Symmetry and Kirigami (Fri Art)

 Just before bed last night, Nel came up to me and said, "Mum, can we try paper cutting tomorrow?" showing me a piece of kirigami she'd done. Nel's always loved patterns and symmetry, it's in the way she does things, in the way she keeps and arranges her stuff as well.

So today, I headed to the art shop, got stuff and did a simple lesson with my girls.
We first reviewed parallel/perpendicular lines which we did in last week's art.
Then we looked at the definition of symmetry.

 We talked of how it existed in nature, in objects around the house, even in alphabets. We did a brief walk around the house and in the garden to spot objects that had symmetry.

Having done that, I gave them a simple project. I drew them the following and asked them to complete the picture, and to make sure it was symmetrical.

 Here's what Jo did with hers.

Nel worked on mine for a while, and when it didn't look too symmetrical, she abandoned it and decided to work on a new piece.

 Nel's work, defining symmetry.

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Having done that, we moved on to Kirigami, since it is based on symmetry. We looked at some examples of Kirigami online and started working on our own.

 I did 2 basic ones to show the girls.

 Jo requested for one on dogs and cats, and we came up with this. Here she's adding expressions to the animals.

 Nel's first kirigami

 Jo attempted a whale, but it tore to 2 parts.

 Nel's work again, where she's layered 2 pieces together.
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Kirigami completed we proceeded outside to work on symmetrical painting.

 We divided the paper to 2 sections,n Nel on one side, and Jo on the other. We painted in layers, folding the paper after every few strokes to see the outcome.

 After several layers of painting and folding, this was the outcome.

 We then stuck our kirigami onto the painting using green tag.

And this was the final piece of art for the day. :)  Children really enjoyed today's work of art. :)

Acrostic and Autobiographical Poems

After last week's class where we did "Writing in the jungle" we're back to poetry writing. Nel enjoys this a lot, and has loved doing all the poetry assignments.

Last week she worked on quite a number of  Acrostic Poems. Here's just 2.

1)  Fresh air

   Air that cools sweaty bodies

   Nice and cooling.

2)         Creamy!

           Really delicous!

           Enjoyed by all ages,

           Aching to eat some cream now...

           Marvelous taste...yumm. 

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This week we started off by working on Autobiographical Poems. We looked at some formats as found here, and will be working on a few formats through the week.

Nel's very first attempt at such a form (First draft only with further editing to be done later).

Nel

Strong, creative, kind and graceful.

Sister of Brave Jo!

Lover of strong Shetland ponies,

           of creamy cheese cake,

           of furry poodles.

Who feels irritated when somebody keeps on calling me,

Angry when somebody scares me,

and calm when my mum plays a nice tune.

Who needs to read before going to sleep,

Who feels sadness when somebody teases me,

Who fears when meeting with a new friend,

Who gives old toys to the poor,

Who believes that toys come alive,

Who would like to see China,

Who enjoys cooking with my mummy,

Who likes to wear shorts and short sleeve shirts.

Resident of South East aSIA,

Last name, Detective Drew.

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Here's Jo's attempt at autobiographical poem, a different format from Nel's.

Just because I'm tiny

Doesn't mean I can't swim

Doesn't mean I can't cook food
Doesn't mean I am whiny.

Just because I am six years old

Doesn't mean my mum has to carry me

Doesn't mean I chuck toys

Doesn't mean I cry when I fall down.

Just because I'm a girl

Doesn't mean I'm weak

Doesn't mean I'm sexy.

Doesn't mean I'm scared of slugs and worms.

Just because I'm a girl, tiny and six years old.

Why do adults sometimes think 6 year olds are scared?

Why do Guys think girls are dumb?

I may be tiny, but doesn't mean I can't do anything!

Friday Art

Some random art done this week. With the leaves collected while having a class in the forest the kids briefly made these simple collages.

