This weekend, we finished Our Big Summer Project – Our Outdoor Mural!
Here’s how we got from point B to point Z, with a DIY recap at the very bottom of the page.

Generating the Final Design
Come up with a final sketch (or use an existing image) and print it in both colour and black and white. Earlier this summer, I chronicled the kids’ first attempts to sketch for a planned outdoor (see Outdoor Mural Phase One: Sketching from our Favourite Artists). Drawing on those projects, particularly their imitations of abstracts and of the African masks owned by Henry Moore, the kids continued to sketch throughout the summer. On a trip to Ottawa last week, the kids fell in love with the totem poles in the Museum of Civilization. So, working with their father, the kids came up with a design [drawn within in a rectangle of a ratio of 2w:3h] that incoporated the faces on the masks they’d drawn in a totem pole structure. They also used some of the “abstract” concepts they’d picked up from the other artists they’d sketched to come up with a simple but striking background of leaf-like geometrical objects. Once a Master Design was in place, we scanned it into the computer and printed it out in black and white [to use as a colouring page].
Original Designs, Master Design and a Scanned Black and White Copy of the Master Design:
     
Gathering Supplies
Measure space. Cut MDO or Plywood to size. Purchase exterior paints and painting tools.
A few weeks ago, my husband and I measured the back of the garden and decided upon the size of mural we would like to place against the back fence. We wanted a 4 foot wide by 6 foot high mural [corresponding to the ratio of 2:3 we'd given the children to sketch within], so we went to Danforth Lumber and asked for 4×8 MDO panel to be cut to size. [MDO is board that is often used in sign-making. Plywood works just as well.] We took home both the 4×6 and the 4×2 panels and set them up against a our shed in the backyard.
Then, this Saturday, with a colour printout of our final design in hand, we went to the paint section of a large, local hardware shop to choose our paints. We set a budget and decided that we could afford both 1 quart of exterior primer and 6 quarts of coloured exterior latex. [You probably need 1-2 quarts in total to complete a mural of this size, but most places won't mix less than a quart of paint per colour. Unfortunately, our shop did not have any rejected/returned paints or we would have been on those like flies!] The kids had a great time mulling through the paint chips and helping choose an array of colours to suit our needs. We came up with a palette of six CIL colours: Lake Simcoe, Shamrock, Kiwi Fun, Red Brick, Egyptian Earth, and, Sun Rays.
As the paints were being mixed, I ran off to the dollar store to pick up a wide array of paint brushes,plastic tarps, plastic cups for holding paint, hooks and latches to secure the board against the fence, and a box of coloured chalk. We came home that night and primed our wooden mural boards before bed.
Supplies and Priming:
     
Painting Day!
Colouring our Master Designs, Chalking-Out and Painting the Mural
On Sunday morning, we got up early. We set the kids to work choosing the final colour placement for our mural. We asked them to pick out a crayon or coloured pencil closest to each of the six paint colours we’d chosen at the store. Then, they filled in the black-and-white copies of the mural design with their “suggested” layout. Together, we conferenced and filled out a third colouring sheet with the final colour placement. We taped this final design to the shed near where we were working to us as a reference for our painting.
Colouring the Black & White Copy of the Master Design:
     
Meanwhile, my husband spent time laying out the basic design in chalk on the primed panel. First, he chalked a grid of rectangles in light yellow on the panel that corresponded to a grid he had drawn in pencil over the printout of our final mural design. Then, he sketched the outlines of the figures onto the panel in a medium coloured chalk.  Bea joined in from time to time to lend an expert hand. Finally, when he’d gotten the drawing the way he liked it, he re-traced that final design with a darker chalk.
Chalking-in the Master Design on the Primed Panel:
          
Then, we got to painting! We set the panel on the ground on top of several tarps. We had each kid work with one colour at a time, pouring a small amount of paint into a plastic tub for them to use. Before the kids would paint a certain area, my husband and I would spend time outlining the edges of those areas with fine brushes [smaller than 1 inch]. Then, the kids filled in the outlined areas with their own brushes [1-1.5 inches]. We kept a cloth around to clean up the dribbles. The project took several hours. We made sure to take water breaks and to order a few very large pizzas to keep us going! As evening drew on, we stood the finished mural up against the garden shed and applied some finishing touches. This morning, we attached hooks to the sides of the panel and latches tot he back fence so taht we could latch the panel to the back fence to keep it from falling in the wind. Still, it will be easy to move around the garden any time!
Painting the Mural:
                  

The Finished Mural!

Below, you’ll find a basic DIY!.

Creating a Movable Outdoor Mural - A Brief DIY:
Supplies
MDO or plywood cut to the size of your choosing
Praint Brushes
Paint Roller [Optional]
Outdoor Acrylic Latex Primer [Optional]
Chalk
Outdoor Acrylic Latex Paints [3-6 quarts in colours of your choosing]
A Sketch or Printout of the Artwork You Will Paint – We call this the “Master Design”
[The Master Design need not be your own artwork...feel free to copy whatver you like!]
Computer, Scanner & Printer
Coloured Pencils, Crayons or Markers
Tape
Tarps or dropcloths

Method
Prime the MDO or plywood with Outdoor Acrylic Latext Primer [Optional]
Scan your Master Design into a Computer
Crop or resize the image so that it corresponds in width and height to your wooden panel.
Print this image once in colour [optional] and several times in black-and-white.
With coloured pencils or crayons that match the 3-6 colours of paint you’ve chosen, fill in your black-and-white colouring page to your liking.
Divide another printout of the Master Design into squares or rectangles in a grid-like pattern.
Tape the gridded-image onto a fence or wall near your wooden panel.
Using a light coloured chalk, divide the MDO/Plywood panel into a grid with an equal number of squares or rectangles as in your Master Design.
With the grid as your guide, draw your Master Image onto the panel using a medium coloured chalk.
When you are happy with the image, colour over that medium coloured chalk with dark coloured chalk [optional].
Lay the mural panel down on a tarp.
Tape the coloured-in image of the Master Design on a wall near your workspace to use as a guide.
Outline the edges of each section of colour in the mural using a fine paint brush.
Fill in the outlines using a finer or thicker brush to suit.
Return the board to an upright position to add your final touchups and let dry.
If desired, attach hooks to each side of the wooden panel and secure against a wall or fence with latches attached to that wall or fence._______________________
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Summer of Funner : The Lunchbox Season : In Defense of Burning

