Art and Language Arts

Zach has known his letters and their sounds for some time, but hasn't really tried to read much and I haven't tried to help him much. He has done some sight reading, recognising a word today, forgetting it tomorrow. I'm in no hurry, so I left it alone.

Now Zach draws ALL THE TIME. This is no exaggeration. So does Simonne actually.... but let's talk about Zach. Because of his constant drawing, his handwriting is pretty good for his age. His fine motor is very strong. He started to copy letters from the cover of books as part of his drawings (he would draw the cover of the book). Then he would copy each page of the book, so would copy a word from the page on the drawing. He wanted to know what letters were in 'cow' so he could put it on the picture of his cow. He became fascinated by writing both the words and the pictures so I could ask him what words he wants to write (read that 'what pictures does he want to draw?'), he would tell me, I would write them on paper, he would copy them and then draw a picture depicting the word.

If I wrote the word 'tiger', he would write the 't' then ask "What word does 't' make?", then write the 'i', then ask, "What word does 'ti' make?" etc, till he's furnished the word.

I've been fascinated watching him explore sounds, words, and integrate them into his art.

Simonne is a good reader, but was a reluctant writer until the art frenzy began in our home. Now, her writing is beautiful. She takes the same pride in her writing as she does in her drawings. Now, she will actually write a few sentences as part of a story that she has already done some drawings for (the drawings are loosely related, hopefully the story will tie them together!).

She now studies the illustrations in the books we read, thinking about how they were done: paint, pencil, markers,... and listens to the stories for the details she saw in the illustration! This one is a biggie. It translates the other way too. Her memory of the details in the stories is getting better, as she flips to a later page and recalls some detail that we had read before.

I'm excited to be watching this process unfold!

Nature - Insects

So it's spring, and we should be outside more, but .... Anyway, to celebrate, I started a series of explorations in books and online about the wide range of creatures outside. It's somewhat random, following this great book we have, the Christian Liberty Nature Reader, Book 1. They have short blurbs on a variety of interesting creatures, then we follow up with google searches and other investigations of our own.

The life cycles, habits, food, etc of these animals have been fascinating! In the past few weeks, we have talked about and probably drawn:

• the caddis fly


• the ichneumon wasp - drills into trees and lays eggs in the larvae of other insects (see photo above)


• the gall fly


• the cicada - it's larva spends 17 years living underground!


• mosquitoes - no containers of still water in the backyard


• grasshoppers - (did you know that they don't start out as worms, as many other insects do?)


• solitary and social spiders


• the diver spider


• solitary and social bees....

I could go on. I've been fascinated at the connections I'm making. I'm hoping the children are equally fascinated. They cluster around to hear more every time I take the book out. I think I'll get Book 2.