Bats in forest by Nel

Falling Leaves by Jo

2) We also looked at 3D shapes this week, and studied parallel lines.

Jo's picture after studying parallel lines

She drew a picture of my thesaurus and we marked parallel lines with symbols (flower, clouds and diamond.)

Again, parallel lines, but this time circular lines. She's marked the parallel lines in darker red.

3)  Since it's Good Friday today, I gave the children charcoal and asked them to create art to depict Good Friday. I gave them the following instructions - Colour the whole paper in charcoal, then erase lines to create your Good Friday Picture, remembering that Christ died on the cross for us.

This is Jo's Work. If you look carefully, you'll see stick figures hung on 3 separate crosses. The one in the middle has a signboard, and Jo says it reads "King of the Jews." There are also speech bubbles. In Jo's words,  the prisoner on the left says "If you are the king, safe yourself." The second prisoner on the right says "Why do you say that? We are the ones who did bad things, while He didn't do anything wrong." And Jesus' speech bubble says "Today you will be with me in paradise." There's also a crow flying to peck the bad thief's eye, and also 2 Easter bunnies with eggs telling others that Christ will rise on the third day.

Nel's drawing of Christ, hung on the cross, a sash around his body.

Quick sketch of Christ by me.

Writing in the jungle

Continuation from previous post (where we focused on photography).

This year's been a slight struggle for Nel, as far as story writing is concerned. Some of you have read, she's my dreamer who loves reading and fixing things. It's funny how she loves reading, but finds writing a dreadful chore. To help change her perception about writing I decided on something different, thus a  trip to the jungle to inspire creativity. (can't believe it took me this long to do this!)

Our first stop was the deer farm. The children spent a lot of time here, just feeding and petting deer.

 

As we continued to trek we also stopped to collect leaves for our collage project and gave the leaves special names like "star leaf", "sparkly purple leaf" etc. (all part of creativity.)
10 minutes into the forest reserve, the road became quieter, with hardly anyone in sight except for the occasional passerby on bicycle.  I whispered to my children, "Let's pretend!"

Putting on a worried face, I said,  "Children!! We're....we're lost in the jungle! I think we've lost our way...it's getting dark, we've  hardly got any water left....."

Jo replied in a practical, logical voice/face, "Mum, the way out is the other way. Just turn back."

"Shhhh, Jo!! (Act along will ya!!) If you talk loudly, the magic black panther is gonna get all of us, he will EAT Us UP!! Quick, we must seek shelter!"

Just then, an aeroplane flew by and I shouted like a mad woman "An Aeroplane, an aeroplane! Wave children wave!!! Stop airplane ! HELP US! We're LOST! We're here!!!" My children grinned as I waved my hands wildly.  Of course, the air plane flew by not stopping for us, and I acted upset and worried.

With that, Jo and Nel got sucked into the story and we began our imaginary journey through the forest. It's funny how when acting scared all the sounds in the forest become alive. Alas, our imagination came to a halt when Jo, over excited, tripped, fell and cut her knee against the tar road. ;(      *sigh* Well, the poor girl cried, while I gave her tissue and told her to press it hard to stop the bleeding. You'll see later, how she used this learning experience in her story.

Once consoled, we continued by looking for the magic dragon (bus/tramp) which would transport us magically back home.

Back at the entrance, we sat down, had  lovely ice-cream, and together Nel and Jo wrote a story. It's wonderful to note how they included their experiences in the story, (the leaves, deer, the falling down, ants and all).  Here's their work for the day (edited once with Nel). Not perfect with lots of room for revision and correction...but a good start to creativity!

 I'm glad to say in  the end Nel said "Mum, I never knew writing could be so fun. I enjoyed it." That's all I wanted to do, to inspire her, and I think we succeeded in doing that today. :)

Story by Nel and Jo.

