four

Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall

Make four seasons -- that's not all;

Fire, water, air and earth --

Four elements give us birth.

from Number Qualities Verse, Enki Education 1st Grade Academic Activity

Very appropriately, this is my 4th post of the day (and, I promise, my final post today -- I took advantage of the kids playing outside all afternoon to catch up a bit with the blog!). So please don't miss my other posts below this one for some seasonal fun!

The end of the week focused on "four". Here's J's written numeral "4", a square (4 sided geometric figure), and four dots to depict "4". J commented on how it look like a "4" on a domino.

Our story to represent four was "The Wonderful Healing Leaves", an Iraqi Fairy Tale, modified by Enki Education. In the story, the hero must overcome 4 dangers, and steal 4 scales from a dragon's tail to lay upon 4 lions (hence magically keeping them asleep until removed) who guard the Queen's chamber. The kids easily recognized the 4s in our story recall, and immediately tossed out other examples of 4 -- 4 seasons, 4 directions, 4 members of our family, 4 legs on most animals (and 4 limbs on humans, 2 arms and 2 legs, which Zoo Boy quickly pointed out was 2 plus 2 equals 4). I chose to draw the 4 seasons, and the 4 lions from the story.

J also chose to draw the 4 seasons, but instead of actually drawing, he slip into symbols instead, dividing up quadrants like I did, but putting in a letter (first letter of each season) and a representative color for each season. (Per his explanation, blue sky in Spring, green grass in Summer, red leaves in Autumn, and white snow in Winter.) I like the (F) in his Autumn block, to show that Fall is another name for the season. He also drew the 4 directions (upper right corner), and he drew a cow, noting 4 legs, and 4 teats on her udder.

Zoo Boy also slipped into symbolic writing rather than drawing -- first he traced his arm, then decided he didn't want to pursue that line of thought (the 4 limbs on our body). Instead, he wrote the equation "2 + 2", and, noting that we have 4 fans in our house (we don't, but that's beside the point....), he wrote the word "fan" rather than attempting to draw it.


And here's Zoo Boy's 4, square, and dots.

In looking at the progression of their drawings over the past few segments of our block, I've decided that it's time for a full-blown led drawing to try to re-enliven the art process in them. I think they're getting a little bit too analytical with the numbers before experiencing the artistic digestion portion fully. So hopefully a led drawing will help lead them back to a fuller artistic experience with our work. And the good news of course is that they are clearly having no problem at all with the concepts we're working on or embracing the quality, or "feeling", of each number.