Grandparents Day, Onam, and Fall Lantern Festival

We started the week talking with our grandparents and remembering some of our favorite moments with them.  She remembers sharing apples and strawberries, reading stories, exploring new places, building and making videos.  We've read lots of books about spending time with grandparents.  In Tambourine Moon, a grandfather walks with his granddaughter through the city at night while telling the story of the night he met her grandmother.  Tangerines and Tea, My Grandparents and Me is an alphabet book about staying with grandparents overnight.  Llama Llama Gram and Grandpa is also the story of an overnight visit with grandparents, as well as a forgotten lovey.  This is one of Genevieve's favorite series.  The author recently passed away from brain cancer, and I recommend reading one of her books with a child in honor of her life.  In Max and the Tag-along Moon, Max watches the moon follow him home, feeling his grandfather's love the whole way.  In Grandma's Smile, a little boy travels to find his grandmother's missing smile.  The Mitten is about a lost mitten, knitted by a grandmother, and serving as a temporary shelter for several creatures.  Silas's Seven Grandparents is a book about the fun and challenges of having several grandparents.  Grumpy Grandpa was a favorite, about a grandpa who has forgotten what is like to be a kid.

Onam is a festival in Kerala, India.  Long ago, Mahabali defeated Indra and became ruler of all of Indra's territory.  He is believed to have been a good leader in Kerala, treating people equally.  The people were happy and without worries, no children died, and there wasn't any lying or theft.  However, as great as he was for the people the demigods were not happy with his rule.  Vishnu came to him in the form of a dwarf.  Mahabali promised him a gift and Vishnu asked for no more than three steps of land.  Mahabali agreed and Vishnu grew and stepped over heaven and earth.  Mahabali kept his word as a man of honor, and is allowed to visit each year at Onam.  People celebrate by creating designs in their yard using flowers, wearing new clothes, cleaning out their house, dancing, feasting, and participating in the great snake boat race.  It is also a time of thanksgiving, celebrating the harvest with a great vegetarian feast.

We didn't have a lot of flowers left, but we did have some colorful sand, so we went outside and created a sand painting.  We also read the colorful My Mother's Sari, celebrating the beautiful patterns and colors.  It also includes instructions as to how to wear a sari.

The Lantern Festival goes by many names throughout Asia - Chusok and Trung Thu being some of them.  It is a festival of thanksgiving and celebrating family.  Each country may celebrate it slightly differently, but it is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month.  This year it coincides with the full moon on 16 September.  Celebrations often include a visit with family and special moon shaped foods, like rice cakes, moon cakes, and pomelos.  They remember ancestors they have lost, visiting their gravesites and burning incense and paper gifts.  Families celebrate each other and the harvest.  That night they use lanterns and candles to represent the light of the moon.  Children might wear masks, sail boats, and watch unicorn dances.

We've been studying the moon this week, noticing it's size and shape and watching to see if it follows us.  We noticed it's up in the afternoon, but we can't see it in the morning anymore.  We read Ba Nam, which is an older book but it follows a family visiting the ancestral plots.  We also read The Sun, the Moon and the Gardener's Son, which is a fable with the sun, moon, and rainbow fairies.  The Moon's Almost Here is illustrated by Tomie dePaola and says goodnight to several animals as mime Pierrot and his child prepare for bed and watch the moon.  Thanking the Moon is a nice book for younger kids that follows a family at their mid-autumn moon festival.

What else is new?  Genevieve has been practicing counting (3,1,7,8,9) and riding her tricycle all by herself.  She is good with colors and shapes, body parts and the letters G and T.  She also likes to remind me that her arm is happy, because I told her about her humerus when she hit her elbow.  She's really interested in her calendars, both to review what we are doing each day and to see the month's activities.  She's looking forward to the day airplanes and birthday cake show up on the calendar to show family will be coming to visit for her birthday.  We've started a new round of classes - storytimes, dance, music, gymnastics and soccer.  Tobias is pulling himself up all the time, and trying to stand on his own.  When he's not trying to stand, he's usually crawling.

Learning through Play: Sand Art

Learning through Play: Sand Art

Sand art is a great activity for toddlers, preschoolers, and even older children.  It can be messy though, so be prepared with a tarp or create your artwork outside.  The pinching and controlled work will improve younger children’s fine motor skills and patience.  They will explore the texture of sand and the way it moves.  You can discuss art, culture or science with older children as they create this artwork.

The Projects

You will need colored sand, or sand, trays, and liquid water color.  You will also need paper and glue or sticky boards, sand paper, and crayons.  Pencils, spoons or funnels may also be used.

If you would like to create your own colored sand rather than buying dyed sand, it is possible. Spread some sand out on a tray and add a little liquid watercolor.  Liquid water color will work better here than food color, which tends to clump more.  Use your hands to spread the color throughout the whole pile.  You can add more color if you feel the sand needs it, but don’t allow the sand to become too wet.  Allow the sand to dry, stirring it occasionally with your hands.  Be sure the sand is fully dry before moving it into a storage container, otherwise the sand can grow mold and will clump.