 It was a nice and glorious day when 3 friends named Rose, Marigold and Cheese decided to go for a walk in the forest. Strolling hand in hand, Marigold, the oldest girl with dark brown hair, talked gently to a baby squirrel on her shoulder. Kind-hearted Rose, who was 10 years old, chatted with Cheese, the youngest, about cheese and mice.

While  walking in the forest, they chanced upon a baby deer. Marigold tried to coax it towards them but it ran away. The frightened deer thought they were trying to trap it when actually they just wanted to play with it. Because it was so adorable, Cheese decided to follow the deer, and so the girls followed. Without realising it, they went deeper and deeper into the dark forest.

Feeling tired after walking, Cheese sat down on a broken tree  trunk. Unbeknownst to her, an invincible, blood-sucking spider lived in that trunk. Suddenly, Cheese cried out in pain, as her legs began swelling and bleeding profusely! She had been bitten by the spider, and slowly she began to pass out. Rose panicked and quickly took a giant leaf and pressed it hard on Cheese's leg to stop the bleeding. Marigold splashed water on Cheese's face, but Cheese did not wake.

Cheese lay motionless, her face was pale, her lips dull purple. They didn't know what to do.

Suddenly a fairy appeared in the sky and asked "What happened?"

"Something bit Cheese on her knee, we don't know what it was." said Marigold.

"I've got eyes all over the place, I know who bit her. It was the nasty, mischievous spider, always biting everybody! Well, to help Cheese, you have to collect star leaves, fern leaves, purple and rainbow leaves. We'll use these to make a magic potion.  This potion will stop the bleeding. Then, go find Mr. Dragon and ask him for a drop of his tears and wash it over Cheese. Cheese will wake then."

Quickly, Rose and Marigold rushed to find the dragon. While looking for the dragon, it started to rain. Strangely, it rained only on them and nowhere else.
"Something's wrong around here" said Rose.

They looked up and saw a dragon crying, sitting on a branch because there was a thorn in his foot. "Quickly put up their bucket to collect the tears," said Marigold to Rose.

While Rose collected the teardrops, Marigold looked up and saw the thorn. She took pity on the dragon and asked the dragon if she could help him. Mr. Dragon said "Yes" and let down his long tail so Marigold could climb it. Marigold had a difficult time climbing the dragon's tail, and kept slipping. Finally she got to the top and tugged the thorn out of the dragon's foot.

The dragon was so grateful
The dragon lived in a big gigantic tree, and in this tree there was a  gigantic nest which belonged to him. And in this nest were all sorts of leaves!

"Awesome man!" said Rose. "Where did you get all these leaves?"

"Oh I went to Korea and collected all this during autumn. But these are heavy. I don't think you can carry all these back by yourselves. Need help?"

"Yes," said Marigold. So the dragon carried the sack of leaves in his mouth and flew the girls back to Cheese. They took the bucket of tears and poured it all over Cheese. 

Cheese woke suddenly and asked "Where am I?"

They gave the leaves to the fairy who put it all in a hot pot of boiling crystal purple medicine. It formed a greenish concoction. The fairy warned that if human hands  touched the medicine, their fingers would drop off and only a hummingbird could touch the medicine.

So Marigold whistled a little tune and a little hummingbird came flying. The little bird dipped its claw in the medicine and hopped on Cheese's wound and suddenly the bleeding stopped. They cried "Yippie" and thanked the fairy, bird and dragon.

Wondering how to go home, they saw some marching ants on the floor and asked if the ants could lead them home. The ants nodded their heads and led the girls safely home.

The end.
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Some other random shots by yours truly.

 Saw this beauty a drinkin when we passed 'im by

 This is not funny . I called em deers and said "Heiya, could I take a picture of you guys and gals?" and they all turned their backs on me.

 This was the sweetest thing there...a little babe, shy of us but observed us from a distance. So pretty indeed. :)

 To end the exciting day, we decided to make fire

using a magnifying glass.

