Because i did a job which had to do with birds previously i have a partiality to birds. But the Raven is an bird which is so much of the imagination - it is probably the bird we have the closest relationship with as human beings. It is so much part of our mythology around the world - American Indians, Norse mythology, Egyptian mythology, and of course Celtic mythology as well. So when i saw that R was done as Raven in a previous book, i did not miss the opportunity.
It is always good fun when you tell children that the Raven is about the same size as i am with its wings outstretched. They are very impressed.
We did R in the ML books. Here are the results...
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| Shading |
I am teaching the children how to shade. Rather than have everything done uniformly, being ever so slightly sanguine, i'm using the ML drawing practise sessions to teach various drawing teachniques with different media - colour pencils and wax (block and stick) crayons, and how to mix colour. This time round we used shading - i loved the results - each child coming up with something which is entirely theirs with some instructions. For children who don't want to do shading, that's alright. They can do what suits them ... and i do a straightforward colouring with them.
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| November song drawing |
Finally, we did our November song and said goodbye to it.
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| Chalkboard practise |
We spend lots of time drawing the letters and saying them before we put them in the ML book. In this case we did D and R. We walk it, draw it with bits of our body and then finally model it. And then we pracitse draw it and then finally put it in the ML book.
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| We have plastercine Rs |
There is also a strang emphasis on making sure that they do the letters in the correct way - up to down and then a non mirror image. This will probably be something which happens gradually, as often children at this age still cannot tell left from right and will flip/reverse letters. It will take awhile but playing down good habits is essential now. Get it right from the start.
