Titanic at Night

I thought it would be fun to do some art activities that took place at night.  Working on black paper gives different effects but we don't do it very often.

I took this coloring page at Kids-n-fun and redrew a simplified version on to black paper.

Titanic at Night

I cut a sponge into a star shape and glued it on to a cork.  Keeping my Toddler entertained did a blog post about her button stamps that gave me the idea for this.

Then I gave younger Toad his paint which included iridescent medium.  It's the best thing ever because it makes all your paint shimmery.  The boys went through a phase where they refused to paint without it.  The picture above is his interpretation of the project.  He had colored pencils and a paint brush too.

For older Toad, I took one of his premade books and glued black paper to the front.  On the back I glued his ticket from the exhibition.  I talked about the exhibition in my first Titanic activities post here.  I gave him our box of Prismacolors and asked him to do a drawing of the Titanic hitting the iceberg.  I said the project as a whole was to describe his experiences the night the Titanic sank from the perspective of Nils  Odahl.  Mr. Odahl is the passenger that he was assigned for the exhibition.  Then he chose to fill one whole side of the book with a drawing of the Titanic with its lifeboats being lowered.

On the other side he wrote his story.  It said:
The night was quiet.  Suddenly the Titanic crashed into an iceberg.  Just before the Titanic sank it split in two.  The bow sank right away.  The stern bobbed for a few seconds then sank.  The Titanic was gone.  Survivors huddled in lifeboats.  Around 3:30 AM a signal rocket streaked the sky.  Mr. Nils sank in the disaster.

  
To focus on the good things about this story - Older Toad's handwriting is soooo much better.  It's great that it's legible.  His spelling is awesome.  Now I have to interject as the nitpicky teacher and detective of all things curriculum.  We've been using All About Spelling as our spelling curriculum.  I've been really pleased with it and have continued to use the lessons in order thinking learning each spelling rule would give him a good foundation.  Which after doing this story I think I need to reevaluate.  Toad's become a cautious speller.  He wants to confirm every letter before he commits it to paper.  If you press him he will spell every word orally fine.  I think I'm stifling his writing by focusing on the handwriting and spelling.  

During this story I told him he spells great and needs to be more confident and just write it down.  I told him I'd help him with his spelling after he was done but I'm sure he'd spell everything right.  Starting with ...Survivors and ending with..sky, rather than try and spell he got out one of the Titanic books we've been reading to confirm the spelling of the words since I said I wasn't helping him until the end.  Coincidentally, those two sentences in his story sure sounded exactly like the ones in the book.  When we read his story together at the end, we had a talk about what plagiarism is and why it's bad.

Moving forward on our creative writing journey I think I need to jump ahead in the All About Spelling curriculum so he's being pushed more.  If he's being pushed he'll make some mistakes and correct them, and see it's all okay and part of learning. I'm also going to get the Grammar Island curriculum from Royal Fireworks Press.  I've heard good things about it and I think focusing on aspects of writing more than mechanics at this time would give him more opportunities for creativity.  I'm hoping it'll help him see his story as a large work of art rather than focusing on the minutia of each letter.



 
 
 

Iridescent Medium 2.5 oz. When mixed with watercolor, this medium gives an iridescent, glittery effect.

Premier Colored Pencil Sets set of 36 These soft, thick lead pencils have been enhanced with a better bonding process, providing professional, artist quality color while resisting breakage. They provide high blendability, excellent lightfastness, and a smooth laydown that will not scratch.Unmatched in brilliance, Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils are perfect for illustration, renderings, landscape, and portraiture. The pencils are non-toxic, AP certified, and do not contain rainforest wood.

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Call it Courage 'Clothing' Project

We homeschool three days a week. One day per week is coop and one day is public school. Even though it's only three days a week, by afternoon I am DONE. Sometime between 2:00-3:00 it's required the kids be outside. We have a lovely, big, fully fenced yard so it gives me a break and they get some unstructured time.

This week, older toad decided to spend some of that time making fabric. He found one of the ginger plants in the backyard had very soft leaves on the bottom. He came to me and asked if he could turn them in to fabric. While it did involve my effort to get out the thread and thread his needles for him, I appreciated his self-directed project so I helped him out. The picture below is what he did. He thought it was neat. We've talked about fibers and how fabric is made (wool and cotton) and he realizes this isn't anything close to the real thing, but he just enjoyed the process. I love these projects that they come up with entirely on their own and try to work them in to 'school' to give more validation to what they've done.

We've (he reads aloud one page, I read aloud one page alternating) been reading Call it Courage intermittently so I used his fabric and the book as a writing prompt for a creative writing activity. We don't do enough creative writing, in my mind anyway, which I talked about in a post here. We're trying to do one story that Toad writes, both creatively and penmanship, per month. So this ended up being perfect. Below is what he wrote. I've edited for capital and lower case letters in the correct places in the transcription. I orally helped him with his spelling so that was all correct and the grammar is all his.  He illustrated the first page with Mafatu and Uri in the boat.

Mafatu lost his clothes in the ocean. Then he saw land. The canoe drifted towards the land. The canoe shot up in the air and fell on a coral reef. He swam to land. He saw Uri drinking water from a brook. Mafatu found some plants with soft leaves. He made clothes with the leaves he found. The end.