Children's 1st try at DSLR photography

After a very busy week working back to back, I felt trapped in routine, my mind heavy with work. So I decided today we'd take a break. I woke my children early, told them to pack and said "We're heading to the jungle!" My children rejoiced with "HooRAY!!!!" and off we went to Bukit Cahaya.

My goals for the morning were to 1) Teach my children Photography 101, using my DSLR
                                                   2) Collect leaves for collage art
                                                   3) Create inspiration/imagination for story writing

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Within minutes of walking, I spotted a dragon fly down a slope near a pond and wandered off to capture shots of it. (I admit, I forgot my children for a while.)

 I was drawn from photography by the cries of my children shouting "Mum! Mum! Where are you???" I ignored them for a while till I saw them bounding down the slope towards me saying "There she is! I knew mummy would wonder off!!"

Hahaa.......wonderful start to inspiring my children. Well...I decided heck, while at it, why not give my children a shot. So we looked for things my children would like to take.  I gave them just one rule for the day-  "Shoot photos, but for today, DO NOT put your object in the middle of the screen, anywhere but middle is fine."  I set the camera in auto mode, but allowed them both to use the zoom lens as well focus manually to see how one can focus on particular objects in the same area and make others look blur.

 I chose these leaves as Nel's first subject, asking her to take shots from different angles. As we looked at her 10 over shots, we noted how sometimes the branch was in focus and sometimes the leaves, depending on where she focused.

 Then using zoom and manual focus, Nel captured a shot of this dragonfly. She's pretty pleased with her shot and now wants a DSLR! :)

    Nel's 3rd subject of the day.

 THis is Jo's photo of the day. I told her I liked it, coz it has a little frame around the flower, and she's pretty happy with it too.

     Jo loves weeds, she's always making bouquets out of them for me. Thus her shot of this wild flower today. While editing, she wanted more red in it. I did that for her, and here's her shot.

Will continue about story writing in a new post tomorrow. Now inspiring them to write was an interesting exercise for me and them! Will write about it soon. Stay tuned. :)

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There's laziness in me bones now, and reluctantly I blog just to keep going less the spark to blog totally dies.This week we took part in the March of the Frogs, we went to watch the Twits (a local theater production which was quite fun to watch), the kids FINALLY visited Kidzania and had a WHOLE day there trying all sorts of roles (thanks to aunty DJ who took them), we went ice-skating with some goody friends .....and yeah, it's basically been an out of the house week...and thus this mama thinks me is tired.

As for learning, Nel's still reading up on environmental science, studying bout energy, and now reading up Renewable Energy. Where we used to struggle with math, there's suddenly a light coming through *wink*, will blog about this when my mind's not so lethargic. She's CRAZY about mysteries right now, and hopes to meet a girl who's equally crazy about mysteries, or better yet, meet Carolyn Keene, the author of Nancy Drew herself.
As for Jo....well apart from her  project on snakes (which she wants to continue studying), we're gonna include now a study on whales (she requested), especially after receiving a very big beautiful poster all about whales from Uncle PA! She's also reading....about...can you guess?? Mermaids of course! Whenever we're at the library, of course, she gets books about mermaids, and her dear sis Jun just got her a new book of mermaids so she's been reading that over and over and over again.

Ok...enough of my boring rambling. Just some random pictures below.

Jo's garden's done well and we cooked our first harvest of Pok Choy. As for the radish, I pulled out one and realised, they're far from ready. Still tiny and will take a couple of weeks more I think. Only one pumpkin plant survive. The rest mysteriously disappeared.

We went help PA clean out his fish tank and of course we wondered if there were any tadpoles under the beautiful leaves...unfortunately none.

And so the girls helped him catch the baby fish out, scrubbed the tank and put in new water for all the creatures that live in his tank.

I'm not sure if Uncle PA will invite them again though...coz they err..ended up playing too much with the fishies.

