Books on birds

 I love books and have always looked for various themes and ideas ...

This November, being a month when usually birds migrate to warmer regions is also celebrated by various bird watching societies as a month to write about birds, do bird walks, songs, art around birds.

So on that basis, I have made a small attempt to make a small compilation of books about birds.

Most of them are from publishers from India and I hope it helps some one to give a thought.

Art

        This is something that is so open-ended, but still has its boundaries and we never know if we offer it right or not for children. Are we overdoing it or depriving them of the opportunities to express themselves?

I was doing some reading around this topic, and here I am thinking of Art in a classroom set-up.

I am still unsure if whatever I am writing here is good to go, but it's still one way of thinking.

Here when I say Art, I am going to think about drawing/painting, and Collage making (Gluing/Sticking). I will think about Sewing another day. I will save writing about clay (on which I have no experience so far) some other day.

As always, I wanted to understand what was Dr Montessori's idea about Art and when we get the objectives clear, we can then work on the practicalities of a set-up.

There is mention about drawing when she talks about drawing with insets. Quoting it here

    " The exercises which we have described as drawing were really an education of the hand intended to prepare it for writing. Thus this particular drawing which we have described becomes also an artistic element, a coefficient of drawing proper.

    All these preceding exercises are "formative" for the art of drawing. They develop in the child the manual ability to execute a geometric design and prepare his eye to appreciate the harmony of proportions between geometric figures. It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for the wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence which drawing constitutes. The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one's own hand- that is what is necessary. Inspiration is an individual thing, and when a child possesses these formative elements he can give expression to all he happens to have.

    There can be no "graduated exercises in drawing" leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and formation of spirit. That is our reason for not teaching directly to the child. We prepare him indirectly, leaving him free to the mysterious and divine labour of reproducing things according to his own feelings. "

And she also says about analysing the children's drawing (A major learning for me)

    " The sensory and manual preparation for drawing is nothing more than  an alphabet; but without it the child is an illiterate and cannot express himself. Abd just as it is impossible to study the writing of the people who cannot write, so there can be no psychological study of the drawing of children who have been abandoned to spiritual and muscular chaos. All psychic expressions acquire value when the inner personality has acquired value by the development of its formative process. Thus, unless we know how a child should develop in order to unfold his natural energies, we shall not know how drawing as a natural expression is developed. "

To confer the gift of drawing we must create an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, a soul that feels; and in this task, the whole life must cooperate. "

AND THIS IS A MAJOR PART OF THE THEORY OF DRAWING 

So I understand from reading all of these is that she talks about inset drawing as the preceding exercises for the formative for art of drawing.

hmm, that's a new thing to see and understand.

I will write more when I get better clarity about these later as well...

Now when it comes to the practical set-up of drawing, I went back to theory if she has mentioned somewhere about these and there are a few notes. 

Copying it here for my own clarity...

                    "Another form of assistance is that which we give to every kind of learning: the analysis of difficulties or the analysis into components. In drawing itself there are various elements, such as outline and colour. Now for these two items, there is offered the tracing of outlines of the insets and filling the drawings by means of the lines, which prepare the hand for steady muscular exertion.  For colour, we provide paint brushes and watercolours with which it is possible to represent drawing even without having an outline prepared. We give pastels also, and show how to use them.

            Finally, it's possible to oppose artistic representation by cutting out coloured paper."

                "This is the beginning of production, of self-expression of work. He needs the objects necessary to carry out all this work. This of course depends upon the technique of production. Of the necessary objects. what are the brushes, and what kind of colours. how to clean the brushes....Little by little, things may develop from this." 

It's needed before we fall back into our everyday activities...

I am going to write down my thoughts about ART setup in a classroom now 

1. Do we need to set up pencils for drawing before metal insets?

        Not needed really though. Metal inset can be a good start for drawing with pencils. Maybe this can be set up as another option for Art for children with experience with insets

2. Can crayon be offered to young children?

Yes, maybe, unwrapped crayons - experiences offered with the broad side of crayons are in more alignment with the nature of the young child.As he progresses into the linear, analytic state,maybe he can start using a pencil.

The technique here is to show soft and other pressure to show the result of using a crayon on paper.

3. Why do we need an Easel?

         Painting at an easel makes us work vertically which is how we usually perceive things. It helps to keep the perception of whatever we draw better. Bigger arm movements aid in more strengthening and stability. Midline crossing.