Several years ago, decades ago, as the case may be, my husband and his parents painted an outdoor mural on a piece of plywood and installed it at the back left-hand corner of their garden.  Whenever I even think of going over to their house, this is the image that comes to mind: a large face or mask, somewhat similar to one of the great Moai of Easter Island. I’m sentimental about it. I am sure we all are. So, this summer, we decided to paint a large outdoor mural on a piece of plywood and “install” it in our own garden, both as an homage to that first painting and as a newly-beloved object of our own.

The first step has been to come up with an idea of what to paint!
So far, we’ve got four general threads going:
1) Some sort of “tree” related mural to memorialize the very large, very beautiful cherry tree that used to stand in our back yard. (Just now, its final blooms are pictured on the header to this journal.) Just this spring, our 60+-year-old beauty, in full bloom, was taken up by the roots in a gust of wind and crashed down across our fence and into our neighbours’ back yards. No one was injured, thankfully. Although, it caused some interesting neighbourly drama that has been a learning experience for us all. In any case, we miss our tree most terribly!

 2) An image of the female lamplighters painted by Paul Delvaux.  I have been dying to do this for years, and it will be done regardless of whether it happens in the form of this particular mural or as one of my own.

3) A figure, face, or mask not unlike our inspiration piece across town.

4) A favourite animal.

Over the past few days, the kids have been looking at books featuring the work of some of their favourite artists.
Today, we spent time copying, imitating, and, generally, drawing inspiration from those works towards a design of their own.

Here’s the pile of books they chose to sketch from today. If you are looking to do something similar and if you don’t have anything on hand, it would be easy enough to choose library books:
Klee, A Study of his Life and Work, by Gualtieri di San Lazzaro, New York: Praeger 1957.
Stuart Davis, The Great American Artists Series, by E. G. Cossen, New York: Braziller, 1959.
Henry Moore, My Ideas, Inspiration and Life as an Artist, by Henry Moore & John Hedgecoe. London: Collins and Brown, 1999.
Ancient Egypt, Kingdom of the Pharoahs, by R. Hamilton. Bath: Parragon, 2005.
The Imperial Collection of Audubon Animals, Ed. Victor H. Cahalane. New York: Bonanza.
The World of Henri Rousseau, by Yann le Pichon. New York: Viking, 1982.

Here are the artists at work:
              

And here are the completed sketches beside their inspiration pieces!

Tobes:
 
Snake. Inspired by Stuart Davis. Still Life with Saw. 1930.
  
The Tiny Chipmuk. Inspired by Audubon. Colorado Chipmunk.
 
Marmot Marmot. Inspired by Audubon. Yellow-Bellied Marmot.
 
The Snake Who Only Reads. Inspired by a page from Ancient Egypt.
 
The Mask of Strangeness. Inspired by a wooden African mask from Henry Moore’s collection.

“Ah Never Mind!” The Treadmill’s Not Working!  Inspiration: The 2012 Olympics.

Bea:
 
London with Lights. Inspired by Paul Klee. Town with Watchtowers. 1929.
 
The Old Tree. Inspired by the landscape that inspired Henry Moore. A tree in the Adel Woods.
 
Egyptian with Knife and Toy. Inspired by a Relief from the White Chapel of Senusret I at Karnak.
 
The Mask. Inspired by a wooden African mask in Henry Moore’s collection.
 
Jaguar. Inspired by Henri Rousseau. Negro Attached by a Jaguar.
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Summer of Funner : The Lunchbox Season : In Defense of Burning

July 18, 2012

Each summer, the kids create and fill up their “Yesterday Books” with pictures and stories of their Summer of Funner adventures. Sometimes, these are illustrated journal entries, and others, fantastic fictional histories.  So, each July, we start off our Summer of Funner by choosing notebooks and decorating the covers, transforming them into our famous Summer of Funner Yesterday Books!  You can have a look at Last Year’s Yesterday Books by clicking here. 

This year we turned it up a notch by adding two things: Rulers & Pop-Art Animal Olympians!

Rulers:   Last year, the kids chose journals with half-ruled and half-blank pages to use as Yesterday Books. This year, however, they chose blank books. They told me that they wanted to have free range to choose when and where to place their text.  With this in mind, we decided to attach small rulers to the coils of our notebooks via an elasticized string. This way, the kids could make ruled lines on the pages in a jifffy.

Pop-Art Animal Olympians:  For the covers of their books, the kids wanted to re-visit the Andy Warhol pop-art style of illustration we used for one of Bea’s Birthday pARTy activities, our now famous Pop Art Name Plates.  Rather than simply printing-out an image four times over, I had the kids try to reproduce the same image by hand four times on the same page before inking it in with permanent marker. Then, they used highlighers to colour each of their four images in a different shade.  As this is the summer of the London 2012 Olympics, the kids wanted to incorporate an Olympics theme into their Cover Art.  To do so, they drew their favourite animals with medals.

