May 19, 2009 @ 8:09 am | Filed under: Art, Books, Math
Jane really appreciates the great optical illusions and Escher-art book suggestions. She has added more than a few promising titles to her birthday wish list, so perhaps we’ll have some reviews to share in the months ahead. In the meantime, here’s a nifty YouTube clip we found. Jane was looking for help in drawing “impossible shapes”; I didn’t know what she meant until she showed me pictures in the Harold Jacobs Mathematics book. (Highly recommended, by the way—we have never used the Jacobs books as textbooks, but rather they have been ‘fun reading’ for Jane and others for several years. She has Mathematics: A Human Endeavor and the algebra book, and actually the Jacobs geometry book is item number one on her birthday list.)
Back to the video clip. Jane spent a good bit of time yesterday working out how to draw the “impossible triangle.” This morning we found this Paint tutorial demonstrating that triangle and several other “impossible” shapes. Simple and fun.
Thanks, Jane! As a fifth grade teacher, this is great! You don’t happen to have the html so I can tag it for future use? Or would a You Tube search for “impossible shapes” suffice?
That video was great! One of my 6yo twins is really into art. He thought that video was fascinating and is now asking for a book to learn to draw optical illusions.
They send you free seeds for sunflowers (a specific variety) and you spend 30 minutes a month (I think) recording bee data and send it in. I’ve bookmarked it for next year, anyway.
(A roundup post with links to my notes and reviews)
Hey, what happened to all those booklists you used to have in your sidebars at the old blog?
They're still accessible at melissawiley.typepad.com, where this blog lived from January 2005-March 2008. You can also find all my Lilting House posts there, or try the search bar here. All my previous Bonny Glen and Lilting House posts have been imported to this site.
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
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“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
Thanks, Jane!
As a fifth grade teacher, this is great! You don’t happen to have the html so I can tag it for future use? Or would a You Tube search for “impossible shapes” suffice?
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 9:37 amThat video was great! One of my 6yo twins is really into art. He thought that video was fascinating and is now asking for a book to learn to draw optical illusions.
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 9:48 amOh my heavens, my daughters are going to love this. Thank you. You guys are superduper.
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 9:50 amLissa, I just stumbled across this and thought of you – http://www.greatsunflower.org/en
They send you free seeds for sunflowers (a specific variety) and you spend 30 minutes a month (I think) recording bee data and send it in. I’ve bookmarked it for next year, anyway.
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 10:41 amWhat a cool video. I’ll have to my 5yo is very into art and I’ll have to show it to her tomorrow. I’m going to look up the Jacobs math books too.
Posted on May 19th, 2009 at 5:22 pm