Five Little Things : Building

Children seem to love building. With wooden blocks, kaplas and legos or with sticks and stones and whatever else they can get there hands on outside. There's a lot to be said on this subject. I'm going to post more about it really soon with some of my thoughts on what my three home educated kids are getting out of their building activities and why I believe they might be an essential part of childhood education. But for now, due to a very hectic week here are some photos of a fort the kids built with their cousins while on holiday using Hazel and weaving techniques.

The proud builders

A guard tower

The Well

The other guard tower

Vu d'ensemble

 

Homeschooling is living and breathing!

Lotta crafting

Paper Egg

 

Easter was a quiet affair here. An egg hunt with the compass and a map, hot cross buns and a wee bit of crafting. Mostly we’ve just been enjoying the warm weather and spending a lot of time outside, gardening, playing, cycling. Oh yeah and creating a massive hurdle course for playing at being ponys! 

Obstacles and Swings

Although it might see then that this has been a quiet time for homeschooling that is far from the truth. In so many ways our job as parents and educators is only to open their minds to possibilities and see where they take them. And to give them skill sets which will help them on their journey. In that sense learning is no more separable from living than breathing. And they are certainly doing a lot of that!

A home in the Lilacs

So I can breathe too, relax and know that all the imaginary play they are reveling in today is teaching them to use their imaginations to go beyond appearances, find creative solutions, redefine reality. I can see that knowing how to coax a seed into a seedling, taking the responsibility for watering plants, weeding, mulching – all this is giving them the tools to feed themselves and their families for the rest of their lives. And that exploring their passions and their interests fully is letting them evolve to be fully themselves, wonderful, unique beings that they are.

Homeschooling Art : Lino Block Printing with kids

Owls, Hortensias and other lovely things

So I was probably ambitious last week to think I would manage to blog and prepare our annual homeschooling inspection. It always takes a lot of time and energy but now it's over and done with I'll get back on schedule. Lino Block Printing ended up being our first spring craft. It wasn’t on the list but I’ve been wanting to give it a go for absolutely ages and a warm spring day and the need for some birthday cards provided the perfect opportunity.

We started out as we often do by talking about the technique and how it works. The kids had tried it once before in a workshop situation but didn't remember much about it. I outlined the need to think about presence and absence. I attempted to demonstrate how to use the different tools* we had safely but I’m afraid I failed miserably and instead managed to take a chunk out of my own finger! As my husband said later, well at least then they knew exactly what would happen if they weren’t careful. 

Using the tools - safely

I had two large pieces of lino which I decided to cut into small rectangles, roughly the size of a note card. Maya began to work on a flower straight away. She drew her idea directly onto the linoleum and got on with carving. Noah took some time to think about ideas and tried out things on paper before finally deciding he wanted to do a tractor. Although I wasn’t sure how this would work I let him go with it. I reminded both of them during the process that it wasn't the same as painting, there would just be one colour at the end.

I worked side by side with them on my own engraving – a magnolia flower. That enabled them to see how I was using the tools and try out things I was trying out to. I’d never done this kind of engraving before (I have engraved a lot on copper) so it was a discovery for me too. I think it's great to try things out with your children. Sometimes as adults we think we need to have everything planned out and have some degree of mastery of what we're doing in order to share it with our kids but actually I think it's really inspiring for them to see you trying things out and learning too. 

In our case, part of our homeschooling philosophy is not to view ourselves as the masters who are dispensing wisdom, but as fellow travelers on the road of learning with our children. We may have begun further along the road in most ways but they are gradually and surely catching us up and inevitably over taking us in the areas they are most passionate about.

Maya at work

We had a lot of fun especially at the printing stage. We used a blue ink specially for lino block printing which we applied with a roller. We then pressed the paper over the block and rolled it with a rolling pin. The ink was pretty thick so I think you could probably use a good acrylic paint too but we haven't tried it yet. We followed instructions from Lotta Jansdotter's beautiful book Lotta Prints. I love Lotta's designs, I have her sewing book too and it's one of my favourites.