Here’s a look at the results, with an illustrated DIY to follow:
  

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Yesterday Books with Pop-Art Animal Olympians
The Illustrated DIY 

Supplies
Blank Notebooks, with one blank page removed for the cover
Pencils
Black Permanent Marker, preferably with thin tips
4 different coloured Highlighters
Clear Contact Paper
Small Rulers (we used a $1 4-pack of rulers for geometry class)
Elasticized String or Ribbon
Scissors
Masking Tape (optional)

 
Method 1 (of 3): Making Pop-Art Animal Olympians as Cover Art

Using a pencil and a ruler, divide the white paper into four quadrants.
In pencil, draw an animal with sports apparel and/or an olympic medal in the first of the four quadrants.
Do your best to replicate that image in the remaining three quadrants.
With a black, thin-tipped permanent marker, re-trace your pencil drawings.
Using long horizontal or vertical strokes, fill in each of the four quadrants with a different coloured highligher.

Method 2 (of 3):  Attaching the Artwork to the Yesterday Book
Cut a piece of contact paper several inches wider and longer than the size of your notebook cover.
Peel off the back of the contact paper.
About 1/4 in from one of the the longer edges of the contact paper, now sticky side up, place the left-hand side of your artwork face down.
Carefully flip this sticky page back over and align the artwork onto your notebook.
Press that 1/4 inch of sticky paper down near the coils or spine of your notebook.
Open the notebook so that the sticky overhanging edges of the contact paper are facing up.
Using scissors, trim a “square” from the contact paper at the upper and lower lefthand corners of the notebook so that the contact paper will fold over the inside edges of the notebook cover without requiring folded corners.
Fold the overhanging edges of the contact paper over onto the inside of the notebook cover.

Method 3 (of 3): Attaching the Ruler
Cut a piece of elasticized string or fabric ribbon about 4-6 inches longer than the length of the notebook.
Knot one end of this string to the upper coil of the notebook. (If there are no coils, use masking tape on the back cover.)
Knot the other end of this string around the ruler. (If the ruler has no holes or openings, use masking tape.)
  

Your Yesterday Book is now done!  

Now, it’s time to rule, write, and draw!!!

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Summer of Funner : The Lunchbox Season : In Defense of Burning

Today, though, I’m feeling tentative about the task of looking back over our Summer of Funner 2011 and trying to figure out what our various activities meant or what they did for us. I’m not ready to think about what we might hope to do again in ten month’s time, either, or what we hope we’ll never need to do once more.

With lists in mind, I’ve been thinking about Orpheus and that wife of Lot a little overmuch this long weekend. And, I’ve been saying to myself, superstitiously, “turn back, now, and be damned, yourself.” If I look back too soon, I keep thinking, everything might fade or blur, receding further and further away from me, if not in terms of my memory of what we did or how things went, then in terms of my (in)ability to access or, worse, to feel the sentiments I felt at the time we were doing what it was we were doing. Right now, then, searching for the “place where our summer is erased,” so to speak (with my apologies to Graham), isn’t exactly something I would derive great pleasure from. Come look for me and you would find, if not a pillar of salt, per se, a puddle of salt tears.

I’m not ready, then, to write the Summer of Funner 2011 in Review. Nor will I ever likely write that kind of thing…And, as for the kids, I’m hoping for the best there, too. I’m hoping, that is, for the classic”What I did on my Summer Vacation” essay to have gone by the wayside [I can just see their heads exploding, now! Which? How to choose?] — in favour of some more modern, goal-oriented assignment.

So where does that leave us? Looking forward to our time ahead. Sure, sure, we’ll be documenting our Summer of Funner again in June 2012. And, in the meantime, starting tomorrow, in fact, we’ll be heading over to The Lunchbox Season to casually document our off-summer adventures. Feel free to join us there!
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Pictures
1. Orpheus and Eurydice. 1806. C. G. Kratzenstein-Stub, 1793-1860. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen.
2. Lot’s Wife Leaves Sodom. Giustu De’Menaboui.
3. Inman Gallery, Jason Salavon. The Top 6 Grossing Films of All Time, 2×2: Can you tell which one is Titanic?
4.Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld. Jean Baptiste Camille Corot.
5. Lot’s Wife and Lot Salt and Pepper Shakers. Artist Unknown.
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Summer of Funner  : About  : The Lunchbox Season : In Defense of Burning

WE CAN’T BELIEVE IT!  OUR SUMMER OF FUNNER 2011 IS NEAR TO A CLOSE! 

Of course, we’re going out with a bang…Over the last two days, for instance, Blaise has been holding a cartooning workshop with the kids, teaching them about how comics are designed and produced and helping them create their own comic strips.

Yes, research, even for these comic book junkies…

The kids are no strangers to comic books or superheroes. Papa’s old comics are standard night-time reading at our house. Yes, we speak Doctor-X, Wolverine, Shogun Warriors, Prince Namor, and Spiderman to boot. Oh yes, we do!  Still, it seemed sensible to “start at the very beginning.”  So, Blaise took up the dictionary and talked to the kids about all of the possible interpretations of the word “cartoon.” [The one that suprised me was the definition of cartoon as a rough draft image for a fresco or painting!]  Then, he used comic books, picture books and the internet to help the kids examine the form and function of cartoons – first concentrating on single panel images: “Look! Somebody made an image of Toronto’s Mayor Rob Ford as Jabba the Hutt!” – then moving on to comic books and larger format collections.

First Stop, Character Studies

Of course, before you could say “go” or get the sketchbooks out, the kids were buzzing with ideas for the types of comic strips they wanted to create.  Bea, who was inspired by our Crazy Fruit Day, as well as our recent, failed attempt to make Sumac Jelly, wanted to combine her experiences into a “Land of Crazy Fruits” strip. Toby, as fascinated by turtles and sea life as he has been throughout the summer, wanted to do an “Under the Sea” themed strip.  I have to say, as I listened to them describe what they wanted to work on with their father, I was thrilled to hear that the kids were drawing heavily from their previous Summer of Funner experiences!

Blaise convinced the kids, though, that the way to get things started was not to go right to drawing their comic strips but to pick one of the characters they wanted to feature and to draw it over and over again with different expressions.  Without flinching, the kids reoriented themselves, preparing to give it a try!  Bea chose to draw a Broccoli with changing facial features.Tobes chose to draw a crab, first, and then some graceful stingrays.

