Artist Study ~ Edgar Degas

We were watching my niece’s ballet recital and I was telling my son that there was once a painter who loves to paint ballerinas.  And out of nowhere, I found myself setting up an Edgar Degas artist study.

Degas is well known for his pictures of racehorses, nudes and of course ballerinas.  He was fascinated with ballet dancers.  He showed them in many poses, not just dancing... but going to classes, chatting, stretching and tying shoes.  He spent hours observing and sketching ballerinas, totally absorbed in his works.  And as he aged, he eyesight worsened so he turned into sculpting.

Using my homemade art cards, we looked into some of Degas’ famous works.

         

Here’s a copy of my Degas art cards.  All images were from Google/Wikipedia. 

Asia ~ India [2]

I chanced upon this book:  Krishna Steals the Butter and Other Stories.  The book retells stories based on Hindu faith, perfect for little kids learning all about Hindu deities and mythical creatures.  My son enjoyed the stories so much that we read it every night. 

I looked around the net for some coloring printables of Hindi deities but I only came up with Ganesha and Rama.

Furthermore, I browsed for some resources, I discovered this wonderful site titled INDO Kids.  It has links to Indian mythical stories, festivities and famous people.  It’s a perfect site for those who wants to learn about India and doesn’t have access to libraries.

Another thing that we did was watch an episode of a local show here (for kids) entitled Let’s Celebrate wherein it showcased the Diwali festival.  The story of Rama and Sita is shown on the video, it’s just a portion of the whole Diwali episode.

We also had fun watching and dancing with these little cuties as we learn how to dance.... in Bollywood style!

And that ends our journey of discovering India.  Oh we had so much fun learning!  You can read the first part of our Indian study here.

Stay tuned as we discover Singapore and Philippines!

 

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Asia ~ India

We had a wonderful time learning important facts about India. Here are some of the materials we used:

Currency (Rupee) which I Googled and printed out, stamps, Fact File similar to China, Indian flag which my son made, a map and a Taj Mahal figure.

 

Books are important learning materials as well and we’re lucky to have lots of great ones at our local library.

We looked for India in the map which I purchased from here.

The pictures that I printed out also helped a lot in understanding the lifestyle, culture and religion of India.  My son is amazed of the many things he has learned!  Like he can tell that Hinduism is for India and Buddhism is for China :)  Then he also wanted to try out eating on the floor, which most of the Indian people practices.  I couldn’t find a mehndi here so I skipped the part of applying artistic patterns on my hand.  We also tried eating “chapatis” (ready made) and dipped it to curry sauce (from my Chicken Curry).

    

We ended our first session by making an Indian flag using our colored papers. He basically did it all by himself :)

     

More of this soon!

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Asia ~ China [2]

Below are the activities we did in line with our China Unit Study (this is for Asia continent study).

CALLIGRAPHY

We tried numeric Chinese characters.  We practiced writing it using a pen... and later on tried using a black paint and a brush.  My son loved it!

 

He was dead serious with calligraphy, concentrating just to get it right.

 

 

CHINESE LANTERN

We made lanterns using colored papers and cardstock.  This activity, he did not much enjoy though.

 

I added some details on the lanterns by adding glitters.  Chinese lanterns are usually red because it’s the color of “luck” and “prosperity”.

 

When I tried placing the lanterns on our candles, it got his attention.  He loved how the lanterns produced shadowy effects.

 

CHINESE JUMP ROPE

Then of course, I just have to introduce the Chinese jump rope which I love to play as a child.  This game was very very popular during my growing up years.  And did my son like it? He love it to pieces!  He enjoyed linking the rubber bands together and much more when we started jumping over it! We’ve been playing with it for days now.  It would be best if we can play it outdoors.... maybe next year in summer time we’ll try it.

 

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