3. Tempura acrylic paintings vs Watercolor paintings - Is it progress or just two different mediums to explore?

        Acrylic paintings are user friendly - can be painted on any paper, unlike watercolor special paper. They dry quickly. Watercolours blend easier and there are a lot of options for mixing and trying in watercolours. Watercolours give a light tinted effect, unlike acrylic colours which give a bright effect.

So basically these are two mediums and not seen as points of progress.

4. How do you set up Easel in classroom and what can the exercises ?

        The bench Easel is better. H-Easel is also okay for sake of space in the classroom.

• A plastic floor mat under the easel
  
  
  
• A bucket and a sponge for cleaning
• Primary colour paints
• Brushes of different sixes
• Primary colours to mixing of two primary colours in a container. 

 Real presentation:

1. How to attach the paper to the easel
2. How to dip a brush into the paint and wipe it on edge of the container.
3. How to remove the paper and how to carry it and where to put it
4. How to clean the apron, easel and mat
5. How to clean a brush and position it so that it will dry correctly.
6. How to mix primary colours 
7.  Mixing white and black will make shades of grey (Advanced)

       

4. What do you present in watercolour painting?

1. How to mix one colour with water and use it on paper
2. How different amounts of water bring different shades of colour
3.  Can paint freehand or later draw a picture and paint
4. Where to put the paper
5.  how to clean watercolour palette and brushes
6.  How to dry the brush (here it has to be laid on its side when its wet as water may get into the ferrule when kept upright while it's wet)

4. Does Easel painting and watercolour painting both setup needed in a classroom?

        It's basically different mediums to explore. So it depends. Can be alternated.

4. Cutting set up - Ideas and thoughts?

• Papers to cut into strips.        
• Papers/cardboards with predesigned  like straight lines, wavy lines so that children cutalong those lines.
• Showing children to draw a line at  a designated distance along  a ruler and then practice cutting along this straight line.
• Simple pictures from magazines
• Single folds: Take a rectangular/square piece of paper. Fold it half and draw half of leaf, half of an pval and then have the child cut it out and open it up to discover what he has made

5. Gluing set up - Ideas and thoughts?

• To take it further to collage making like using small squares to make a design- just the technique of collage making.
• We use a pasting brush and jar instead of a squeeze bottle - ever wondered why? To help in better coordination rather than a good efficiency so that they work out a good efficient technique later.

6. Why different colours and sizes of paper needed?

• To offer freedom to explore
• There is no compulsiveness to do more

7. Do we have to store art work or send ? What can be done?

• Copying here a reply from a renowned Montessorian that made more sense to me

  As adults what's our role:

•  To observe , have casual conversations 

                This may give us some thoughts to ponder when we talk with children about their Art:

                " If he puts the moon in the sky, he will realise that many of the colours will change. The green of the earth will become black. Instead, if he has the sin, all the colours will become brilliant. When the sun is shining many details can be put in - little houses, some animals, many boats in the bluse sea , with coloured sails. Roads can be put on in parts that represent the earth.Gradually the painting grows. While painting, he also learns a bit of technique - how to use colours, how to handle brushes. He can then draw whatever comes to his mind on a piece of paper. Perhaps they are only houses, perhaps only an animal or a leaf, an idea taken from his imagination. He has a brush and some colurs, and his own hand. Thus, a new path to self expression lies open."

• When we present, we make sure not to leave a representational example unless we are looking at a real specimen and drawing because we are introducing the children to a process.
• Telling simple short interesting true stories about artists.
• Have beautiful pictures of realistic or abstract art, from all periods, cultural and ethnic traditions, hung  so that the centre of the image is level with the eye level of the child.
• Not too many pictures on wall, but instead change the pictures often.
• Books about artists, visiting an art museum, beautiful photographs, book of arts.
• Always modelling care of art area
• Give exact names of materials, names of art hanging on walls and technqiues.
• Classified pictures and reading set of Art cards.
• Defintion booklets (defining various art technqiues, branches of art)
• Booklets about indivdual artists 

And this is one of the longest posts I have written after reading few to many reference books for this :)

• The discovery of child
• Creative development in the child Volume One
• Art and developmemt essay by Nell Weniger and Karin Salzmann from the publications:Montessori talks to parents:Nuturing the Creative personality.
• Chapter: Drawing from The Advanced Montessori MEthod - II
• The Red Corolla Montessori Cosmic Education for Ages 3 -6+ - Susan Mayclin Stephenson

BUT I ENJOYED WRITING THIS.......

Baric tablets

 Have you ever wondered why this sorting in middle of everything else? What is the significace of these tablets ?