The Process

Next, Blaise taught them about the process of taking an idea to a sketch, then a sketch to a finer pencil drawing, then pencil to ink, and then, a full colour print. The kids drafted a series of panels with pencils. Then, on watercolour paper, they re-sketched their panels in pencil before using permanent ink to trace over the final pencil sketches.  They coloured in their comic strips with markers to produce a finished product.  Today, Blaise helped the kids use a scanner to save and “shrink” their images so that they appeared as if on newsprint.  And, it’s been nothing but comics  ever since! I have a feeling they’ll spend the rest of this “back to school” weekend at work on one-panel postcards and additional strips for their series! And, why not? I can think of no better way to end our Summer of Funner 2011!

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The Progress of Toby’s Under the Sea

Tobes says his comic book is about “a turtle, two tadpoles, an alligator, a crab, and an evil hammer head shark that captures them. There’s also a stingray. He’s the one who swims down to save them.”

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The Progress of Bea’s The Land of Crazy Fruits

Bea says her comic strip is about “How Ice Cream saves the Land of the Crazy Fruits, whose town’s name is ‘Mallberry’ (because they have lots of malls), from the Evil Sumac.”

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Don’t worry, there’s one more post before the end of our Summer of Funner!
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for The Lunchbox Season!     - R

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]]> http://summeroffunner.com/2011/09/02/comic-strip-days/feed/ 0 roseye UTSdone LCFpanelsdone LCF brocco sketch UTS Crab sketches jkbw JKcolour UTSanimalia UTSearlysketch Under the Sea early sketch UTSrealpencildraft UTSinked UTSmorecolour UTShalfcolour UTSdone Under the Sea Land of CF characters LCFtoppanelbegin LCFpaneltwo LCFpanelmore LCF1draft LCFpanel2pencilfin LCFpanel3pencilfin LCF3panelspencil LCFinkedpaneldone LCFcolouringpanels LCfalmosttherepanel1 LCFpanel2almostdone LCFpanel3almostdone LCFpanelsdone CrazyFruits1 - Print CrazyFruits2 - Print CrazyFruits3 Print http://summeroffunner.com/2011/08/25/hands-for-jack/ http://summeroffunner.com/2011/08/25/hands-for-jack/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:02:40 +0000 Roseanne Carrara http://summeroffunner.wordpress.com/?p=694 ]]> August 24, 2011On Monday, we lost Jack Layton. The leader of Canada’s official opposition party, and a former Toronto city councillor, Mr. Layton passed away after a heroic fight against cancer. Even in his last days, he stopped to consider all of us, writing a Letter To Canadians that has struck a chord with one and all.

I have spent the last few days trying to figure out how I might speak about this loss with my children, and how to find ways to honour Jack’s legacy today and every day.

This morning, I walked the dog along the beach under a particularly orange sunrise, trying to figure out something we could do, immediately, to keep Jack in mind.

Inspired by the memorials that have been popping up around this city and in our nation’s capital, I thought that perhaps we could spend some time designing a three part mural in Jack’s honour, celebrating the Love, Optimism, and Hope he propounded in his letter.

I figured that we might use these designs to paint our fence, or as a springboard for a larger community project.

Of course, as the day evolved, things changed.

Bea had a friend over to visit this morning. Towards the end of her visit, I asked her what types of images she would paint on a wall dedicated to either “Love” or “Hope” or “Optimism.” Each one of her answers included a reference to human hands. For “Love,” she suggested “people holding hands.” For “Peace or Hope” she suggested “hands praying.” And, after I explained what “Optimism” meant, she talked about hands in the air, raised in hope or celebration.

Perhaps the thing to do, then, would be something incredibly simple, at least for now. Perhaps the thing to do would be to raise our hands for Jack right here and now. So, before our sweet guest took her leave, I had the three children dip their hands in dark orange paint and print them on orange paper. It’s a start, at least…perhaps, the start of a movement.

Our results are above and below. To me, our guest’s prints, at the top of the triptych, symbolize Love, Bea’s handprints, in the center, symbolize Optimism, and Tobes’ prints, at the bottom, Hope. But, I’ll let you decide.

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August 17, 2011

Today we made Rob Ford Protest Posters inspired by the artists of the Ghosts of Gone Birds!

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This morning, I received a tweet from @GoneBirds with a link to a brand new poster advocating for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. You can also find this picture on the Ghosts of Gone Birds Facebook Page. According to the group’s description, this poster focuses on the “near gone bird status of the spoon-billed sandpiper as the migratory estuaries it stops over on to refuel come under increasing threat from industrial development. The Saemangeum Dam in Korea is a notable example.” The sandpiper bends its head low as a series of cranes, construction cranes, that is, encroaches upon its habitat. Above the bird’s body, you’ll find the warning, “As Economies Expand in East Asia, Habitats Shrink.”

Bea’s finished poster:

Tobes’ finished poster:

We plan on scanning these into the computer so that we can use them to make t-shirts, buttons, and large-scale signs for our front yard and for city hall!!______________________
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Sure, we’ve painted with pineapple skins…We even attempted to grow one from a crown on our windowsill…Still, this year’s “Crazy Fruit Day” took the old “Pineapple Day” up a notch. Today, we played a Name That Fruit Game, we created Still Life pieces with ink and watercolours, and we operated a Blind Fruit Tasting. There were also some Special Surprises towards the end of the day…

To Market, To Market…By Herself

Mangosteen

Originally, I had planned to take the kids on an early Tuesday morning excursion down to Chinatown to pick up the fruits for today’s fun and games.

Lychee

But, when I heard about some temporary changes to the streetcar route, I nixed that idea and headed over to Chinatown by myself on Monday to pick up our supply of “Crazy Fruit.”

Rambutan

First, on the recommendation of friends, I picked up several spiny looking Rambutans and a sextet of plum-coloured Mangosteens. I followed these up with a netted bag of Lychees and a few stalks of Longans.

