At the beginning of the semester, I challenged my academic track Jungle Book class to each present five minutes on any animal that they found interesting, as long as it appeared in the Jungle Book.

I thought I would share some pictures that came out of their very creative presentations:









With the children completely undirected and able to do whatever they wanted, we had all kinds of five-minute lessons! We had crossword puzzles, games of charades, we had comics, we had a demonstration on how to care for a horse, we had lovely pictures, we had a simulated visit from an actual working elephant mahout, we had an astonishingly huge full size king cobra created from fabric, we had earnest, interested, engaged children sharing ideas and facts with each other -- it was awesome to watch. Thanks for all your participation!

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Quiz:

The quiz this week is about the Gond tribe, the tribe in central India of which Mowgli would have been a part. Which of these statements are true?

1. The Jungle Book is set in an area of Central India called Madya Pradesh.
2. Kipling wrote about this area while he was camping on the banks of the Wainganga itself.
3. The Wainganga River is a real river, but the area around it is not a rainforest.
4. Today in the Seoni District, there is a tiger preserve, where 50 tigers and 30 leopards can be hunted from hired jeeps or airplanes.
5. The villagers that Mowgli encountered would have been members of the Gond tribes.
6. The Gond people practice Hinduism and also animism, which means they worship animals and ancestral spirits.
7. Gond tribes survived by trading their art with neighboring cultures.
8. Gond tribal art usually portrays technological wonders like steamboats and front loaders.
9. A ghotul is a tribal dormitory where young girls and boys go to live apart from their families.
10 Gond people believe that freedom and happiness are more to be treasured than any material gain, that friendliness and sympathy, hospitality and unity are of the first importance.

Project: I'm going to condense two weeks together here, to show you how to get this project done.

Step 1:

Materials:
White piece of paper
Pencil
A sense of what the Gond tribal paintings look like, and what kinds of elements they would include.

The Gond tribes painted things they would see in their everyday environment. Ask the children what kind of elements and motifs they would expect to see in a Gond tribal painting, and then ask them to create a sketch of the painting they would like to do. Here are two examples of the drawings the kids came up with:


Step 2:

Materials:
White poster board
Pencil
Black Sharpie

This is where you, the teacher, at home, transfer the sketches the children have done onto posterboard, and add the design elements common to the Gond style. This is hard. Don't expect to get it perfect or symmetrical -- freewheeling a little bit is fine. Here are some examples of my attempts to translate the children's art into a workable poster:







Step 3:

Materials:
Poster paints
Lots of Q-tips
Paper towel
Outline drawings for each child

Make an example to show them how the paintings may end up looking. Here's my example:



Set each child up with paper towel, some poster paints, and a pile of Q-tips. Demonstrate the way you fill in the outline with "dot dot dot" action. Some of the older children may want to branch out into doing small lines to fill in the areas, or other fancy stuff. The little ones should stick to dot-dot-dot to make their paintings colorful. Emphasize that the colors do not have to be realistic. Emphasize that it does not have to be perfect -- folk art is neither exact or mathematical. Let them know that if one of their Q-tips gets squishy or frayed or otherwise irritating, they should ditch it and use a new one. Expect each kid to go through about 20.

Here are some pictures from our painting day:











For more pictures, check out our Jungle Book Flickr set. :)

Story: In the last few weeks of class, we discussed Mowgli's place in the world. Does he belong in the village or in the jungle? I left this as an open-ended question, and obviously there is no right answer. It was interesting to hear the children discussing it. I asked them where they felt they belonged -- more comfortable in the country or in the city? This led us to more interesting questinos: Is man an animal? Can people ever be truly civilized? What is perfect "city" behavior? What is perfect "jungle" behavior? Are there people you know that remind you of different animals? What animal would you be if you could? Would you be happy living the life of a wolf/snake/crocodile?

To me, these questions are more significant for young readers than the issues of race, colonialism, and caste that inevitably come up surrounding this text. They are some of the fundamental questions of humanity, and yet very accessible, in the context of Mowgli and his story, to even the youngest ones. We did talk about race and the empire, and we didn't shy away from some of the more troubling aspects of the stories. However, what I hope the children come away with is a little more awareness of the complexity of point-of-view. I hope they remember reading about seals from the point of view of scared seals and the hungry hunter, reading about the lawful jungle and the unlawful village, about the Gond tribe and the wolf pack. Maybe when they return to these themes and ideas later, they will be able to accomplish a deeper understanding of the tough issues too.

Song and Dance: We had several children who memorized all of "If" and all of "Mandalay." What an amazing accomplishment! For our final show, we had the enrichment class doing the first two verses and the academic class doing all of the poems -- it was a great performance! We also did a Bhangra dance using all 20 of the moves we worked on.

Here are a few videos for you:

Academic track kids doing "Mandalay":



Enrichment track kids doing "If":

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Quiz:

The quiz this week is about henna, the ancient art of dying your skin with smushed up plant juice. Please tell me which of these statements are true?