I have often thought about in my first years of practice with children and then brushed it aside  thinking, something easy to show - just leave it ....

I know the aims and objectives of this presentation but not given deeper thought to it ...

But few things I had managed to take care while sorting 

1.  Weigh two same tablets on different hands together 

2. Make sure you weigh different size tablets On the hand from the previous weighing so that the subtle idea of weighing is passed on 

Once an experienced trainer asked to present this and then she walked us through how those little nuances are important to pass on the aim to the child.

I forgot to write them down but the experience remains intact ...

So I read about them and here are few technical details and some interesting information

Technical aspects:

        For the education of baric sense, I use with great success little wooden tablets, six by eight centimetres, having a thickness of half centimetre.These tablets are in three different qualities of wood - wistaria, walnut and pine. They weigh respectively 24,12 and 18g, making them differ in weight by 6g. These tablets should be very smooth; if possible, varnished in such a way that every roughness shall be eliminated, but so that the natural colour of the wood remain. The child, observing the colour, know that they are of differing weights, and this offers a means of controlling the exercise. He takes two of the tablets in his hands, letting them rest upon the palm at the base of his outstretched fingers. Then he moves his hands up and down in order to gauge the weight. 

Now coming to idea 

Why up and down 

How to offer baric tablets 

There is so much that makes sense as to why behind these offerings 

Long division

 When the long division was presented to me in my course, I wondered if this was really needed for a  4year old? Why is this complicated division presented here? I have often thought about it. Me and my dear friend when we worked together for a while, have presented these to a couple of children both in decimal operations and stamps. Children have shown quite a good understanding, but haven't repeated them as much as needed, at least in my class.

I recently started reading about the idea behind these materials and this is what I read and putting here 

First of all, about Division

A division should be started from the left hand side and not from the right hand side. This is preferred because otherwise, we gave to change at every stage and break up the tens and hundreds and thousands so often that the division becomes very tedious and long. Starting from the left it is easy and quick, so we distribute the quantities equally in this way

Now coming to Long Division

Long division is actually very short because the longer the divisor the shorter the division. 

We will take a number, 1332 and divide it by 12. Twelve people are chosen, but ten of the twelve choose a leader who represents all the ten, including himself. The leader, who takes for all the ten, is given a blue ribbon in order to distinguish him from the other two. These other two are given green ribbons. The children already know that a hundred contains ten tens and a thousand contains ten hundreds and so on. So if we give a thousand to the leader, we give one hundred each to the other two. And so we distribute the quantities in that proportion. The leader gets 1110 and the other two get 111 each. The leader has then to distribute what he has, to nine of his colleagues and himself. Each one of the ten gets 111, the answer of the division is what each one gets. So the amount is split into 12 equal parts, each one getting 111.

And this is exactly what we do when we present a long division to a group.. How interesting!!

Why is it presented?

    >   A child who can count up to ten can see the function of the decimal system and the nature of operations here

    >    to keep the child's interest alive after knowing how to put hierarchies in order

Why exactness of answers is ignored here?

    Children must do these operations even if there is an error. They will not recognise errors here because they cannot verify anything except the quantities. The importance is not in the answer, but in function. The exactness can be learnt later and we know what helps there.

How do you prepare a child to be ready for a division/long division presentation?

    Lots of change games must be played with the children where they have an idea of how many tens make a hundred and how can a hundred be split into.

As usual, the role of an adult while presenting is to 

• help children verify quantities
• help children understand the function of operations
• help children understand the hierarchy in the decimal system
• help children articulate what they do

Walking on the line

 

        Walking on the line is an exciting exercise. Though I loved the exercise, I could never present it to children in an inspiring way, that they do on their own. 

        Many times, the physical space was very constraining to the children or may the place where the line was put was not thought through and done...

        Leaving aside all these, Recently I started following a trainer from TMI, Denver who likes to help Montessori guides draw the lines on the floor. I found his little mission very interesting and inspiring and practical to help in classrooms..But the more interesting part is his thought about Walking on the line. Pasting it here for me to remember. Also, I am taking this as something to do with children more mindful when I get back to work with children.

    Apart from this I found reading the chapter "Walking on the line"  in the book Creative development very interesting.

Writing down a few lines that I would like to remember

"To detach the child from us the adults, and to attach him to the environment, so that between the child and the environment, there is a union because of which the child can act by himself alone - this is to facilitate independence"

"We can ask the child asked to sing a song while walking"

Something from the same chapter to help me consider while setting up things for Walking on the line.

"In the case of a rope-bell, the longer the rope, the more difficult the activity."

