Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Colors...

Seth started school introductory course the first of April. Real school starts next week...

Most kids in Denmark go to public schools that has, or at least had a good reputation, but lately the smaller schools are being  merged into very big schools. Luckily we have a system in this country that also supports private schools that use a different way of teaching or have a special agenda  . Seth's school is a small private one. The whole school work on the same subject for a longer time. In my opinion it gives a feeling of being together working on something like in a family or even a workplace. When I go to the school I see older children taking care of the small ones and even being like a sister or brother. The school has 20 student pr class and 1 class pr age.

It was a big day and off course he got some new crayons and markers.



I made a bag for his new markers, and bought some real good crayons from Mercurius (Stockmar ). This place sells them in either packages of 12 or 24 and you can even just buy one in the color you like or if one got lost. I made an elastic band of an old belt to keep it all well together. Everything has his name on it. For the wooden crayons I used a burner to write his name with. I think it is quite important to teach children to care for their things and learn that its their responsibility....off course... 





One of the things that shows quality of different type of paint, crayons and markers is of course their intensity but also their color range. For me it is important that they are true to the color wheel. If they are not the colors will act strange and the red and the blue mixed together will suddenly have a brown tone to it...just not nice. All of Mercurius stuff seems to have this quality.

For watercolors to little children I have a little different approach and that is buy cheap and in tubes. The ones I got have strange colors. Some are opaque others aren't. The yellow is opaque and very weak which makes it a little strange when mixing. But with children I just find it better to give them a clean new fresh palette very often. I have a bunch of plastic palettes and When Seth is done with one he get a new one. I wash the palettes, put new paint on and they get into the everlasting circle of colors in our house.




It is no secret that I have a hard time to just sit down with my children, and (In my opinion... ) do nothing. I like to be productive, and I find it so much easier for me to do things with Seth that I also like. Making color wheels and building stuff is much more my thing than being killed (10 times...)  in a Star Wars fight ( While making dinner...)

These color wheels are so much fun to make, and we have made them with Seth's watercolors and with his Stochmar big giants. He also has some fine pointed crayons and I guess we should try it on those as well.

So much fun and so much learning...




Dinner tonight: pasta salad from yesterday. Added some celeriac and salad for crunch and some chopped olives to balance the sweetness of the roasted pepper.

2 comments:

Mette said...

Ja, det er kedeligt med de mange skolesammenlægninger, Mette, som er en vigtig grund til, at jeg skiftede job sidste år. Tænk at Seth er blevet så stor. Dejlig beskrivelser om det "rigtige værktøj" som er ens eget.

Linda said...

Åh vilken fin ide att bränna in namnet på träpennorna. Superfint sätt du/ni har att se på skolvalet :)