Once your sand is dry, there are many different activities to do with it.  One of the most popular is to fill bottles with the sand.  Choose a fun bottle to display and the colors you would like to layer inside.  It’s recommended to use a funnel to help channel the sand into the bottle.  Use a spoon or pinch sand into the funnel.  Change colors as needed to create your layers.  Fill the bottle as full as possible, as loose sand will shift over time.  If the bottle is full, the pressure of the sand will keep the layers in place.  Add a lid.  Although this is beautiful art, you can also look at it as a representation of the Earth’s layers for an added lesson.

Another type of sand art that is created worldwide is the mandala or rangoli, which are both impermanent forms of art that take great patience and care.  Mandalas are created by monks as a form of prayer and meditation.  Housewives create rangoli as a blessing for the house.  The Navajo Medicine Men also created sand paintings, which was also impermanent.  Working with sand offers a great medium for temporary art work, which can make the artist ponder their work.  Ask yourself how you feel about your hard work being destroyed.  You can create a temporary piece of work, or create a more permanent piece of art if you prefer.  You can plan your design ahead by drawing it on a piece of paper.  You can look up some of the designs used in rangoli, mandalas, or Navajo sand Art to get some ideas.

http://www.mandalaproject.org/What/Index.html

http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/rangoli.htm

http://navajopeople.org/navajo-sand-painting.htm

For temporary work, you can draw an outline with sidewalk chalk outside and sprinkle sand as needed.  For a more permanent piece, you can use paper and glue or sticky boards.  Remember not to pile the sand too high, as the sand needs to touch the glue or sticky board to stick.  The sand that doesn’t stick can be reused as rainbow sand.  Just collect all the extra sand of the various colors together.

You don’t need colored sand to create sand art.  Many cultures built things using sandstone and would create works of art on these walls.  The artists would need to consider the way the texture of the sand would affect the final product.  You can experiment with crayons and sand paper to simulate this.  Remember to use crayons, not markers, as the tips could become ruined.

Some Information to Share

There are multiple layers hiding under the Earth’s surface, as your sand bottle can represent.    The Earth’s layers are: the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core.  Above the crust is the layer of dirt and silt on the surface.  Underneath the surface dirt and the debris left with time is the crust, which varies in thickness and is made mostly of alumino-silicates.  Under the crust is the mantle, both the upper and lower mantle.  Together the whole mantle is about 2900 kilometers thick.  Convection leads to the circulation of heat through the mantle which is theorized to be responsible for the movement of the tectonic plates.  The center of the Earth is the core.  The outer core is 2300 kilometers thick and is composed mostly of a nickel-iron alloy, with as much as 10% of the core composed of elements lighter than iron alloy.  The outer core is a liquid, but a less viscous liquid than the mantle.  The inner core is solid because of the pressure from the weight of all the other layers.  The inner core is 1200 kilometers thick and almost entirely iron.  The entire core is through to contribute to the Earth’s magnetic field.

People around the world create sand paintings.  Some of the most common are called mandalas, which are mostly associated with Tibetan monks, but were also made by Native Americans.  The early Christian nun Hildegard von Bingen is well known for her mandalas as well.  Mandalas are created from colored sand as a reminder of the impermanence of life.  Work on the mandala may require many hours or days, but after the mandala is finished, it is swept into a jar and emptied into a nearby body of water as a blessing.  Another form of sand paintings are the rangolis or kolams created by Indian women.  They are mostly made with colored flour, but colored sand, flower petals or colored rice powder might also be used.  Rangoli and kolams are made in the doorway for two reasons.  Firstly, since the Hindu principle of dharma states that one should serve animals and humans alike, the colored flour or rice powder might be used to feed insects.  Secondly, the artwork welcomes Laksmi, the Goddess of Prosperity into the home.  Symmetry is key in this artform as it represents balance.  They also often incorporate geometrical shapes, animals, fruit, and flowers.  The lotus is a favorite to include.

Some of the most famous art created on sand or stone surfaces is that of the ancient Egyptian artists.  Stone surfaces were prepared for painting with whitewash or a layer of course mud and plaster.  Limestone was often painted directly.  This often left the paintings with some texture.  The artistic style was influenced by even more ancient African cultures and near-Asian cultures.  The styles were settled upon in the Old Kingdom, and as artists had little desire to create their own styles, they tended to copy the accepted art forms.  Typical colors for artwork included red, blue, black, gold, and green.  When painting gods, either an animal form or a human with an animal head could be shown.  For example, Anubis could be shown as a jackal or as a human with a jackal head.  Images of people also followed rules.  Faces were painted in profile except the eye would be shown as if from the front.  The top half of the body faces the viewer so both shoulders can be seen.  Arms and legs are often shown in motion.  Feet are shown with the big toe closest to the viewer.

Bibliography:

http://www.universetoday.com/61200/earths-layers/, 

http://www.kidsgeo.com/geology-for-kids/0020-crust-mantel-core.php, http://library.thinkquest.org/28327/html/universe/solar_system/planets/earth/interior/layers_of_earth.html,  http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/earth/Inside.shtml, http://www.namgyal.org/mandalas/background.cfm, 

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/te_index.asp?i=14, 

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/E/egyptian.html,

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/egypt/art/egyptart.htm