Metal Insets , Writing

 

Metal insets are one of the keys to literacy is what I have heard. Hmm,  it's true, maybe because it is one of the keys that lead you to write. It prepares the hands - the mechanism to write. When such a hand comes to the writing, it can then follow the will of the individual. But this writing ability is prepared through metal insets.

Earlier preparation:

• Lots and lots of tracing and moving around geometric figures. The hand has to go around different geometry figures- sometimes short, sometimes long
• Many different forms of repetition of exercises with geometric cabinets.

    A hand which is capable of delineating a precise contour, and an eye, which is able to follow the movement of the hand, is indirectly prepared to draw and write.

        

        So our role is to Observe how they trace and how they have control of moving around the figures goes before we present the metal inset.

Point of interest for us while presenting:

1. Start with an ellipse or circle as they have no angles. With an ellipse the area to be filled is narrower, making it easier, to begin with.
2. 
    When we draw around the frame, we draw the outline smaller than the frame.
3.  When we draw around the inset, we draw something that is larger than the inset.
4. Eventually, you have to hold the pencil at the same angle through both outlining if we want to see two concentric figures.
5.  3 pencils each serve a purpose - freedom with limits
6.  We draw the strokes as light as possible.

What is the progression we need to observe?

     In filling in the outline of the inset using the third pencil too, the child is offered a technique and certain limits. He is told to make light strokes, as light as possible, and not to go out of the limits of the inner circle, until the control of lightness is acquired. The idea is to give the child the capacity of holding the pencil and acquiring an elasticity in holding the pencil so that he need not have to make horizontal parallel lines at first. Initially, the child makes heavy enormous lines, but after a week or two he acquires the light touch. He is also told that while filling the outline with parallel lines he must start at one extremity and go to the other. In the beginning, the child finds it a bit difficult. We can only teach the child the exact technique, we must not force him to follow it. Gradually he acquires lightness of touch, and gradually the pencil mark is hardly visible. Each line is fine like that of a light pen line.

These drawings somehow restrain the hand so that it leads to the coordination of mechanical movements needed for handwriting. 

What to do next? 

    This drawing eventually leads to the development of decorative art.  It leads children to explore the composition of shapes and the relationships between them.  Now, though, it is a drawing, it's not a drawing that represents anything in the environment like flowers. Now attention is on the line and hand and hence the preparation. 

    With many figures combined, the hand is helped to fill in little spaces, to make big strokes, to fill in large spaces, to make little hooks.                                        

Linear Counting

As everyone knows, a chain of ten is where there are 10 ten bars of squares to form 100 ( a square of 10)

Here is what I want to note: what is its primary use when presented to a child?

• A glimpse of a linear representation of what a quantity 100 looks like

• Opportunity to offer a child counting from 1-100 which may not have happened with a square bar.

• Earlier the same bar gave an idea about the decimal system but now it decomposes to give the idea of stretching the bar.10, 20, 30 ....are like signposts that the child passes from one milestone to another. Counting is like going from one milestone to another and that is true everywhere in our life - like measuring and many things - That is the biggest takeaway for a child of this age and this is the biggest idea to be passed on more than anything else.

  • Counting is not based on groups in decimal systems - but just moving on from one item to another - Just like a rosary helps an adult to follow counting mentally, the chain here helps to count.

  • Once the technique of counting is strong in children, we show an idea of grouping - counting in 2s, and 3s through the next chains

  So what I must not forget or what is better to offer with these chains is

  1. Offer children exploration of chains so that they see the differences visually many times. For eg., numbers 6 and 7 vary by one quantity but squares of 6 and 7 vary by much more. If children start seeing the differences visually at this age, I am hoping it starts with them for a much longer time.

  2. I read somewhere it helps in writing numbers afterwards. Maybe that's the by-product of counting that we look for many times with children :)

  Prior to this type of counting, a few ideas which I ought to have to show children

  • 
    Knowledge of terms between 10 and 20 is crucial as well as understanding the quantities also.

  • To help a few children who can read, we can even have cards highlighting the names between 10 and 20 - where groups of units in one colour and teens in another colour.

  six teen

  fif teen

  nine teen

  
  

  • Counting with teen boards, ten boards every time shows how quantity and naming is similar between 1 and 9 and how it changes when a 10 is added. The change of words for every ten has to be highlighted to children to get them used to the counting and transition of names from one milestone to another.

  We have given the vision of the number system and visual differences across the groups in decimal systems earlier, and
  we have given the idea of counting is given in steps to ease the transition to counting.