'Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.' Pablo Picasso
This afternoon, I left Charlie with his Dad, exploring the Tate Kids website, whilst I went to the library to stock up on art books. I found a good selection.
Meanwhile, Charlie enjoyed the Tate website, particularly the games section.
When I arrived home, I found Charlie deep in concentration, working on an observational drawing of a crisp packet. I think he must have remembered Emily Gravett's description of how to do an observational drawing in her talk yesterday.
After completing this picture, Charlie immediately looked for something else to draw and decided on the kitchen clock.
He spent the rest of the evening drawing different objects - including us - then went to bed and read the art books from the library until he fell asleep. He told me, before he fell asleep, how happy it made him to draw.
Tomorrow, Michael is going to take him out to buy some cheap art supplies.
On Saturday, Charlie and I attended the Lewes Children's Book Group birthday party, celebrating 40 years of bringing children, books, writers and illustrators together. The event was opened by Gillian Cross, a founder member of the group and author of many books, including 'The Demon Headmaster' series, which Charlie loves.
Gillian Cross opens the event
The book group celebrated its birthday with a fantastic line up of popular children's authors and illustrators: Emily Gravett, Christopher Lloyd, Ali Sparkes and Steve Cole.
The first presentation was by Emily Gravett, twice winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and the Nestle Children's Book Prize Bronze Award. Charlie had attended one of her first author events several years ago at the Ottakar's bookshop in Worthing, but he was far too young to remember. She stayed in my mind, though, because she was so unpretentious and so sweet to the children, as well as showing such outstanding talent as an author/illustrator. We still have signed copies of some of her earlier books, now well thumbed.
From the start, Emily showed a real rapport with the children in the audience, drawing them into her presentation by asking them questions and involving them in the creative process. She asked them if they knew what an author or illustrator was. Little hands went up all over the room.
She then gave us a highly entertaining and humorous account of how she had become an author/illustrator.
The first drawing she ever completed was of her kitchen clock. Her mother was so proud of the drawing that she stuck it up on the kitchen wall. However, a curious thing happened: the drawing started ticking, just like a real clock. Her mother was so alarmed by this that she called the neighbours round to listen - and they all agreed that yes, the drawing was indeed ticking. To Emily's horror, her mother threw the picture away.
This event left the young Emily convinced that she had magical powers. She decided that she would make the most of her powers by becoming a witch.
One morning, she crept out of bed early, clutching a broomstick, determined to find out if she had the requisite power of flight needed to become a witch. She jumped from the top of the stairs - and fell hard on the floor below, breaking her nose in the fall.
That was the end of her ambition to be a witch. But she still loved drawing.
Emily's first observational drawing, aged five: a drawing of her mother
Emily left school at 16 with a grade A in GCSE Art. The school career's counsellor advised her to become a hairdresser because she was arty and good with her hands. Instead, Emily went to live on a bus and travel round Great Britain.
For eight years, she continued travelling the country in a variety of vehicles, always drawing. Then something happened to change all that.
Her daughter was born. The trouble was that she cried and cried and cried. Nothing would calm her. Emily was at her wit's end. Then, one day, she decided to read to her - and the crying stopped.
Emily read countless children's books to her daughter. Realising by then that she wanted a career, she applied to Brighton University for an illustration degree course. Her first book, 'Wolves', was published by Macmillan after she graduated, having won the Macmillan Prize for Children's Illustration. From then on, she worked as an author/illustrator which, she told us, was the perfect job because she could do what she loved best all day long and could work in her dressing gown and slippers if she wanted.
After this potted autobiography, she read two of her books to the audience: 'Dogs' and 'Monkey and Me'.
At this point, Emily told us she was going to help us to create our own children's book. This was a wonderful way of demonstrating the process to the children. She asked children for their ideas for a main character and hands shot up all over the room. She chose the suggestion of an alien.
The format was based on the story of 'Monkey and Me' and this was the entertaining tale that the children in the audience came up with:
Alien and me, alien and me, alien and me, we went to taste, we went to taste...
A balloon
Worms on toast
A frog
Ah, at last - something tasty!
At the end, Emily asked the children what they had now become. The answer, of course, was: author/illlustrators! It was a wonderfully neat way of ending an inspiring and entertaining presentation.
