Dragon

Sometimes it just works. Unexpectedly, the usual amount of vague ideas, lack of "proper planning" and even a little resisitance still all come together.
We have a large box of art stuff, largely different types of coloured pencils, plus pastels, crayons, more pencils and lots and lots of half-used pads of different sizes and weights of paper. Every time I try to clear it out we get stuck with all the still untried possibilities. (But why are they still untried?) So my art curriculum this term has boiled down to opening the art box and using the stuff in there.
So that is what my daughter and I did yesterday. She really just wanted to carry on drawing her pictures to send to a friend (surely, my doubtful voice says, that is just as much art as my idea?) but agreed to give it half-an-hour. We settled on dragons as we have some delightful dragon stencils and I gave her the challenge of doing four pictures, each with a different material and different paper, and I joined her.

It was fun. She developed a character for one of her creations and was inspired to write a poem. She thought it would be "cool" to have a poem in which each line started with the letters that spell out "DRAGON" and my son let her know that this was an acrostic. We played with words and she wrote her poem and then copied it out onto her picture, which now, along with seven other dragons, decorates our mantlepiece.

Dragon

Deep in the wood,

Residing in a black cave,

All his skin green;

Guzzling a young deer,

Orchids scattered everywhere,

Never more to return to the land of men.

 Middle son had, meanwhile, been baking, so we switched chapter book for Poetry Tea. devoured awesome, warm cherry cake and shared poems. Eldest son read us a poem he has written for his English course and a story which he has just heard has made it through to the second round of a national competition. We were reminded of the Geographical Fugue and listened to it on youtube.

Sometimes it just works.