On a cold October morning, my ten-year-old daughter, Julia, sat at our kitchen table and contemplated the Earth's layers. She had been tasked with making a cross-section of the planet's interior: core, mantle and crust. Now she needed to decide what materials to use for a three-dimensional model.
...
'Julia, what do you want to use? Playdough?" I imagined concentric rings of clay, balls within balls, cut in half to reveal the earth's multi-coloured strata. "Or would you like to cut a strofoam ball in half? You could paint the earth's layers onto the flat centre."
Julia shook her head.
"Well, what do you want to use?"
"Fruit," she said.
"Fruit?"
"Yes, fruit."
From the basket in the center of our kitchen table Julia lifted a kiwi, then took a steak knife and cut it in half. She held the green fruit to my eyes, and there was a model of the Earth: the white core, surrounded by squishy green mantle, with black seeds like the rocks the float in the Earth's magma; and on the outside, the thin dry crust, its fuzz like brittle, drought-ridden grass. I felt completely humbled, reminded that all life is connected in repeated patterns...
an excerpt from Laura Brodie's 'Love in a Time of Homeschooling"
that got me amazed by how kids brains work so differently, and much more creatively, from adults :)
wonder how an art piece will look like if kids have the ability to draw what they want
it may look even better than any art pieces out there, you never know :)
