Mish Mash Splash

November 4, 2012

Poor Toad has lost a button!  We read the story A Lost Button from the book Frog and Toad are Friends.  Cannon identified many of the Dolce sight words as well as some new words to add to his reading vocabulary.  

           button                                  

            lost

            jacket

            pocket

            found

 

We looked at some of the buttons from my collection.  Many of these buttons are from my mother and my grandmother. Cannon practiced some data collection skills by sorting a packet of buttons by size. 

This week he can play some sorting games by identifying other attributes, number of holes, shape- round or square, thick or thin.  He might want to make a bar graph to show the data he collected.

Mark Making

Mark Making in art is many things including what some people call scribbling.  It is an important skill that American art educator Viktor Lowenfeld describes in his book Creative and Mental Growth and Development. He identified the types of mark making/scribbling as, a) disordered, b) longitudinal, and c) circular.  I call this Movement Mapping. 

                                    Untitled II by Cy Twombly

 Artist Cy Twombly (1928 –2011) explored these early mark making movements. He was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. He exhibited his paintings worldwide.

                                             Movement Mapping I by Cannon

Cannon and I looked at some of Twomby's paintings.  Then Cannon explored mark making using ultra fine Sharpie pens.  We taped three black pens together, then worked with two and then just one pen.  He used colored pens toward the end of the exercise.

Can you Keep a Secret?
In my family there was a saying, “a gift from the hand is a gift from the heart”.  Gifting season is almost here and so it is time for us to open our secret workshop.   Our work table was out-of-bounds for dad.  I can’t tell you what we were making but I can say it involved a lot of mishing and mashing, squishing and squeezing.  I think it is safe to share a couple of things about our activity. 

 

Cannon learned to crank a pasta machine.  He grasped the handle with his left hand and vigoursly turned the handle.  He got quite a workout extending his arm fully and bringing his hand and arm back to his shoulder. He repeated this movement again and again until our project was ready for the squishing and squeezing part. Cannon’s every movement was energetic and heartfelt.  Next we will let Righty have a turn at cranking the machine. Sorry, you will have to wait until after Christmas to see Cannon’s creations.
Above - Cannon uses his muscles to turn the "crank" on the pasta machine.

Left - I guess there is nothing for me to do but watch as Cannon does all of the work.

 

 

 

Activities for Next Week
Cannon has a Turtle magazine of activities to enjoy during the week.  I left the magnetic white board and some Dolce sight words and some of the words from our word building activites so that he can compose sentences to tell a story.  He can move the magnetic words around and even add words with dry erase marker to make his sentences.  Hum, what will he write, I wonder?   

Election Day November 6
Hey, Cannon!  As I was standing in line waiting my turn to vote early this morning, I was thinking of you.  I thought, “you have to be 18 years old to vote, how many years will it be before Cannon is old enough to vote?” 

Then I thought – “what year will be the first year Cannon will be old enough to vote?”

Can you figure this out?

Have a very good week.  930