Crafty Science + Games

On the last day of our week we have been being crafty in science, playing oceanography games and doing our nature notebooks. This first game was invented by Ellen McHenry the author of Professor Pigs Magic Math which we did when the boys were about 6 years old. I am a big fan of Ellen's Inventive games and crafts. You will see more from her in just a minute. Best thing is she is offering all of them for FREE!

Bites and Pieces is played very much like concentration, but instead of matching just to cars you are trying to find the info card plus the head, middle and tail of the shark. The boys learned many shark names and ways that God has made sharks unique one to another.

 Max putting his first shark together.

 Zak putting his first shark together.

TJ putting his first shark together.

Sting Ray hand puppets also invented by Ellen McHenry. We used some old food covering material and it worked beautifully and cost us nothing! Zak added some cool spots to his sting ray and it was so cool how he accidentally lined up the pattern to take advantage of the fake wood flooring pattern on the material. 

 Max is taking the pattern onto the fabric.

Now to cut it out.

Using a hot glue gun we put the pieces together and added some tin foil eyes. 

All three different, but all well done!

3D Ocean Bingo sorting animals of the ocean by Zones.

Her clam diagram is brillant!

And I am so impressed with this pop-up-barnacle page.

Check out what is inside the barnacle...

We have also been adding some more animals to our ocean board.

 And doing some nature notebook entries

Zak drew this clever little drawing of our dog, Diamond.

Thanks for dropping by!

 I hope you enjoyed our pictures. :)

Painting 101 Continued

 This week we are wrapping up our painting skills lessons from I Can Do All Things art curriculum which we began last year. I say painting skills because in this art lesson being creative was not our objective. The objectives were to learn the skills of painting such as mixing paints, wielding a brush, mixing colors, and  planning what to paint first then second etc. I think this is an important first step to being able to create. They are a few of the foundations that one must master so that when the artist has a worthy idea it can be expressed as the artist wishes.

Each time we sat down to paint inevitably Zak would ask, "How do you make Green?" after three or four lessons it changed to "How do you make brown?" Now he can make any kind of green or brown that he wants. 

Learning to wield a brush os not easy, it is different than the markers the boys are used to in that it is flexible and must be eloped with paint often. The boys became better at not scrubbing the brush, when loading it and when painting. They also learned how to move the brush to stay inside the lines. Some better and more patient than others but all in all they all improved in this. They also learned how to use the brush from the tip and how to move it t make different kinds of strokes.

They were always given red, blue, yellow, white and black to begin the paintings form there, they mixed what they needed.

They learned how to mix secondary colors and see how they relate to each other. 

They learned how to use tiny bits of blue added to white to make a sky blue but not too blue.

Because we are painting a drawing already drawn for us the student can focus on the painting not the drawing part of making a picture beautiful. Each lesson picture once painted looks great so the student can feel good about his or her efforts.

The prescribed drawings were often looked at by the boys and they would exclaim, "I could never paint that!" but by breaking it down and learning maybe a new skill or two they were bale to do it. Thus the title of the curriculum is true, the body learned they CAN do ALL things.

During the lesson above with the clown the boys realized that planning what things to paint first or second or third would help them paint the picture better. So on this lesson we talked through why the eyes, eye brows, lips and all the details came out messy, and they learned that they must paint from the background to the foreground so the paint can overlap and leave clean lines.

More challenges with shadows and how to make a darker green to illustrate that.

Some lessons just did not turn out all that well. There is always next time.

More practice making colors with the parrot lessons and adding white to make the brighter.

Max did this painting and because he had learned how to plan what to paint first his flowers came out beautifully!

I had one rule that we always followed and that was that they were never allowed to use the paint straight from the tube, they must mix at least two colors together. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing their good work!

Thanks for stopping in.

Passport to the Middle Ages

TJ's Viking longboat one of the souvenir crafts from stop #21.

TJ painting his viking longboat sail.

The back end of Zak's Viking longboat.

Max's Viking longboat dry docked on his loft bed self.

Front view of TJ's Viking long boat.

A close up of Zak's jousting mini book. The arm broke off but it should move up and down with a brad hinge and the knights face each other and can be slid forward to simulate a joust.

The inside of the jousting mini book

Max working on his jousting mini book.

Max's complete jousting mini book.

TJ playing the Fox and the geese game with Dad.

We attached the fox and geese prints to old othello game pieces so they played better on the board. Looks easy but it is a very challenging game for the geese.

TJ's own coat of arms. We used this book for ideas and then scanned some pages so the boys could trace them via the window light. They first selected what shape of shield thy wanted. Then they selected a motto, we decided not to try and put it in latin. Then they added animals and scrolls etc as they wanted by tracing them onto their paper using the sunlight as a light box.

Max's Coat of arms.

Following are excerpts from their medieval newspaper, templates provided by Passport tot eh Middle Ages.

Pageboy advertisement by Max.

Upswitch Armory advertisement by Max.

Jousting Match news article and Viking long ship drawing by Max.

Viking Longship illustration by TJ

News article and accompanying picture by Zak.

New Castle Article and picture by TJ.

Zak's coloring page and Viking souvenir craft card.

TJ's Rooms of a Castle overlay.

The castle without the overlay.

Lifting the overlay.

The boys have been getting postcards from historical figures like Alfred the Great and the Viking chief Rollo. They then illustrate the picture for the postcard. This is Max's postcard rack.

All these wonderful hands on activities are from Passport to the Middle Ages.

Thanks for stopping in. 

:)