Truth: I borrowed with idea from Sara, yet again. Last year she did form drawing using the Clown of God, retold and illustrated by Tomie de Paola. I like this story very much, it has a nice spiritual feel and works really well with the focus of second grade. The Clown of God is the story of Giovanni, a beggar child who can juggle.
My my plan is to use this story through Christmas - as it is a Christmas story that ends on Christmas Day. Our final form will show the final scene of the story. I have a hardcover copy of the book that I plan to present to her on that day. As this story ends we will begin our second, main lesson, language arts, block focusing on stories of the Saints. I just love it when things tie in nicely.
So far it's going well. Nightowl is having no trouble with the forms, so I might adjust my plans to include more difficult forms. Until then, here's what we've done so far:
#1 - Giovanni, #2 - Juggling,
#3 - the crowd, young and old, #4 - the traveling players
#5 - Giovanni joins the traveling players, #6 - Giovanni's clown suit
I find that I'm liking this weekly version of form drawing better because it spreads out this extremely intense activity, allows us to explore more forms, and keeps Nightowl involved in the serial of the story. Its good recall for her to re-tell the story each week. Plus, she is not getting overwhelmed by the activity - which was one of our problems last year. Finally, with this schedule we have the feeling of doing many different subjects as opposed to just a single block; it keeps things interesting. I'm already considering what we'll do for the January - June forms. I'm not sure yet, but there are a number of interesting possibilities.
3 comments:
Hey, fun! We really loved doing this block-- and it's so much fun to see all the new forms you've come up with, like his clown suit! :-)
Thanks for posting this entry! Now that you mention it, I remember reading Sara's post last year, and thinking, gosh, what a great idea! Of course, I bookmarked it, and then... promptly forgot about the wonderful idea.
I'm looking forward to reading your Part 2. :-)
I like the idea of just doing it once a week. I can better get my head around that concept.
I think my youngest boy would like something like this and the older boy and myself could use an activity to quietly focus ourselves (as we tend to be not so quiet or focused).
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