Then, I asked a vendor about the Sweet Sops and Sapodillas at the front of his shop, and I picked up a pair of each of those.

Dragonfruit

The large, lone Dragon Fruit was an easy choice, because the kids were familiar with it, and they were hoping that it would be on my list.

Passionfruit

I also spotted a trio of orange Passionfruits held together by an elastic band and added those to my increasingly heavy bag.

Sweet Sop

Trekking west through Kensington Market, I searched for the ultimate fruit (at least in my book): the Prickly Pear. I had seen them a few weeks ago at a local grocery store, and I was hoping that they might still be available somewhere.

Longan

I had a secret wish, you see, to make Prickly Pear Jelly as a special Cook’s Treat towards the end of the day.

Kiwano (Horned Melon)

I had Prickly Pear jelly once when I was a girl, on a family vacation at a dude ranch in Arizona. I’ve always wanted to try it once more and share it with the family. But, I couldn’t find prickly pears either in Chinatown or in the Market, so I settled for something new, a pair of orange, horned, Kiwano melons!

One last bit of preparation…The next morning, before the kids were up, I took the fruits out of their hiding spot in the cupboard and organized them onto separate plates and bowls on the dining room table. Then, I went and printed two sets of namecards for each of the fruits on yellow and green paper…

Name That Crazy Fruit

We haven’t played many games on our food days this year…so it was about time we got down to some funny business. I told the kids that it was time to play, “Name That Crazy Fruit,” and I handed each of them a set of nine cards with the names of a Crazy Fruit printed on each one. I asked the kids to place one card beside the plate or bowl filled with the fruit they thought corresponded to the name. I resisted singing the “Chiquita Banana” Song and dancing around like Carmen Miranda with a bunch of Longans on my head while the kids walked around the table trying to place name tags beneath the correct bowls and plates!

Round one, of course, was the hardest. Bea and Tobes hardly ever concurred when it came to which name suited which fruit. Still, when they did concur, they always had their answers right! They both managed to place the correct nametags under the more familiar Dragonfruit, and the brand new Kiwano (Horned Melon). Bea also labeled the Passion Fruit correctly.

For Round Two, I handed back all of the cards which they had misplaced and asked the kids to try again. Bea was quite successful in this round, correctly labeling four more of the nine fruits, for a total of six. Except for matching up his Passion Fruit card with Bea’s good guess from round one, Tobes struck out. I think this would have resulted in less disappointment on his part had I not made the mistake of keeping score in a notebook. Still, all wounds were soothed over as Bea kindly took it upon herself to explain to Tobes that she really had “lucked” into it… The kids’ discussion of “luck,” furthermore, resulted in their invention of a “fruit adoption” program which I will explain, below.

Round Three was over in a flash, as Tobes follwed Bea’s correct examples from round two. And, at last, the kids did the final switch-up between the “hairy-scary” Rambutans and the “absolutely purpular” Mangosteens, as they called them.

Still Life with Crazy Fruit

A while later, we returned to the Crazy Fruit table in order to do an art project. I quickly familiarized the kids with the concept of Still Life drawing and painting. Then, I had them arrange the crazy fruits on a large platter. I was surprised that they tended to keep the types of fruit together on the plate rather than scattering them around. I really thought the whole display was going to be much less composed than it looked!

After they had their “model” settled, I drew out the plan for how they would create their Still Life pieces. First, on a piece of thick watercolour paper , they would sketch an outline of their Still Life in permament markers.

Then, they would use watercolours to fill in the “colouring page” they had created with their markers. All of our art supplies, by the way, had come from the local dollar store – so, aside from the initial outlay for the fruit, the whole project was super-thrifty.

Bea’s still life took up the bottom half of her page. You can pick out particular fruits quite easily from the drawing. Her ability to add details has really strengthened! She also chose to do a close up of a Lychee on the upper right hand corner of her page – noting that she drew it by its “actual size,” which I thought was quite lovely.

Tobes’ piece looked almost like a pile of fruit covered over by a glass bowl, which was charming in its own right. The single Longan hanging from the roof of this so-called bowl figured as a pendant lamp lighting up an array of animated people-fruit. And, the faces on his Sapodinas reminded me of some drawings of the Moai statues I had them do years ago….

The kids wanted to do a “second round” of individual fruits. Interestingly, they both chose the dragon fruit for this second sketch. Both brother and sister veered, a bit, from the more realistic sketching of their first attempts, creating compound or fantasy fruits. Bea’s Dragon Fruit, for example, looked like a cross between the Dragon and the Mangosteen.

Before he applied his colours, Tobes’ version of the Dragon Fruit looked as much like the Kiwano (Horned Melon) or the actual fruit platter, as it did like the original, Dragon Fruit

And Then The Kids Improvised: Crazy Fruit Adoptions

As we were setting up our Still Life display, the kids decided, between themselves, they were each going to “adopt” one of the fruits, make it a home, and keep it “safe from being eaten.” Bea took a lychee from the pile and named it “Lucky Lychee,” while Tobes took a longan and named him, “Lucky Longan.” The discussion of “luck” and probability associated with the naming game had stuck with them, I guess.

After we were done with our art project, the kids went about personalizing their adoptees. They both drew faces on their fruits with the permanent markers we had used earlier. And, they both set about finding places in the house for the fruits to “live.” I nixed the bedrooms, fearing the inevitable decay and decline of the fruits in some dark corner or closet. So, Tobes hid his fruit for a while beneath a living room pillow, while Bea set up an old jewelry box as a “Lychee Lounge.” She invited Tobes to put his longan in with her lychee. Now, the two no-longer-orphaned fruits are couched in luxury on the mantlepiece!

