarecrow to the paper.

Frankenstein and Pizza: A couple of pictures he made on his own with the same techniques.

 

Parker's pumpkin from Halloween. His request. Dad's carving skills.

An afternoon with oil pastels and liquid watercolors. A favorite combination lately.