I’m not sure if this is Daegan’s work or Gareth’s, but I thought it was neat way to represent some of their knowledge about dinosaurs. This is a plant-eater (hence the green leaves in the stomach), which also swallows rocks (gastroliths—the black ovals) to help grind up the plant foods, much like birds do today. I also see some neck vertebra. I’ll have to put this back on the table again and see what they do to complete the project.

A surreal / black-humoured food fight, which began with a tomato, slice of pizza, can of gasoline (petrol) and a dog. I’ll let you use your own imagination as to what happens (hint: lots of explosions and free-floating body parts):

A panel in a similar vein, involving a karate-loving mango threatening to harm a tomato (“You’re ketchup!”), in a similar manner the peanut has been harmed becoming peanut butter. Kid humour at its finest:

Now for a few that make me wonder less about the need for psychological counselling. Daegan is very proud of his dinosaur with moveable joints:

as well as his colourful clay figurine scene, complete with tree and lake. (On top of his folder for the class):

Hopefully we’ll be able to find him a claymation class in a few years; he’s already asking.

“the octopus in the ocean go wiggle, wiggle, wiggle”:

and “the squid in the ocean go squirt, squirt, squirt.”:

Then it was time to get their “graduation” certificates:

and pick up any remaining crafts that had not yet gone home. We had a few to take. An underwater world (made with sand, shells, and coloured water in a glass spaghetti sauce jar, wisely glue-gunned shut):

a paper-plate fish:

a sand- dollar:

and an alphabet-pasta’ed dolphin. Can you tell Gareth is quite fond of glitter?

This was probably Gareth’s final playschool class of any type, as next fall we are registering him for homeschool, which begins in grade 1 in Alberta. These playschool classes have been among Gareth’s favourite, and he did 4 different sessions: Rainforest Safari, Tumble Rumble, Dino Dig, and A World Down Under. They’ve been very well done, with plenty of games, crafts, songs, stories and activities each week. The teachers often brought in real items to heighten the children’s interest in the natural world, like last week when when some real sand dollars were examined, or during the Rainforest Safari class, she brought in a small sample of food grown in a rainforest for the kids to try (pineapple, coconut, and chocolate were the faves). I know Gareth will miss these classes, but it is time to move on to other things. I wonder what new adventures he will have come fall?

The background is an ordinary 8.5 x 11 sheet of blue construction paper. The dinosaur is made of a paper plate cut into segments (round middle of the plate for the body, separate tail, neck / head, and leg pieces), and then painted, and an eye later added. The clouds and tree were cut from construction paper, with the tree trunk coloured in with crayon (we were out of brown paper). All the pieces were then arranged and glued down in place.

I could tell Daegan was quite proud of this work, as he signed the back—something he rarely does:

I love the confidence he has with arts and crafts materials, and I am very pleased that I have not passed along my “art anxiety” to him. (Just as many people had horrid experiences with math in school, and as adults suffer from “math anxiety”, I had horrid experiences with art in school, and hence “art anxiety.”)

I think this one is going up on the wall of his room.   

The boys made lots of dinos (no surprise!). Gareth started with a wax-resist crayon technique, and Daegan used a coffee filter to make a transfer print—entirely his idea:

We also made some plants:

And some other animals:

Some of Gareth’s dinosaurs turned out quite colourfully:

I tried my hand at some fruit, and Daegan followed suit (with better results!). We got grapes out of the fridge to try a “still life” style creation::

Gareth continued making dinosaurs in a third style:

And Daegan’s art continued to suggest he was hungry for lunch!

Have fun creating your own bingo dauber art!

I also find things like this on the board. Gareth is showing his scientific knowledge, drawing different species of dinosaur and putting them into their correct time period (C, J, and T stand for Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic):

Another day, he wanted to draw eight different species and put them in their own boxed off area of the board. Gareth was surprised to learn that to by drawing only 7 lines, he made 8 boxes:

In the finished work I could identify a few of the species: a triceratops middle left, a pterodactyl lower left, an ankylosaur lower right (plating and club tail), etc.