We had a break for refreshments at this point. On our way back to our seats, I spotted Christopher Lloyd and had a brief chat with him about home education, as I knew he and his wife had home educated both their daughters. I had seen a clip of him on The Wright Stuff, speaking in favour of home education, and told him how impressed I'd been by his speech. People can be so prejudiced against home education and it is rare to see someone win an audience over so adeptly. You can see the clip here.
Apparently, the UK
has one of the highest numbers of home-educated children in the
developed world - as many as 100,000 children are educated by their
parents. What does this say about our school system?
In an article published in The Telegraph, Christopher wrote:
'ONLY CONNECT – that famous dictum at the start of EM Forster novel Howard’s End – is
still the best advice for anyone involved in learning and education.
Connecting knowledge allows young people to follow their curiosity... whereas chopping it up into fragments, as we mostly
still do in school, presents a view of the world about as engaging as a
window-pane of shattered glass. A big picture perspective provides
narrative context and lateral links – essential ingredients for making
information relevant and interesting.
In a world where everything changes so fast it seems crazy that we
continue to base our education system on outdated Victorian structures,
timetables, school bells, arbitrary subject disciplines, syllabi,
curricula, rote learning and endless examinations. If a child gets bored
at school, blame the system – it’s not the child who has failed. Christopher's description of replicating school at home and how boring this had been for his children made me think again about the way I was home educating Charlie. I still believe that Charlie needs to work on certain subjects daily, whether he wants to or not, but I can also see that all subjects can be covered through a topic of the child's own choice. As Christopher describes in his speech on The Wright Stuff, one of his daughters soon became as bored by work at home as she had been by work at school. So, he did something different: he asked her what she wanted to study. And she said: penguins. This project led to a trip to London Zoo, a study of the Antarctic, an exploration of why penguins live in groups, creative writing about penguins, an examination of ice and why it melts - in short, as Christopher said, "It's amazing, you can teach everything you can wish your child to learn through penguins!" Anyway, Christopher wasn't at the event to discuss home education, although, funnily enough, the books he was promoting were the result of home educating his children. He had looked for books to share with them which connected natural history and human history - and found nothing. In the end, he used his background in journalism and history (he is a graduate in History from Cambridge) to write a book called 'What on Earth Happened? The Complete Story of Planet, Life and People from the Big Bang to the Present'. It was great, but it was too dense for young readers. So he then came up with the idea of a 'wallbook': a visual overview of world history in pictures and captions.
Since producing this first wallbook, Christopher has developed more in the series, published by his own publishing company, whatonearthbooks.
Subjects covered include: Shakespeare; science and engineering;
history; natural history; and sport. There are also mini editions and
poster editions.
Demonstrating an unfolded wallbook
Christopher's ambitious aim, during his presentation, was to cover the history of the world from the Big Bang to the present day in 45 minutes. To help him, he wore a special coat, hand sewn by a kindly next-door neighbour, featuring pockets for objects which exemplified each stage of history.
It was a breathless, fascinating and entertaining presentation, which kept the children (and adults) mesmerised till the end. Afterwards, Charlie and I spent some time looking more closely at the giant wallbook, before buying an edition to take home with us.
After this, it was time for Gillian Cross to cut the cake.
And there was lots of free cake - and some delicious homemade biscuits - for us to take home.
Unfortunately, we couldn't stay for the events by Ali Sparkes and Steve Cole, but I hear that both were well attended and just as successful as the first two.
As we walked home, I explained to Charlie why I felt it was important that he kept on with English, Maths and handwriting every day. But, I pointed out, if he worked hard at his lessons first thing in the morning, then he could have the rest of the day to study whatever he wanted. What would he like to study?
Without a moment's hesitation, Charlie replied, "Art".
'...when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.'
Kenneth Grahame, 'The Wind in the Willows' On Friday, Charlie couldn't concentrate on his work. He said he felt all wrong. He tried to practise his handwriting, but the letters came out wobbly. I felt his forehead: it was cool.
"Why don't you go and play for a bit?" I suggested. A few minutes later, he was creating a river out of blue Lego, spraying water over it and causing maritime disasters.
