Weekly Wrap Up 2/02/18 Mechanics of dialogue and Leonardo DaVinci art projects

We are continuing with our Lightening Literature program and the boys read Stephen Cranes short story "the Bride in the Yellow Sky".  The lesson this week was to learn the mechanics of dialogue and how it is used in literature.

For the most part our boys knew most of rules listed in the program.  However this program did contradict a previous program that MarioFan and I have used in the past IEW.  In the IEW program it strongly discourages using the word "said" as a tag line.  Lightening Literature made a strong case for why this is not the case.

SO we discussed the controversy of the phrase "Said is Dead" and found many examples in our past Literature readings.  

boys working on their workbook pages, we do some in class together and then some at home during the week

discussed how tag lines are used.  I found this resource free on pay teachers:)  I love free resources!

Next the boys will be working on creating their own short stories using dialogue.  Our next book is the autobiography of Helen Keller.

For art we have been learning about Leonardo Da Vinci.  I really did not like the Meet the Master art project for this artist so I looked around and came up with  different things to do.  First we learned about his inventions and made a few replica's.

Some of the resources we used to learn more about Da Vinci

First we tried the DaVinci Bridge, and blog reader (Waves) sent me this a year ago when my son and I were studying bridges but we never got around to it.  So I pulled it out and got to work on it.  

Here is a video of the bridge 

We couldn't do a large version so I worked on a smaller version and I must say it was a little more complex than I thought as it took me several frustrating tries before I got it to work:)  but once I got it I was able to use this project and the boys were able to build the bridge.

The completed bridge

It is actually quite sturdy!

Da Vinci designed 5-6 different bridges and all but one has actually been built in modern times.

The boys attempting to work together to build the bridge!

I had the boys make one notch each in each of the wooden pegs, while I did the others at home to save a bit of time.

Boys working on construction.  I was not able to get the finished bridge because the boys rushed to pile books onto the bridge and it fell down after adding the fourth book before my camera was ready to take a pictured:(  They move to quick for me.

Then we looked at Da Vinci's fascination with flying and examined several of his flying machines which many claim are the bases of some modern day flying machines like the glider, helicopter and even the airplane:)  We watched this short video of how his machines may have worked in animation.





 I found a paper craft which replicates one of Da Vinci flying machines.  You can find the instructions here 

I printed the boys version on yard stock as my version on computer paper was a tad more flimsy.

My completed version -- side view

front view  

Boys working on their flying machine project.  We added them to dowel rods so the boys could fly them around afterwards. 

I used heavier card stock for the boys glider so it would be easier to put together.  

Boys working on building their glider 

They had a bit of frustration with some of the smaller pieces but with a little bit of help they managed to complete them:)

The next project I decided to do was learning to draw a face.   There are plenty of online sites to help with this lesson.

The boys were taught the basic rules for where the eyes, nose and mouth goes on a face.  I also encouraged the boys to look into mirrors and of photos of themselves to gauge how their face looks.

Finished work, not too bad for non artistic boys:)

Our next artist will be Renoir.

As we end the week it appears the Flu has entered our home.  So far my husband and son have been stuck down.  :(  Thankfully we all have gotten the flu shot this year.  Not sure how much will get done next week until this bug leaves the house for good, which I am told takes a week or two:(