Pareu project inspired by Call it Courage

 
We've progressed to the part of Call it Courage focused on Mafatu staying alive on his new island.  Older Toad made a pareu to wear in his custom built structure. In the story, Mafatu makes a pareu from mulberry fiber. Our mulberry tree is too small to harvest the bark off of so we started with plain cotton fabric. For our decoration, we looked at a book (Made in the South Pacific by Christine Price) of South Pacific art and design for tapa pattern inspiration.  Daddy Toad has some fabric with tapa inspired patterns that he bought in Moorea that we looked at as well.

Older Toad has some experience with plant based dyes because last year we did a unit study on mushrooms and he did some mushroom yarn dyeing with Grandma. I wanted to choose a different plant based dye that was more tropical so we used coffee. Coffee does not appear in the story but pareu were traditionally decorated with plant based dyes so we went with it.  I put a third of a cup of coffee grounds in a cup of water and boiled it for 20 minutes. Then I strained out the coffee and simmered the dark liquid for another half an hour. We had a nice dark liquid for our dye. We have an artist in Ybor City, Arnold Martinez, who paints using coffee and wine. Going to his studio will make a nice fieldtrip in the future. 

The hardest part of the project for Toad was to adapt to how the dye stained the fabric. He's used to the tacky feel of paint that stays where you put it, this liquid spread out more. He was getting frustrated that his pattern wasn't turning out how he wanted, but once he figured out his materials, he relaxed and adapted his design.

He also spent several days working on his structure.  The first version was shorter and got destroyed by our Lab who loves sticks.  

The second version had some help from Grandpa and was taller.  It's still up so the boys have been playing in it every afternoon.

After we read this section Toad was impressed by how much work Mafatu had to do to stay alive.  Since it's Thanksgiving this week, I worked that appreciation into a brief talk of the history of Thanksgiving.  Worlds apart, but I hope he got a little appreciation for how easy we have it these days.  He had fun working on his projects and got to change back into his regular clothes so the mosquitoes wouldn't eat him, and went to the fridge for a snack.  TOUGH life!

 

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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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Making Rope Inspired by Call it Courage

We've started reading Call it Courage by Armstrong Sperry as our literature study for Australia/Oceania.  For us it's probably the perfect story - there's fishing, hunting pigs, tropical plants, dogs, boating, boys, you get the idea.

Rather than use it as literature and break it down like in English class, I'm arranging our whole study around projects that recreate Mafatu's tasks in the book.  Projects that hit those themes above that are so loved around here.  For chapter 1, we made rope.  Chapter 1 talks about Mafatu making sharklines out of coir.  Toad did a handwriting worksheet with the definition of coir (fibers from coconut husks used for making rope) and then we went outside to make our own rope.

We had a teeny bit of background with rope.  Earlier this year at the state fair, the Toads got to try their hands at making twisted rope.

Mafatu didn't have access to a rope making machine and neither d0 we so we plaited our rope.  It was an opportunity to learn how to braid too by plaiting the fibers rather than twisting.  Our Bismarck palm puts out thread-like fibers so that was the first material we tried.  It's the curly parts below.

Braiding those gave us a small plait.  

 
Toad could tell that the braid was stronger than the individual fibers but that it wasn't the best material since it was brittle.  I showed him how to work in new threads when ones broke or he ran out of room.

Since the Bismarck fibers were only semi successful and we don't have any coconut palms in the yard we talked about what else we had that Mafatu might have had.  Toad wanted to try fibers from a Queen palm next.  He found those easier to braid.  Even though they were stiffer, they were larger, and easier to hold.  He discovered that while easier to braid it didn't make very good rope either since he ended up with a flat band rather than a round rope.  He was really appreciating the rope making machine at this point.

The Toads love fishing for sharks so they learned something about the benefits of the tackle shop for sure.  Trying to make their own rope they learned something about the materials they used, the problems in their technique and gained a bit of appreciation for the challenges involved in having to make all your own supplies.   The project was super successful and we're looking forward to the rest of the chapters and the upcoming projects for those.

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