Michael came home for lunch and suggested we pack a picnic and go out into the sunshine. So we did.
We ate our sandwiches whilst watching the life on the river go past.
That afternoon, back at home, I let Charlie relax and follow his own interests. He was bored at school; the last thing I wanted was for him to start feeling bored by what we did at home too. There are lots of things I want him to learn whilst he's being home educated - his times tables and how to produce readable handwriting, to name just two - but if I achieve nothing else, I want him to begin to love learning again.
Later, I heard one of my favourite sounds: his giggling as he read one of his favourite 'Tintin' books.
Lord Yama threatens to take Princess Savitri's husband
This week, we've continued to read Jamila Gavin's enchanting retelling of three Hindu tales, Three Indian Princesses. The first tale, about Princess Savitri, appears in its original form in the Mahabharata, an ancient Indian epic.
It was this passage in particular which captured our attention when we read it in the Galore Park textbook:
Her home was a magnificent palace with large beautiful rooms to explore, and cool courtyards with fountains in which to rest. And all around were the palace gardens with their intricate flower beds, avenues of cypress trees, and shady paths among the guava groves. But over the wall where the sun always set, where the rest of the world spread away to the shimmering horizon; over the wall was the jungle.
When we reached the end of the chapter quoted in the textbook, both Charlie and I wanted to know what happened next, so I ordered the book. The first story describes how a brave princess uses her intelligence to outwit the greatest enemy of all: death, or Lord Yama, as he is called in the Hindu tradition. It is a great story to read aloud, beautifully written and with chapters that left Charlie begging me to read "just one more".
Charlie has also been reading more about how people live in modern India. He read and answered questions on an extract from the book, The Changing Face of India by David Cumming, quoted in our Galore Park textbook. Then he compiled an information sheet on India. I taught him how to use Word - opening a new document, saving it, copying images and text from the web and so on. He took a lot of information from this page on the Woodland School website, which I often use for child-friendly materials.
I became a bit too involved with Charlie's work on the factsheet (it was hard for my proofreading/editing eyes to watch him making mistakes without correcting them) and he told me, quite rightly, to stop butting in. So I left him alone to work independently. When he called me back, he said, "I'm really proud of this." He had successfully downloaded lots of relevant text and images and organised it into an informative leaflet. He was rightly proud.
One of the hardest things about home ed is 'to stop butting in'. It frustrates me to see something unfinished or with mistakes. But I know that Charlie needs to be allowed to make mistakes and then learn from them.
For lunch one day, I served vegetable samosas and onion baajis, in the spirit of our studies. Charlie, suspicious of anything that he doesn't eat on a regular basis, refused to touch them, so Tom and I ate them instead.
Although the work on India was initially part of the English exercises in the Galore Park book, it also neatly encompassed Geography, IT and religion (as Charlie ended up finding out about Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism).
We finished our visit to India by watching some some YouTube clips about the country, ending with one of my favourite clips of all time - the final dance sequence from 'Slumdog Millionaire'.
We don't take holidays abroad anymore. On our last holiday, once we'd liaised with the airline for special treatment for Tom, organised sedation for him for the flight and helped him cope with the influx of new experiences on a daily basis, we were exhausted. In spite of all our preparations, the holiday was overwhelmingly stressful for him and that meant it was no fun for us.
So it was fun to travel round the world this morning, when we visited the Brighton Sand Sculpture Festival. The theme was 'Around the World...in Sand'.
The sand sculptures are jaw-dropping. Unbelievably, they really are made out of sand and water only. The sand is prepared by compressing it inside wooden frames, which compacts the grains into a dense mass. The sand is then carved by very talented sculptors, most of whom travel round the world creating sculptures for different exhibitions. Many of them also sculpt snow, ice and other materials.
Ganesha, Hindu god: India and Nepal
Lakshmi, Hindu goddess, India
All packed up for the journey
The Eiffel Tower: France
The Leaning Tower of Pisa: Italy
The Rodin Kiss: France
Tian Tan Buddha: China
Tibetan Monk: Tibet
Close up
Postcard from Australia
The Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building: North America
After our tour of the world, we walked down to the beach to enjoy fish and chips.
