Traveling Journeys

Grandfather's Journey: A book about a Japanese man's travels throughout his life.  The boys and I had a lot of art discussion around the beautiful drawings in this book.

We covered topics on city pollution, birds (that Grandfather kept as pets), and World War II history (Grandfather's homeland was destroyed by war).

We looked at pictures of traditional Japanese art.

Art: After seeing the shadows from Grandfather's Journey we made some of our own by moving the flashlight around an orange and watching how shadows move with the light.

Then of course we sat down to eat the oranges.

Art:  We took a look at contrasting colours.  We discussed what makes a particular object POP out when you look at a picture.  Abishai really seemed to enjoy this as we paged through the book.

The umbrella was the first thing Abishai noticed when he looked at the picture above. When I asked him why he thought that was, he responded by saying, "because the woman's hair is so dark." Contrast!

Then Abishai took some magazines and cut out pictures of the colours that he thought were contrasting.

Placing our story disks onto the map.  We mapped out Grandfather's Journey from Japan, and across the Pacific Ocean to California.  Here Abishai is placing some additional disks from How to make an Apple Pie and See the World.

Looking at pictures of D-Day from World War II.

Art: Origami, the traditional Japanese art of folding paper into shapes and animals.  We just happened to have an entry level origami book and coloured square paper on hand.

Abishai chose to make a dog.

Micaiah didn't want to make one himself, but was interested enough to watch me make the cat and elephant.  Abishai decided to add North American touches to his origami dog.