A Blind Tasting

Once we were done staring at our fruit display and hiding the lucky pair, we moved on to the afternoon sampling! Tobes decided that he didn’t really want to do more than smell everything, but Bea was eager to try anything and everything. So, I gave Tobes the chore of helping me to slice each fruit open and to place a small slice or spoonful of the treat on our platter. We arranged the fruits in a “tasting wheel,” as Tobes put it, taking time, of course, to stop and make spooky-eyes with the round, white lychee fruits and their stones!

Then, the kids got the bright idea that Bea should wear my sleep mask and conduct her Crazy Fruit Tasting “Blind,” attempting to guess, once again, which fruit went with which name. This time, as Toby predicted, she was not as “lucky” as she had been before. Bea had seen the fruits going down on the plate and so she knew how difficult it would be to confuse the Lychee orbs, for instance, with the almost-identical fruits of the Rambutan and the Longan. And, she did mix them up!

All guessing aside, I was impressed by Bea’s determination to try everything! The only fruits she decided not to keep in her mouth were the the Sweet Sop and Sapodina – which weren’t necessarily that toothsome, to be quite honest (I tried everything along with her, out of fairness). Despite some problem spots, she championed through. In the end, her favourites were the Mangosteen, Kiwano, Lychee, and Rambutan. The Longans, however, were on her “I’ll Take a Pass” list, along with the aforementioned “S” fruits and the Passionfruit. She remains iffy about the Dragon Fruit. It was not as sweet as she remembered it when she tried it a few years ago. Perhaps we’ll have another go with that hot-pink number sometime soon.

Cook’s Treat: Lemon Balm & Verbena Jelly

While the kids were off playing independently, I decided that I would make myself another Cook’s Treat. Of course, I had wanted to make that Prickly Pear Jelly. Since this was not an option, I researched making jams, jellies and cordials from the nine fruits on our Crazy Fruit list. Unfortunately, the subtle flavours of Lychee and Co. were either just too subtle or too unpredictable for jelly making, or we just didn’t have enough of a certain fruit on hand in order to make a more robust offering. So, I decided to put off incorporating one of our crazy fruits into my mix, and, instead, went for something from the garden – something I’d never been “crazy” enough, or let’s just say, smart or savvy enough to try making before: Herb Jelly!

Now, I’m a lemon fan…So, I figured that a Lemon-type Jelly would work well, say, as a glaze over the top of a future Crazy Fruit Tart, perhaps, or a Clafouti…so I headed out to cut some Lemon Balm and Lemon Verbena…But then, I had an idea. Bea has a very bad habit of making “potions” and “wands” in the backyard by picking our most glorious blooms or by decapitating the tender, new growth on our magnolia trees… So, I figured, why not give her the opportunity to harvest what we wanted? It wasn’t a hard sell. She swiftly set aside her markers to head outside with my kitchen shears and a glass bowl, filling it high.

Then, I got to work on my jelly. This was my first attempt at jelly, actually. I’ve only ever made jams…But, armed with my new best friend, Liquid Pectin, I was ready for the challenge. I found a lovely recipe for Lemon Balm Jelly that the writer of The Creamer Chronicles had tweaked from her own Rose Petal Jelly recipe. Since I meant to use up the last of my fancy half-pint jam jars anyway, I set a large pot of water to boil on the stove and dropped the glass jars into it before I tackled the recipe.

I had plenty of herbs on hand (the little girl harvests well!), so I boldly doubled the amount of herbs called for in the original recipe, placing 1 cup of chopped lemon balm leaves and 1 cup of chopped lemon verbena leaves in a stock pot. (I’m sure that a single cup of any herb or edible flower would be sufficient for the job here). I poured about 3 cups of boiling water over this mixture, jabbed at the leaves a bit with a wooden spoon, and let them sit in the pot, covered, for about 15 minutes. While this herb “tea” was brewing, I juiced a large lemon over a strainer until I filled the bowl beneath it to 1/2 cup. When the brew was done, I strained the tea into my lemon juice until I had 3 cups of liquid.

Next, I placed my liquid into a saucepan along with 4 1/2 cups of sugar, bringing the mixture up to a hard boil. Once the jelly was boiling, I added 4 drops of yellow food coloring and 1 foil sleeve of liquid pectin. The hot jelly did not take long to return to a boil. In fact, it bubbled over, and I had to take it off of the heat. What a sweet and sticky mess!

Finally, I got my jelly to boil hard for about 2 minutes. Then, I filled 5 and 1/16 half-pint jars with the sunny hot jelly! Leaving 1/4 inch headspace under the lids of the five full jars, I processed them at a rolling boil for 10 minutes.

After a while, Bea had a taste of the jelly in the “Cook’s Treat” jar, and gave it a thumb’s up!

And Then They Improvised Again!

During their independent play time, while I was making jelly, the kids decided to do some drawing and pasting in old notebooks that they had brought home from their grandparents’ the day before. I had no idea this was going on, because I was in the kitchen, canning, and the kids were working quietly…But, what a lovely surprise to be introduced to their own Crazy Fruit Day journals! First, Tobes presented me with a sweet image of his Lucky Longan, which he had drawn on a separate page and then taped into his notebook.

Then, Bea came back to me with two sets of scrap-book style entries that just blew me away! On the first set of pages, she did a recap of her fruit orientation exercises and a sweet introduction to Lucky Lychee and Lucky Longan.

On the first page of her second spread, Bea spent time detailing the “first year” of Lucky Lychee and Longan’s lives. And, on the facing page, she drew her self-portrait with Lychee!

I was absolutely thrilled by their secret record-keeping!

What a way to end Crazy Fruit Day!!!

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INGREDIENTS
Lemon Balm & Verbena Jelly
Makes 5 half-pint jars

1 cup lemon balm leaves, chopped
1 cup lemon verbena leaves, chopped
3 cups boiling water
1/2 cup lemon juice
4 1/2 cups sugar
4 drops yellow food colouring (optional)
1 foil pouch liquid pectin

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For Pizza Day, we created colour wheels, learned about fractions, and made cheesy pepperoni pizzas on the grill!