Maya went on to do several more blocks. She loves the process of crafting and likes to practice a new thing repeatedly to gain mastery. Noah took his block away and worked on improving it to get more contrast and definition. Both children seemed to really enjoy the process, Maya said it was fun carving out her patterns. And they were both pleased with the results which were quickly making their way to various of our friends and family celebrating birthdays.

My advice to anyone wanting to try this with their kids would be go for it. It's really good fun and the results are very professional looking. I would advise making sure you know where your disinfectant and plasters are beforehand just in case any of the tools slip - it really is important to emphasize to everyone how important it is to keep hands and fingers behind the tools! That's also why it's important to use a mat if you're working on a table you don't want to scratch. And finally, make sure you print on a mat or table you can get dirty. 

Such precision and look - the hands are behind the tools!

*We have a very basic set of wooden handled tools. They came from a craft shop and cost no more than 5euros.

Homeschooling the Seasons : Spring Activities and Crafts

Spring is in the air. At the weekend the weather was so warm I hung my washing outside to dry for the first time in months, it was strangely exhilarating. And yes I am aware that it's a bit sad when you get excited about where you can dry your laundry! 

Sunny day

I've always felt it was important to bring the children's attention to the seasons. When we first began homeschooling, Waldorf was a strong influence on my approach and the emphasis on nature, the seasons and hand crafts really suited us. With three children now of varying ages I don't always get to steer the homeschooling in quite the same way I did when I only one. However, I do try to keep an awareness of the seasons in our lives and work on it specifically with our youngest child, Lotta. 

One of the ways we focus on the seasons is with our seasonal books and you can read about our spring favourite here. The garden also helps, March begins the season of planting and we try to get the children involved as this post explains. Last year they each had a plot and they are keen to be responsible for a part of the garden again this season. They love when we eat food that they grew themselves.

Lotta with one of her own carrots

And I also try to make sure that we get in some seasonal crafts. We often spend some time drawing and painting flowers and blossom and we usually paint eggs for easter and of course there's flower pressing and picking wild flower bouquet's. I've already had my first little person flower offering - lovely.

Yellow Bouquet

Maya in bloom

Here is a quick round up of the crafts I've spotted and think we'll give a try this spring:

• Paper Eggs to Suspend from Craft and Creativity

Craft and Creativity's Paper Eggs

• Pom Pom Easter egg painting from Crafty Morning. I think they'll enjoy the novelty of painting with a different medium than paintbrushes for this one!

• Unbelievably we've never grown cress so I think we'll give something like this from The Imagination Tree a try,  it will be great to tie in work on letters.

• Eggs for Ornithology is just one of the fantastic ideas on Imagine Childhood's wonderful list of spring crafts, I think we might also try out the blooming petit fours, spring macaroons and probably the rainbow flower wreath.

• And from the amazing Artful Parent site which we've turned to many times for inspiration, I'm really liking the stained glass window ideas (last year we used real flowers and sticky back plastic to decorate our windows), the fairy wings, and this fun with a box!

I'll be sure to update with some pictures of these crafts once we get started!

thte

Five Little Things : Thinking about Photography

Back at the beginning of February I decided to begin a 52 week long photography challenge (link here). I take a lot of photos but have never taken a course or spent a lot of time thinking about how to take better photographs. In my last post I explained our approach to kids and photography and there haven't really been any differences in my own. Of course I've been finding it hard to stick to taking a photo a week. There's so much going on in our lives that this project was always going to be difficult to fit in. At the same time I still want to try and do this and so I thought why not just catch up when I can even if that means four or five photos in a row and perhaps sneaking the odd one or two in from the archives when I haven't had much time out with the camera. Here is the fruit of my labours for weeks two and three alongside some other pictures I either came across or took recently.
 
Week Two : Straight out of the Camera

No photoshopping or editing was allowed. This is simply a close up of some seaweed on a beach in Iona. I love this shot for the colours and the strangeness.

