Ecosystems and butterflies, two by two

Thursday January 15, 2009

Yawn . . . oh excuse me. Last night was date night, which was fabulous. I love going to a venerable NYC institution. It makes me feel like I’m not a complete shut-in. Of course today I’m sleepy because of it – not so much earlier in the day, but now that Rocket Boy’s school day is over and he’s out for Thursday afternoon daddy time, boy am I dragging.

I had, what I was thinking of as a slow day, but in reality it was just fine. Our start time is a pretty rigid 9 am, but we’ve ended anywhere from 2:30 to dinnertime. If Rocket Boy is excited and on a roll, I just keep going with him. If he’s losing it, well I call the school day done. Luckily for me he does not have a firm grasp of telling time so I can really milk it when I want.

Today was largely science and art. We spent the morning on habitats and ecosystems, including a neat little interactive dot-to-dot at the Ology web site. Instead of connecting to the next number, you connect to the next item in the food chain. Rocket Boy couldn’t get enough. On almost each ecosystem, butterflies were art of the system so we went on a butterfly tangent and did some art. I printed out a line drawing of a monarch then sat the boy down at Hypersteve’s light box to trace it. We talked about composition and tilted the paper so the butterfly would appear to be entering the page angled from the bottom left. While he traced, I read to Rocket Boy all about monarchs and what they eat, how they migrate, and about metamorphosis. It took him forever to trace the whole thing, but I think it’s a good thing. It’s helping him learn more fine motor control of a pencil. Hopefully that kind of careful mark making will help him exert more control when it comes to writing. I’m actually thinking that I need to print out a writing sheet that I can put on the light box for him. He seems to really like it and concentrates well while doing it. Besides we get to hang out in the studio with Hypersteve, which makes us all happy.

After the hour long tracing extravaganza (he really sat for an hour!) we compared the angled tracing to the straight on shot and talked more about composition. Then we went back to the living room to color. I pulled out all sorts of colored pencils in various shades of yellow, orange, brown, and red. I had him test each color on a new sheet of paper, then test what happens when you blend certain colors. His desk has some bumpy bits and he realized that when you rub the pencil over those spots, the texture comes right through. He got excited and ran around the house trying out textures. His favorite was the wood grain from the laminate floors. For faux wood they have lots of wood grain texture, in fact probably more texture than my actual wood floors have with their coats and coats of polyurethane. After a while we sat and colored together. He put me in charge of black – mostly because there is a lot of intricate black around lots of little dots. It would have driven him crazy to do that part. He did all the orangish bits. I have to say, it’s a beautiful collaboration.

Then came lunch. Rocket Boy said he wanted to rest so we climbed on the couch and read the three stories from the easy reader “Eek! Stories to Make You Shriek” and we read a silly barnyard yarn called “Bob.” The stories nearly drained all the energy out of me. I was so sleepy I barely finished my sentences.

I had to move around or I was doomed, I also needed some outside help. Enter Schoolhouse Rocks. I put n the number two song and Rocket Boy and I went through a worksheet with 1-100 printed on it, circling all the even numbers. Then I tried to explain the concept of counting by twos. I don’t think I handled it so well, even with telling the story of Noah’s Ark and doing a drawing activity. I had him draw his family with all our hands in the air. Then I had him count the people, then count the hands, then count by twos pointing at each body but indicating the number of hands. We kept adding people to the paper. He had a blast adding more people and counting, but I still don’t think he really got it. I have to look into how to introduce counting by twos. 5s and 10s seem so much easier since I can use coins.

At that point it was three and time for Hypersteve to take Rocket Boy to chess club, where they are right this minute.