Had to stop to take a pic of flowers...so tiny, but so beautiful

It's been a while since i Took any pictures of critters. I still haven't gotten any macro lenses....time just doesn't allow me to go buy one. But I saw this beauty sitting on my banana leaf. Managed to get 3 shots before it flew off. This is best as I could get.

And if you've read my blog, you'll now know, I love spiders. Saw this beauty on my banana leaf too. A lot of things have come to my banana plant, from here to there, there to here, funny critters are everywhere.

And because I love spiders, I love webs. Nel was watering the plants when she yelled "Mum, Mum!! Come immediately COME! It's BEAUTIFUL!!!!" (as you can see...my children love critters too). And I saw this beautiful web that she was shouting about, and thus a picture.

..Since we're on the topic of critters, here's one more on my lime leaf. Really really tiny fella! not more than 1mm. Hubby thinks it's a caterpillar, i thought it was a slug. So...I'm not sure what it is...just another funny whiskered old thing.

So what do you think it is??? 

March of the Frogs

We signed up with http://www.enoprogramme.org/ to take part in a "Be Climate Smart" campaign. Together with a group of friends, we made paper marche frogs and took to the streets to participate in the March of the Frogs. During this march, our children went round telling people about climate change,  asking them to pledge to make a difference by helping our earth. The pledges suggested by  ENO were as follows:

A)Decrease the temperature at home by 1 Celsius and turn off the lights whenever you don't need them.

B)Don't leave your TV, computer or stereo in a stand-by mode but switch them off when you don't use them.

C)Change your light bulbs into energy-saving bulbs.

D)Change your electricity into one that uses renewable resources.

E)Don't waste in vain - prefer to fix and repair rather than buy new

F)Sort your waste and recycle whenever possible

G)Use products that have as little packaging as possible.

H)Use public transport and walk or bicycle instead of driving a car.

I)Eat local food and less meat.

J)When you buy food I use a bag or an old plastic bag.

K)Favour environmentally labelled products.

L)Plant a tree and ask you friend to do the same.

First people to pledge :)

When we first started, most children were nervous and refused to approach anyone. To act as good role model,  I collected the first pledge by approaching a group of guys seated outside Subway. These guys happily listened and obliged, and they made the first pledges which they fed into Franck our Frog. :)

As the day drew on, almost all the children became very confident, approaching random people, asking them to make pledges to safe the climate.

During the whole campaign, the children met friendly as well as rude people. Some waved them off with excuses such as "Find me later" or "I'm in a hurry."  One lady waved us off as if in fear, opened her handbag and wanted to throw us some money. When we told her we didn't want money, but just a pledge for the environment, she was surprised. There were a few others like that who reacted in surprise,  "Is that all you want? Just my pledge?? " they asked in disbelief.

In total, the children spent about 2 hours on the campaign, and collected close to 400 pledges, pretty good for such a small group of children! As the various people they approached read the pledges and signed them, I believe our children who participated were making a great impact, (as one dad put it), by planting eco seeds in these people.  

In the end, I think the whole campaign gave a new sense of empowerment to the children too. They came away feeling more confident about themselves, proud of their achievement and role they've played in society. :)  Just before we called it a day, Nel my more introverted child, stepped away from the group. I saw her approach a lady all by herself, and asked if this lady would pledge to help the environment. For me, as mum, I felt proud of my gal...that she was able to break away from her usual self by approaching a total stranger to share about climate change. Proud of you Nel!  :)

One of our kids wearing the pledge

As the day went on, our children, more confident began approaching total strangers by themselves, sharing about climate change and asking for pledges.

A student feeding a pledge into our frog.

This guy humored the children because he pledged to do almost everything on the list!

reading the pledges, deciding which they would be able to carry out.

Other members of the group doing their part

Some people made pledges and left encouraging notes for my girls. :)

At home, we sorted out the pledges and Nel will be using the results to make a graph and we'll be analysing the results together.

 Here's some of the frogs that went with us.


Will YOU pledge to make a difference by pledging one of the above to help our earth?