Week Three : Land

A landscape or something inspired by land. I take a lot of nature pictures, I like the colours and the sense of peace I find out there. The seashore is one of the most restorative places for me and I love how this picture feels like a soft caress of sunlight across the land.

Some non photography challenge shots...

A beautiful close encounter

A little Photoshop work was required here to clean up the image. It was the fruit of quite a few shots.

Running to the Museum

I gave this photo a colour wash (Bazaar in google photos) to make Noah and the windows stand out more. I love this photo because it captured Noah's joy returning to St Etienne's Museum of Art and Industry where they have armor and weapons and bicycles!

Mysterious Door

I love a mysterious door and often photograph them. This one has seen some time I think and wears it proudly. I still don't know what's on the other side...

Homeschooling : How to make a Roman Soldier's Helmet

Noah has been fascinated by the Romans for quite some time now. As I posted recently we've been working on a Roman Fort model as well as and Ampitheatre. We've also watched lots of documentaries about the Roman Emprire and read lots of books. So it was no surprise when during are one on one time last week he asked to make a helmet to go with his Roman Centurion's costume. 
 

Noah trying on his Roman Centurion's Helmet

I did a quick five minutes of online research and then launched freewheeled it. Here's what we did...

Roman Centurion's Helmet Tutorial

• First I freehand drew the different parts we would need to make the helmet onto some cardboard (from a box). I got inspiration for the pieces here, you could print their templates and then trace them onto cardboard.

Cutting out the pieces

• Next we painted all the pieces with silver paint (metallic for kids from a supermarket). You could also use gold or grey. We used a roller to apply the paint and because our box was white we only needed one coat. We painted the crest section red and then cut into it like for a fringe to give a feathered effect.

Painting the helmet parts silver

The crest is painted red

• Once all the parts were painted and dried, we began to assemble the helmet. First we stuck the cheek guards to the semi-circular front piece. We then added the rectangular and pointed front piece. We also had to add on an extra rectangular piece to hide some annoying lettering on our box which the paint didn't cover even with two coats. We used staples to join the pieces together as they hold better than glue.

Sticking the pieces together

• Finally we attached the two long rectangular strips to the front piece and adjusted them to fit around Noah's head. Well perhaps one or two other people might have tried the helmet on first!

Avé César !

Homeschooling History

Noah at Rockingham Castle

As you may remember from previous posts, Noah really likes building things. When I discussed what he'd like to learn about this year, most of his ideas began with the word 'make'. So when we are learning about history making stuff has become an important part of how we do things. Making swords, daggers, shields and jewellery, castles and scrolls have all been useful projects to bring history alive. The kids also like to dress the part, Noah has a Roman Centurian costume as well as a shield we made following instructions from this book. Of course I don't have a single photo!

Today I want to share with you a project we've been working on for quite some time with the help of a kit from Usborne Books (see here). They have a series of wonderful cut-out model making books which all begin with the words Make This. We have several of these, Make this Roman Ampitheatre, Make this Medieval Castle but today I'm going to talk a bit about Make this Roman Fort.

Book Cover

We have been working on this one for quite a few weeks. These kits contain a well made series of templates to cut out and assemble. They involve a lot of cutting and have been a great way for Noah to improve his fine motor skills with scissors. There is a number scheme and instructions to follow for putting everything together. The instructions are clear and concise but some of the assembling is very fiddly. Noah is seven and needs help from an adult to follow the directions and stick the pieces together successfully. We have experimented with several glues (prit stick and liquid glue) and have come to the conclusion that the most important thing is to be patient! Holding those pieces together as long as possible is the key. 

The fort coming together

While we've been cutting out and building we've also been watching a variety of short documentaries about what life was like as a Roman soldier, as well as Roman engineering and how they built their forts. Noah has also been really interested in Roman battles and their military tactics. 