Colour Wheels

Nothing says pizza more than a colour wheel….? When the kids objected to my idea of making a crust-less fruit pizza for breakfast (they were too hungry to wait!), I decided to shift gears for the morning and do something more interpretive.  So, we went back to an activity they had done a few years ago with papa: making colour wheels. This time, however, instead of using coloured pencils to identify our primary, secondary and complementary colours, we would mix our own paints.

To get started, I handed the kids some thin permanent markers (always a dangerous prospect!) and had them work with fractions and geometry. I asked them both to trace a circle on a thick piece of paper, using a round plate as a guide. After I helped them find the centers of their circles, I asked them to use their rulers to divide their circles into twelve “equal” pieces following a two step process: first, they would divided the circle into four equal parts; then, they would divide those fourths-sections into threes.  We then wrote the names of the primary and secondary colours along the colour wheel so that they could find the proper places for the colours when we started painting.

We began painting by identifying and selecting the primary colours from our collection of paint bottles. The kids then painted the three primary colours along their colour wheel.  After this basic work, we started our measuring tasks. I asked them how we could make the “best purple:” which colours would we need and how much of each colour would we need? They told me to pour out equal measures of blue and red on a plate.  While we were mixing our purple, we noticed that our blue paint did not mix very well with the red – it tended to clump, which was unfortunate. The kids also remarked that the purple made with “equal halves” of the paint did not really look like purple to them after all. I had to agree. It was rather dark. I let them stew on that for a while as they painted their grainy purple slice of the colour-wheel pie.

We had made a rather large batch of our equal-mix purple paint. So, after the kids painted their purple slices, we divided our purple paint in half of the plate.  We used our “estimation” skills to consider how many tablespoons of paint were on each side of the plate.  Then, we added the equivalent measure of tablespoons of blue paint to one of the purple halves, and an equivalent measure of red paint to the other.  I then asked them about the proportions of each of these colours: did the blue-purple plate have more red or more blue? And approximately how much of each?  How about the red-purple side of the plate?

After the kids had each mixed a variation on purple, we decided that the red-purple colour they had mixed was actually much more of a true purple in our eyes. We also  came up with “yucky disgusting” names for the grainy blue-purple colour we had created!

For our oranges and greens, we applied the same measuring and mixing techniques.  In both cases, the kids thought that the colours achieved by mixing equal parts of primary colours did not mix into what they would consider to be a true “orange” or a true “green.”  In their opinion, the “yellow-orange” and the “yellow-green” were much closer to the real thing.   We then wondered why this might be the case. The kids came up with some pretty interesting rationales – one blamed the manufacturer of the primary colours for not giving us a “true” base from which to start, the other blamed our dirty mixing brushes.

Even with our grainy purples and greens, I thought that the colour wheels turned out to be quite beautiful!  I’m not sure whether to frame these and other pieces we’ve made this summer or if I should frame the photographs I’ve taken of them.

A Little Fraction Practice

I decided that instead of punctuating the day with pizza activities, as I usually do on our food themed days, we would get everything done in the morning and have a bit of a free-for-all in the afternoon.  So, our next activity was to spend some time doing preformatted math worksheets. We happen to have some workbooks associated with the Jump Math philosophy, but similar worksheets are easily downloaded for free via the internet!  The kids became really interested in dividing not only pie shapes but also squares and rectangles and triangles.

Pizzas on the Grill

System Error! Last night, some water had gotten into the electrical panel of our stove. Since I had been instructed to wait a full 48 hours for the system to dry out before using our oven, we had no choice but to make our pizzas out on the grill.  Some friends of mine have made some gorgeous grilled pizzas, but I had never tried it before. The kids and I went looking on the internet for some quick and easy grilled pizza techniques.  We found a family-friendly style of making mini-pizzas on Alison Bickel’s beautiful site, This Homemade Life.

The kids’ participation in our grilling challenge would be to roll out their mini pizza dough and, when the time came, to top their pizzas as they saw fit.  We had made pizza dough together before, so for this round of pizzas, I decided to do the quick and easy cheat, purchasing a bag of pizza dough from the grocery store.   I had the kids divide their ball of dough into four parts. They basically had a tug of war with the ball of pizza dough until it snapped. Then, they snapped their halves in two. This portion of the fun reminded me of my own experiments with my big brother’s old Stretch Armstrong toy…I remember stretching that toy’s arms all the way across the basement of a friend’s house!  After the kids did their own division, I had them “mush” and “push” their bits of dough on pans until they had formed shapes that were most pleasing to them.

Next, I sent the kids inside to wash their hands as I transferred the dough shapes directly onto our hot grill. After about three or four minutes, the dough began to bubble, and I was able to use a large metal spatula to wiggle them off of the grill and flip them onto a tray, grilled sides up.

I called the kids back outside, and they placed their toppings on the grilled sides of the pizzas. We kept it simple, cheese and pepperoni. Sadly, neither of my children like red sauce!  I’m sure that my Italian grandparents would  shaking their heads and fingers if they had heard my children squeal in terror at the sight of tomoto sauce! It breaks my heart, too, because I know my Grandma Carrara’s secret recipe, and I make a fantastic sauce! Ah well, the kids topped their pizzas to their own liking and danced around the yard while they waited for the finished pies.

I threw the pizzas back on the grill for a few more minutes. The kids were feasting in no time!
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If you haven’t noticed by now, this whole food day thing isn’t rocket science. It’s just a way of making the kids feel as if a few normal crafts, punctuating their regular independent play, and centered around a theme, have made the day into a kind of holiday!   Today was Pomme Day, otherwise known as Apple and Potato Day (for pomme and pomme de terre).