Another day we made biscuits to have with our soup, and Gareth insisted on getting out the dinosaur cookie cutters. I have to admit the T rex and Stegosaurus biscuits were pretty fun:

But it’s not ALL dinos around here. I also found Gareth doing some prehistoric sea creatures (sea scorpion, jellyfish, and unknown):

And this one I found most interesting of all, as it never would have occurred to me to use the craft sticks in this way. This is Gareth’s fox. He is just finishing with the ears on the triangle-shaped head (with whiskers), neck-splayed legs-body, and bushy tail:

I look forward to finding more of his art around the house soon. I do want to emphasize that none of these were in any way my idea. I doubt that I would have gotten such creativity by saying “draw 8 creatures on the white board’ or ‘create an animal of craft sticks on the floor’.  But as Gareth seems very into art right now, I make sure to leave sticks, blocks, paper, crayons, markers, etc. within easy access for him at all times. “A teacher’s job is observe her students, and to prepare the learning environment.” –Maria Montessori (paraphrased).

The craft is made of a paper plate, cut in half and glued so as to have an open section on the bottom. It is covered in coloured tissue paper, and the tentacles are made of construction paper strips, glued to the inside. Add a string, googly eyes and a mouth, and you’re done!

The boys and I gave it a whirl today, with a few variations.

If you try this at home, we found it worked better if you put the food colouring closer together, overlapping or even on top of one another. I didn’t do this.

Now, add a drop of dish soap and see what happens. (We added a few extra drops around the edges). Here’s what we got:

It had a kind of hypnotic, lava-lamp like quality. The boys were keen to try their own bowls now that they’d seen how it was done:

I’ll just draw your attention to the background of the next photo, in case you were under delusions of “perfect homeschooling families”. Yup, that’d be our living room, with nowhere to sit between games, dinos and books all over the couches. Can’t clean now, Mom…too busy playing and learning!

We then tried the experiment with other milks. I explained to the boys how it worked, with the colouring suspended in the fat molecules of the milk. We made a hypothesis that the almond milk, being creamier, would work better than the rice milk, which is quite thin. This proved to be correct: the colouring in the rice milk just melded together, like in water, where the almond swirled somewhat, though not as much as the full fat cow’s milk. Here’s the almond milk:

Here’s the rice milk:

We went back to the cow’s milk for our final variation: using 2 colours only. The boys thought the yellow and blue combo was quite interesting, as a dinosaur appeared and then disappeared! Note the skin texture and crest on its head. Clearly a parasaurolophus!

Have fun with this at home.

In the story, the man protects the rooster from the fox, and the rooster then tells him he is a special rooster that can grant wishes. The man thinks of things to wish for, including this teapot:

The book ends by grandfather pushing the tangram pieces to his granddaughter and asking her to decide what to wish for. I did the same with the boys, who enjoyed building their own freeform shapes. You’ll never guess what they’d wish for! Here’s Gareth’s creation:

I asked Gareth what it was, and he told me, in a rather excited tone, “A T Rex! Funny that it doesn’t use the square…” (which you can see in his hand below):

Then Gareth came up with how to incorporate the square into his picture. “I know! I’ll open his mouth, and the square can be a a lawyer!” (Yes, he’s watched Jurassic Park several times—LOL):

Then it was Daegan’s turn to create:

Almost done. Where can I put the other large triangle?:

Daegan added the final piece to the body, and informed me that he had made something called an Echinodon:

Gareth then played with the tangram pieces for a while, and came to get to me show me his “funny wish."  Here’s what I saw:

I asked him what his funny wish was, and he told me “a toilet! See, here’s the lid…” (that’s what he’s pointing to in the pic above.) The kid is quite the comedian, eh?

This turned out to be a fun way to combine math, reading and art…and a bit of social studies (tangrams are Chinese in origin) to boot! If you find another good tangram book, or website, etc.. please pass it along in the comments as the boys are keen to do more.

“You know Mom, some numbers make good parts of dinosaurs. Like a 7 makes a good pterodactyl wing, and an upside down 6, or 9, make a good apatosaurus neck. And the round part is, of course, the head!”

–Daegan, out of the blue as he was working on his math one morning

I later found this drawing, which he told me he began with a zero (the body) and some 7s (the wings):

I was also wondering a bit about the ‘flasher’ pose, but when Daegs told me about his drawing he told me that bit between the legs was a tail. Whew!