Close up on the soldier's barracks

Videos like this one which use modern computer technology to reconstruct buildings from the past helped us get a real feel for what a Roman fort would have been like. It also helped that we visited Hadrian's wall and the fort Vindolanda last summer.
 

A very wet August day at Vindolanda

We're planning to visit some Roman sites here in France later in the year. 

We've also been reading a lot of books of course. Including quite a lot about the Gaulois and the battles between Vercingetorix and Caesar. We get a lot of them from the library which means they're mostly in French hence the interest in les Gaules! We did come across this series though which is similar in style to Horrible Histories which we also own and which the kids really liked - You wouldn't want to be a gladiator! (link).

Book Making with Kids

Maya and the finished product

I began making books about eight years ago when Maya was very small. I bought this book and launched myself into it with Japanese papers, cardboard and embroidery thread. I made quite a few books for the children over the years; accordion books, cloth books and also note books with lots of fun and different pages. 

Notebook for Maya

Inside - lots of fun papers

Maya makes it her own with her original illustrations!

Last week Maya and I decided to do some book making together. She has made a lot of her own books already, with sellotape and glue and varying success. She would imitate what she saw me doing or how books seemed to be made and she learned a lot this way. This time we decided to spend our one on one time together looking at book making more carefully. I would share some of my knowledge and we would also work together with the delightful The Book Book, aimed at children, it's all about writing stories and making books. It's a wonderful book, a real treasure and worth hunting for a copy (I found it here in the UK).

One of Maya's very simple solo books

We had a lovely time together. There is something very special about sharing a passion with your child. Helping them learn to do something you love and watching them run with it is rewarding. Maya made a beautiful notebook with a variety of different papers and an amazing cover all of her own design. 

The amazing cover

And in our second session, she decided to make a rabbit shaped book inspired by the example in The Book Book.

Rabbit, rabbit!

Another amazing cover

Here is a little guide based on how we went about making these books. There are lots of other ways to bind a book. I myself often stitch my books together as this is a long lasting binding which is flexible and often a work of art in itself. But for kids, this method is simple and satisfying.


How to Make a Simple Notebook 


Please read through all the instructions before beginning as some steps may alter your choices earlier on in the process. Also I would advise having a dummy run by yourself before trying it with kids so that you have understood the process first.


Beforehand

You will need to gather some supplies: paper, scissors, glue, sellotape, a ruler and if possible, a craft/utility knife and a cutting board. These last two are not essential but you sometimes get a cleaner result with a knife and kids enjoy the responsibility of using one. Additional tools which can be fun are a bone folder (a tool for pressing your folds more effectively), clips for holding your work together and a book press - we just use heavier books ourselves. Things like stamps, felt tip pens, paints and crayons can be useful for creating nice effects on your papers.

Before getting stuck in, we usually spend a few minutes discussing what kind of book we want to make - a notebook, storybook, shaped book. This helps get our ideas flowing. It's the perfect time to flick through any books you might have or maybe take a stroll round the internet. Or just get stuck in it really depends on how you and your child work best, some need a model, others don't. The following tutorial will be for making a fairly simple notebook.  

Maya working with her signatures

Step One - Making Signatures

Take a piece of A4 paper. Fold it in half lengthwise and then again across the width. This divides the paper in four. Depending on whether you want a portrait or landscape shaped book cut the paper in half down one of the lines. You can use scissors or the craft knife, the latter gives a cleaner result if done well especially if using thicker papers or card. Maya's book is portrait shaped. You now have two little books (like cards) which in book making are known as signatures. Repeat this process to create as many pages as you would like to have in your book. If you want to use papers that are not A4 see the note lower down about size.

Step Two - Sticking your signatures together
 
To make a stronger book without sewing, we decided to glue our signatures together. Take two signatures and stick them together with glue. In the picture below Maya is sticking a yellow signature to a white one. She progressed one signature at a time, sticking each new one and deciding as she went on if she wanted to add more.

