Read Along: Week Six - The Two Bears

Chapter 6 is called “The Two Bears”. We will also continue to do the Christmas in July stuff, as well.

Pictures from HatsFineandFancy from a Museum visit.  The Ontario Black Bear

1. Discuss different types of optical illusions. Look at Rorschach (sp?) prints and see what things you might find, or look at Escher paintings/prints.
2. Google the type of brown bears that lived in Wisconsin during the mid-to-late 1800s. Compare to the types of bears that may live or have lived in your area of the world.
   

Christmas in July: .

1. Flower pressing. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, flowers are all around us right now. Pick some flowers and press them in books or make a leaf press. After a couple weeks, make them into pictures, or put them in a scrapbook, with their names and where you found them. Or for Christmas presents, mount them into a picture frame to be hung on a wall or used as a serving tray. Or mount them onto cards or writing paper with clear mactac to give as stationary sets.
   
   
2. Flower Pounding Tutorial: There are some great tutorials online. I have done this with preschoolers, and they love it! Find some brightly-colored flowers; some light-colored cotton or linen (no synthetics!) fabric; a rubber mallet, child’s building block, or something other that fits nicely into your hand and you can safely pound it without it breaking; a flat surface on which to pound; old newspapers/brown paper, or anything else you can use to place between the pounding surface and the fabric.
   

Cover your work area with the old paper. Pull off individual petals from the flower and arrange them however you would like on the paper. (This is best if you start small) You can make a picture, or arrange the flower the way it was naturally grown, or just petals from different flowers, etc. Carefully place the fabric on top in a single layer. Locate the petals underneath, and, taking your pounding tool, gently pound on top of the fabric where the petals are. You should be able to see the pigments of the petals coming through, especially if it is a thin fabric. The petals should eventually be destroyed, and you can only use each one once. But on the fabric, you should see the imprints of those petals. You can then set the colors on the fabric in your dryer, or even lay it out in the sun on the grass for a few hours.