Hardly Shakespeare I know, but I was thrilled he could recall what we read in his own words so well, add a little of his own writing that followed the prompt so well, and actually write it all himself legibly. It's huge progress for us.

I do have a pareu project planned anyway, which we'll do next week so this was just gravy.

I've included a list of some of the Call it Courage resources I found below:

Biography of Armstrong Sperry maintained by his granddaughter

Geography through literature worksheets based on Call it Courage

Taking Grades albatross graphic organizer

Jumping Brain worksheets

What win/win projects have you done lately?

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Fishing in Lava - creative writing

I did a post last week about our lack of attention towards creative writing activities. Here is the link to the post that was mainly about free fishing printables for creative writing.

My goal is currently at least one story that Toad dictates to me and one he writes himself each month. His handwriting skills are pretty bad and he finds the act of writing frustrating so I can't push that too much without a lot of conflict. 

I gave him the writing prompt of combining fishing and lava for his story. We're wrapping up our study of volcanoes this week and next week we'll move into the continent of Australia/Oceania and start reading Call it Courage. Those are some themes included in those upcoming subjects so I was trying to build in a pre-project.   Being the staid, boring adult I was expecting something along the lines of someone who fishes in Hawaii but he got much more creative. 

This was his first draft: 

I fish in lava. I catch rocks. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water. Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch. I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch. 

On one of the listserves I subscribe to, someone recommended a PBS creative writing story guide issued in conjunction with their annual writing contest. I thought this curriculum would meet our needs nicely at this time.  Obviously, I liked that it was free since this is not a huge focus of ours, but I also liked that it covered all the basics in child friendly language (freeing me from having to effectively paraphrase), was illustrated with kids art, and emphasized being creative first and then editing what you've got.

Once I got his story all written down, we talked about what a paragraph is, editing for clarity and word choices.  I used colored pencils to mark up the story I transcribed and he got it right away.

This is an approximate copy of what I showed him about the flow of his story.  I just circled his work with colored pencils.

I fish in lava. I catch rocks. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water. Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch. I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.

I explained the elements of his story using the concepts of subject, setting and plot and showed him how the purple sentences were about him as the subject and where he was.  The green sentences were action and the blue would make a great conclusion since it summarized the point of his actions in the story.  As soon as he saw the color blocks he got it right off and liked how it sounded rewritten to this which includes two sentences he added:

     I fish in lava. I catch rocks. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water.   
     Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch.  Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.   I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house.My house is made out volcanic rocks.  My house is made out of the hardest rocks.

Now he liked the structure and I was really pleased by his quick editing.  Being the teacher I wanted to draw his attention to his word choices so I marked it up with one color to draw attention to his word choices.

      I fish in lava. I catch rocks. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water.   
     Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch.  Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.   I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house.  My house is made out of volcanic rocks.  My house is made out of the hardest rocks.

Obviously he likes the word sometimes.  I mentioned how many times it was in there and we talked about some synonyms.  He chose to keep all of the sometimes'.  I gave him the word buoyant because I didn't think he knew it.  He chose to keep most floatable.  We talked about how rakes as an object didn't really go with all the other cookware and he agreed and chose to drop it.  He did see the repetitiveness in his last two sentences and so this was his final draft.  At his point I should stress I'm in no way trying to squelch his creativity so these are all gentle suggestions.  If he says no, it's his choice since it's his story. 

     I fish in lava. I catch rocks. I fish at the biggest volcanoes. Sometimes I fish at the most active volcanoes. Sometimes I catch lots of rocks. Sometimes I don't catch very many rocks. I catch different kinds of rocks. Sometimes I catch basalt and sometimes I catch pumice. The most floatable rocks I put in water.   
     Sometimes I make things with the rocks I catch.  Sometimes I make plates out of the rocks that I catch. Sometimes I make rakes and cups out of the rocks I catch. Sometimes I make handles out of the rocks I catch.   I melt different kinds of rocks together and make stripes. I make stripes to decorate my house.  My house is made out of the hardest volcanic rocks. 

I don't know why it never occurred to me to use the color to help him organize his thoughts but it worked great.  I wrote his final version into an accordion book.  In the past, we've made the accordion books as a project.  This year I knew I wanted to focus more on what was going in the book so I bought book kits from the art supply.  He illustrated his sentences.  The covers were from free art time last week and were repurposed for this since they were volcano colors.

I consider the project a resounding success.  He enjoyed it, learned something, and worked diligently for a long span of time.

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Free Fishing Notebook Printables

Family values are very important.  Every family has their most cherished principles.  If my husband and I sat down and made a list of our most important values I'm 100% certain his number one would be love of fishing.  He would make a concession if you loved lure fishing more than fly fishing but it's still not really deviating.

So you get the picture how important fishing is in our house.  We do a lot of fishing but our homeschool is lacking in creative writing.  I feel we don't try to do enough as well as older Toad finds it harder than it needs to be or he should.  So we need to spend more time on the subject.

Because of all this, I was really excited to get a new freebie today.  The Crafty Classroom is sharing some free fishing printables with nice graphics here.  The printables are all free but the page has lots of ads on it, FYI.  

I know we'll put them to good use as we can combine one of our most frequent, most favorite activities with one of our least!