When your book has the number of pages you want, you can move on to the next step. Remember that your first page and last page must be blank as they will be used later to attach your pages to your book cover.

Sticking signatures together

Step Three - Making your book cover

A book binding needs to protect what's inside, so it needs to be more rigid and a bit bigger that the pages its covering. We made ours from cardboard about 3mm thick. We save the backs of old notebooks, packaging etc and keep it for this kind of project. 

First you need to measure your signatures. If you used different sized pieces of paper (see note below about size) then measure the biggest. In The Book Book Pietromarchi reccommends making your book cover 2cm higher and 2cm wider than the size of your pages. You need to cut out two pieces of card. If your signatures are 15cm high and 10cm wide you will need to cut out two pieces of cardboard which are 17cm high and 12cm wide. This is where the craft knife and cutting board is really useful but I have done this with scissors before.

Now for the books spine. First measure the thickness of your pile of signatures - all your pages. Pietromarchi suggests adding 10cm to this measurement. You then cut out a piece of cardboard which is the hight of your front and back cover and the width of your piles thickness plus 10cm. In the case of Maya's notebook 10cm was way too much as her pile of papers was only a few cm thick. Instead I added roughly two cm to the thickness of her pile.

The inside covers

Step Four - Assembling your book cover

We decided to decorate the book cover before gluing the three parts together. It's probably possible to do it another way or use attractive cardboard in the first place but I always do it this way round. I like to have a contrasting spine and covers. If you want to have a unified cover then you would probably be best sticking the three pieces together first and then decorating the ensemble. Maya decorated the front and back pieces with strips of paper (origami, wrapping, tissue, old magazines...) and the spine with Japanese sellotape. She covered the front and back covers with sticky back plastic to make them more resistant and then glued a piece of decorated card to the inside.

The spine piece you cut out earlier needs to be folded to form a spine and two flaps based on your measurements, for the book pictured this was about 1.5cm for the middle and 1cm either side. We measured and drew lines to know where to fold. We then scored the lines gently with the craft knife (you could use a compass or scissors) before folding to make the folds more supple and precise. 

The next step is to attach the spine to the covers. We used glue and consolidated with clear sellotape as we weren't satisfied with the hold from the glue. This also had the advantage of giving the spine the same aspect as the front and back cover which had been covered with sticky back plastic.

Once your cover is assembled manipulate it a bit to make sure it holds together and has enough flexibility to open and close.

Checking it works

Step Five -  Putting everything together

The final step is to glue your signatures, into your book cover. You use the front sheet and the end sheet to do this. Cover them with glue and place inside the cover at an equal distance from the top bottom and sides. 

Once my book is made I like to press it under a pile of heavy books for a while to let the glue set and also prevent it popping open. I also check that the pages turn and the book can be opened properly.

Notes about paper and sizing

Any kind of papers work for book making and you can use different weights and shapes and sizes within one book. However, for a first project I would suggest using a fairly stiff paper and sticking to the same size signatures while you learn the technique. 

If you do want to use different size papers, for example perhaps you want to use some pieces that aren't as big as A4 you can create a signature by attaching two pieces of paper together rather than folding. To do this there are two methods. In the case of the book Maya made, we used sellotape to attach pieces of paper together. On other projects I have used a more traditional book making process which consists of making a mini spine if you like or overlap for the two papers. It should be made from a paper of similar weight or a strong light paper like traditional origami paper. The overlay needs to be the same height as your papers and about 2cm wide. Score it down the middle (lengthways) and fold. Each paper should then be glued to one side of the overlay. 

Using stamps adds interest to your pages

Another way to make your signatures interesting is to print on them yourself using stamps. Maya used animal print stamps and a footprint stamp on one of her books for example. You could also do some of your own illustrations. In this accordion book I've just started for example, I've used an old chocolate wrapper to create a sea on one page and then some printed gift wrap for a fish. Later I hand drew a whale with black ink on white paper and cut it out to stick onto the blue background. The most important thing is to have fun!

Creating scenes in your book