Picture Book Advent :"The Stone" by By Dianne Hofmeyr, Jude Daly

"The Stone" by By Dianne Hofmeyr, Jude Daly : 

 A retelling of the story told to Marco Polo about the Magi of Saveh, three wise men from a town in Persia, who followed a strange star and find a special child. Marco Polo described the tombs of the Magi in his travel book, Il Milione:
"In Persia is the city of Saba, from which the Three Magi set out... and in this city they are buried, in three very large and beautiful monuments, side by side. And above them there is a square building, beautifully kept. The bodies are still entire, with hair and beard remaining."

Love this book! The story of the three kings but told in a less usual though in my opinion highly acceptable way! 

It fits in/ties up so neatly and profoundly our geography study of the middle east.Leaves us with thoughts to think on and actions to take! Highly recommend it!

Evocative images add to the Persian atmposphere. I love the ending. A great take on the impact of Christ’s light within us shing out to the world:

"then each person carried the flame away,back to all the faraway places of the earth,for all mankind to share.”

Copybook:

Balsar’s eyes shone:”The child accepted all three of our gifts. He must be all three things..”

“What three things?” demanded Jasper.

“The true king. The true healer and the true Holy One.”

Picture Book Advent :Through The Animals Eyes by Christopher Wormell

Day Two:

Through the Animals Eyes by Christopher Wormell

what can I say? I often choose picture books and will continue to do so for their art. And this is no exception. The moment I looked at the cover I knew this would be a book that would "grab my boys in". Seriously if you enjoy good art, and love nature you will be the same!

This is a book to be studied long after advent and Christmas seasons are over. The book gives us more than the "simple" story too but adds to our knowledge of middle eastern animals.A further "rabbit trail pending.

We read quite a sizeable biography at the end of the book about the author/ illustrator, delighted to find that he "cut his teeth" on an assembly line of lino-cut Christmas cards before developing his own particular style of wood-cuts.(wood-cuts? lino-cuts? already a study to come back too)

Finally ds9 was delighted to learn that the Mr Wormall had been chosen as the illustrator of the 2004 Christmas stamps collection in Britain.(more stamp/artist study to follow!)

 ACTIVITIES:

Copybook or calligraphy the following:

"Her child would be the Son of God whose kingdom would have no end”

“So a humble manger became blessed with the light of life."

 CRAFT:

Lino cuts for cards

The Middle east and mosaics

We have finished our middle eastern mosaics! Ds 9 is very pleased it is completed. A good friend lent us this book
by this artist because she knows how much we love following rabbit trails.



The other photos are pictures of his work from said book. Enjoy!

Tales of the Hodja

We are enjoying adding stories from this book to our study of the Middle East. It has proved much harder to find readalouds for this region than for other continents. But a friend suggested using tales and legends and that has made it much easier. This book works really well for both boys although I think sometimes some of the humour might be lost in translation. The illustrations of our copy are wonderfully vibrant and compliment the stories well.

Notebook pages

We use unlined artist notebooks for much of our schoolwork. I like that they are spiral bound as it makes turning pages,even bending the book back on itself possible without damaging work. I also like that their durable covers,means you can take them anywhere and work in them.

Here are pages from our middle eastern scrapbooks. I use that term very specifically. They are not meant to be exhaustive compositions but just "glimpses" into how other people live their lives and the places they live them out in.Perhaps in later years they will also be memory prods as the boys tell back things they still remember of our study of this part of the world.As you can see we like maps! We also like putting key words/and or pictures as a summary of what we have discovered. We also add samples of art work and if is not possible because of the size of the piece(such as mosaic work we are doing for this unit)or because the art work was made of a material that would not fit easily into our books(eg pottery)we add photos of the work. Pictures and titles of books we have read,plus music cd's we have listened to and dvd's watched also find a place in the notebook.

Middle east mosaic work

Today in our study of the middle east we read about Jerash in Jordan. We thrilled over the beautiful mosaics that have been discovered there. This site in particular showed us an amazing map mosaic. And so after all this looking we decided to do some paper mosaic work ourselves. In doing this we also learned how time-consuming this art form is and how even with paper pieces it can be a very exacting process.One son decided to replicate a part of the Madaba Mosaic Map with his own interpretation of course. Other son decided to first draw his imagined scene and then color it mosaic. This is what they looked like at the end of this first day's session.

6 years

We read this picture book today

a quote from it leapt out at me :Current waiting time in detension can be up to six years.

and suddenly I'm back

to a family with 3 young children and a mother who hasn't spoken or left their room

to a visit to Baxter where three young men came up and thanked us for bringing our boys because they were beginning to forget what their younger siblings looked like and it was so beautiful to see children just play again



but they tell me:
we have limited resources



we can't take them all


their taking our jobs

why don't they just go back

and my thoughts move forward to a recent Compass programme that highlighted the reluctance of three young men to come from africa because



they'll treat us like we're monkeys

and back again i remember the privilage of homeschooling two "non-persons" for a term and celebrating the birthday of the youngest with a special picnic in the park, the oldest has a smile that could have lit up all of Adelaide..


even though she'd traveled as a "non-person" ... still kept smiling..... 6 years..........

Middle East studies

In our study of the Middle East we read this book and discovered something that might be a useful idea to adopt in hot summers here!



The tall towers on their rooftops have openings to catch outside breezes. This air flows down to the basement, where a pool or stream cools it. The cool air then circulates all through the house!