Morning Potato Prints, or, Living out a Childhood Fantasy

At some point just before I was born, my parents had purchased a giant set of World Book Encyclopedias. These had never held much interest for me, except for the accompanying volumes of colourful reference books for kids that arrived toward the end of the subcription period. My favourites were a purple book about the human body and a yellow book full of arts and crafts ideas.  I tried a few of the crafts in that book when I was little. I’m sure I made the “mobius” strip out of paper and glue, because I remember getting glue all over the carpet in my room and using a washcloth to “clean it up.”  For the most part, though, the projects required strange supplies we did not have: where was I going to find “driftwood” for a “driftwood mobile,” I thought, near our suburban house in California?; and who did I know in the neighbourhood who had a jigsaw handy to cut out the “easy jigsaw puzzle” they recommended you make with oil paints and a piece of plywood?  One of the projects in that book that I had always wanted to try and never did, was to make prints with potatoes. Sure, I probably could have attempted this one at home. I could have easily gotten a few potatoes out of the bin. Still, I was fairly cautious about taking knives from the kitchen cupboard. My paternal grandfather had lost two of his fingers in an accident in his workshop!

At some point, though, you just have to indulge yourself and try to play out at least one of your childhood fantasies by making your kids do it instead of you.  Guilty as charged re potato prints!

This is not to say I wasn’t worried about my kids hurting themselves trying to carve images into a potato! Still, I’m trying to give them more responsibilities this year. And, I was ready to let them have at it with their kid-sized steak knives when inspiration struck!  I was mentioning the craft to the kids the night before and they started proposing shapes: bears, trees, little people.  Strange enough, or not strange at all, really, they were talking about shapes that we’d used hundreds of times when making sugar-cookie cutouts – and hence the easier, more finger friendly version of the potato print was born!

First, I sliced six golden potatoes in half. Then, the kids picked out small sized cookie cutters from our ever-growing bag of shapes.  With the sharp side of the cutter down, I had the kids stand up and press the cutter down hard into the freshly cut, flat side of the potato. They found this difficult work, at first, but they got into the swing of things by making strange animal noises.

Next, with the cookie cutters resting deep in the potatoes, I took my parking knife and sliced around the circumference of the potato, a few centimeters below surface, so that my knife hit the bottom edge of the cookie cutter. The kids then helped me to remove the sliced part of the potato from around the cookie cutter. To finish off our stamps, we slid the cookie cutter off of the now “raised” image on the potato.   This process was remarkably easy. I would say it took 10-15 minutes from start to finish!

The tables were turned, though, when the kids started to make their prints.  They had started dipping their stamps inblack poster paint and pressing the stamps onto pieces of white watercolour paper when my daughter decided to change the look and feel of her project entirely!  She had only printed her work on one side of her sheet of paper when she folded her paper neatly in half and made a blurry, mirror image of her prints on either side.  So much for the obvious bears, trees, flowers, birds and feet!

We had gone from the plain potato prints that I had imagined to a family Rorschach test!  In the blink of an eye, my kids had made my childhood fantasy  into a fantasy of their own! 

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Making Apple Sun Tea

Speaking of childhood books and activities, I can clearly remember a big craze among the moms in the 1970’s  - those years when everyone seemed to be buying identical glass vats from Lipton designed to make “sun tea.”  These were the staple of every kid’s back porch, no matter where we were living in at the time (we moved around a lot)!

My own Bea has become more interested in tea making and tea drinking over the last little while. She’s tried a lot of our herbal teas at home, and she’s become a huge fan of the pink, pistachio-dotted Kashmiri tea we get down in Little India.  Since seeing a giant glass pickle jar of sun tea (we’re doing it up in apothecary style these days, I guess!) in the window of my favourite coffee shop, both of the kids have been asking to make their own version at home.  And, since we had some Mulled Apple tea bags on hand (my daughter’s absolute favourite), I figured that tea-making might be an easy and likewise “retro” summer-day project.

The whole activity took about five minutes- making a nice transition from our hour-long potato printing fun to their independent morning play.  We simply dangled a few teabags (we used four, but I think 5 or 6 would make it even better) over the edge of our clear plastic pitcher (no retro style in our case!), filled it with water, and placed it in a sunny location.

The best part of this activity was when I sent the kids out into the back yard to try to figure out the sunniest location for our brew.  They spent a while staring around at the yard and asking about how the “sun moved around the earth,” next, coping with my explanation.  Finally, they decided on a location. Since Bea had recently burnt a finger on the outside handle of the grill (when it was turned off), and since the grill is right next to the tomato plants, the kids decided on the top of the grill as their location of choice.

A few hours later, we had a delicious brew of mulled apple tea that we served over ice. Thanks, Lipton ladies, for your example!

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Sweet Afternoon Apple Robots

Maybe the summer should just be full of sugar, after all. And, maybe my kids have really begun to realize their limits when it comes to the stuff!  I had wanted to maintain a nice balance between the sweet and savoury on our food days. With all of the sweets produced on last week’s Strawberry Day, I wanted to keep Pomme Day on the savoury side.  But when it came down to it, my kids’ desire to make robots with apples, matched with the veritable cornucopia of toothpicks, licorice whips, and marshmallows we somehow had accumulated in the pantry (probably because I was trying to keep them AWAY from them for so long) meant that we were going to be using (and likely eating) candy on Pomme Day after all.

Robot making was easy! The kids simply attached various candies to toothpicks and jammed them into their red apples.  I was impressed with Tobes’s desire to make feet for his robot out of apple slices. As well, he insisted that his robot required a “jet pack” and proceeded to make one out of marshmallows. They both did well attaching licorice whips on to the ends of a toothpick in order to make arms or tentacles or crazy hair plugs that wrapped around their robots’ heads!

The kids were surprisingly restrained re the candy I laid out for them to use to decorate their apples. I asked them to hold off on eating more than one small piece until we had finished our robot-making. And, for once, they actually followed through. They didn’t even rush to finish their projects. And, when I asked them to limit themselves, afterwards, to just a piece or two, I didn’t even hear that many moans! So, I consider the day a real coup!

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