Walking through the Science Encyclopedias

Hunter really loves to draw.

And in the past few months, he has become quite keen on writing, too.

So we have decided to combine this along with his interest in science to create a sort of copy work / narrating activity that also involves illustration.

It started out as just reading together for leisure (from some science encyclopedias we got for $1 at a yard sale). But then I decided to go ahead and have him "narrate" what we just read (tell me what we just learned about, in his own words) and he started wanting to draw about it, too.

Which resulted in this...

The aardvark is an african mammal. It digs in dirt and scoops up ants and termit[es] with its tongue. Its scientific name is Orycteropus afer.

Yes, I realize that he misspelled termites and that, for some reason, he put "name is" after its name. But we'll work on that.

The "copy work" aspect is that I write down what he tells me, and then he in turn copies it in onto his story paper (which has unfortunately large lines, making for not too much space to write).

This has been great to work on his drawing (we have been having lessons on drawing what you see and really paying attention to the way the lines go), his comprehension and speaking skills (hence the narration part), and the copy work is to work on his spelling, punctuation, word spacing, and ideally handwriting (although he didn't exactly do his "best" handwriting here, but not too bad).

This is an activity that, if I would have assigned it to him a year and a half ago, he would have hated. But now he actually found it quite enjoyable, and is looking forward to illustrating (and narrating) the encyclopedia entries for abacus and abrasion and absolute zero (good luck on that one, right?).

"...Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua..." 

Exodus 17:14

Hunter is 5 years, 4 months old

The Atmosphere of the Earth

Hunter's depiction of the earth from space. He drew this after looking at one of his flashcards of the earth's atmosphere.

"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." 

Isaiah 55:9

Hunter is 4 years, 9 months old

Tree and Presents

This was Hunter's "gift" to Brandon and me. He drew a lot of things like our actual tree, like the red bow on top, the brown carpet (although ours is actually more of a beige), and the red and green gifts.

We haven't done any more of the Drawing with Children exercises but I really love his representational drawing here. And that he really loves making so many pictures now. (Oh, and by the way, on Christmas day he drew about six more pictures, and kept "wrapping" them and giving them to us to open. Apparently he thought he had to try and match the amount of presents he got. So cute.)

"And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger." 

Luke 2:16

Hunter is 4 years, 9 months old

Drawing Explosion

Hunter has experienced a drawing explosion recently.

It's funny because, up until this point, he did not like to draw.

Ok, maybe I'm being a little too harsh on myself (or on him). It's not like he hated drawing or would never draw, it's just that he never really wanted to draw or, at least, not long enough to finish much of a picture.

I have been talking about the book, Drawing with Children, for quite some time now. I have loved the idea of the book (that is, that any child [or adult] can draw and draw well, even very young ones, without some special genetic gift) but Hunter hasn't really seemed "ready" for it up until now. I hate using that term because it's not that he wasn't capable or couldn't learn or couldn't enjoy it, just that we were focusing on other things.

But recently, he has been drawing a lot. Maybe it's because he doesn't have as many toys here or other distracting factors. Maybe it's just because he suddenly became interested. Either way, he's been at it a lot and more importantly, really focusing on detail unlike he ever has before. The picture above (of the phone) was taken a while ago when he sporadically decided he wanted to draw my phone, which he had been doing with similar things quite frequently.

So it seemed like the perfect time to get the book from the library and start implementing some of the simple, easy lessons. The bookmark to the left was made for Brandon's birthday, and he was able to draw this well after just one lesson (no kidding).

More on this coming soon, I am pretty excited about it.

"And the rest of the trees of his forest shall be few, that a child may write them." 

Isaiah 10:19

Hunter is 4 years, 9 months old

Phonetic Spelling and Representational Drawing

"...how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings..." 

Matthew 23:37

Hunter is 4 years, 8 months old