1. Henna is a flowering plant .
2. Henna can be used on skin and leather, but must not be used on hair, or it will cause the hair to turn green and wrinkly.
3. The Pali District in Rajasthan has the most henna growers and sellers in India. There are over 100 henna processors in one city alone.
4. Henna has been used for thousands of years to decorate skin in intricate designs and motifs.
5. Henna dye is applied as a paste made from the leaves of the henna plant. There are two parts to this paste: 1. The crushed leaves ground into powder. 2. A slightly acidic liquid like lemon juice or tea.
6. Henna tattoos are applied by piercing the skin and placing the dye underneath the top layer of skin.
7. The longer you leave the henna paste on the skin, the more lawsone molecules will penetrate the skin and stain it.
8. The henna stain disappears as the skin cells die.
9. People apply henna decorations to cast spells on their enemies and bring rain to parades.
10. Henna artists use traditional motifs, flowers, lines and dots, spirals, and bands of color to create their designs. .

After the quiz got started immediately on our henna project. We wanted to give ourselves the maximum time possible to let the stuff dry, so Ms Ashleigh and Ms Deva came in to help us get the dye on as quickly as we could.







For more pictures, visit our Flickr set and scroll down to the bottom. We also had some fun with henna at the park a few weeks ago, test driving it on the moms. Ms Deva decorated Louis and Miranda for their Halloween appearance as an Indian prince and princess!







Story: In the enrichment class we talked about the story quite a bit, to make sure the kids are following the plot and ideas. For next week, I'd like them to read the poem at the end of "Tiger! Tiger!" Mowgli says these words as he stands on the council rock after bringing back the hide of Shere Khan, and I want to focus next week on the difference between the village and the jungle, the idea of fitting in, and with the older class some notions of Mowgli's character as an archetypal man, too beastly for the village, too civilized for the jungle. So we'll be focusing on that.

Song and Dance: Next week I told the enrichment class that I am bringing in my prize bag and everyone who can sing or say the first stanza of "If" from memory is going to get a prize. They will have another shot at it the week after, too. I'm going to extend the same offer to the older kids, but they have to say the whole thing! WHAT? THE WHOLE THING? Yes. The whole thing. If they know "Mandalay" too, they can have a prize for that as well, but I'd rather they focused on memorizing "If."

Assignment: The children should be reading the rest of the Mowgli stories to finish the book in the next few weeks. I would like them to be at least through with "Tiger! Tiger!" for sure on Tuesday. After that, the pace is up to you. The fast facts are about the Gond tribe. Next week we'll be doing part one of a project where we make Gond tribal paintings. I'd like them to look at some of these links and start thinking what they'd like their painting to look like. On Tuesday they'll make a sketch of their design which I will transfer as faithfully as possible into a dark outline on posterboard. The following week, they will do the painting part and fill in all the color.

Here is a video made in the Gond art style from a Gond creation myth story:



That's How I See Things is a book illustrated in the Gond style.

A gallery of Gond Tribal Paintings.

Here's just one example:

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Quiz:

The quiz this week required students to correctly identify ten map elements: The Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges River, Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Pakistan, China, Nepal, and Bangladesh. They did pretty well! Good job studying that at home. :)

After the quiz, we talked about the names Mumbai/Bombay and Kolkata/Calcutta. India became independent from England in 1947, but kept the Anglicized versions of their city names until 1996, when they changed them to more authentic transliterations. We discussed how we used to be colonies of England too, and how many of our place names are based on places in England or English monarchs, etc. Particularly here in Norfolk/Suffolk/Portsmouth/Hampton/Etc this is pretty relevant. I resisted the urge to teach the children the song "Istanbul was Constantinople." However, if you wanted to listen to it at home, here's the link. Yeah, it's a video from MTV's 120 Minutes. Remember that show? :)

Story: For this week, we read the story "Kaa's Hunting." We had a great discussion about how Kipling describes an animal world ruled by strict laws and long-established customs, contrasted with the "banderlog" -- the monkey people who have no laws and live by chaos. Baloo and Bagheera have nothing but contempt for the monkeys, and most of this contempt is based on their unstructured culture. We talked about what this means in the context of the British occupation of India. Often an invading civilization sees themselves as having better laws, organization, government. The British saw Indian life as inferior and messy, so they were "helping" the Indian people by taking over their country and making them follow the British way of doing things. Of course you can read this in different ways, depending on where you draw the lines of the analogy. I didn't really take it farther than just pointing out this theme in the story, and discussing the fact that Kipling was showing a culture that seemed lawless and chaotic (the jungle) as in fact very organized and lawful.

The children were *really* excellent listeners today. We had a great discussion and they had lots of interesting ideas and a lot of patience for delving into these abstractions. Kudos to the kids -- if you have a boy in my academic class (like I do) you should give that boy a pat on the back, because the attention span and respectfulness was really great. Not that it's normally bad, but today it was really good.

Henna: Today we learned about the henna plant, how henna dye is made, and how artists decorate people's hands and feet with intricate designs and motifs. We took a look at some pattern and design books and then each designed our own henna tattoos by tracing our hands onto paper and then decorating them. I face-painted this "practice" henna tattoo with washable face paint. The one they get next week will not be as big or complicated as the one they got this week.

Song and Dance: We sang our usual songs and danced our usual dances. The enrichment class kids are really coming along on their memorization. The academic class kids should be working on all of "If" and "Mandalay" and the enrichment class kids should work on the first two stanzas of each. "The Beaches of Lukannon" does not need to be memorized. It's not a famous poem or anything, just fun to sing and it comes from the story "The White Seal."

Assignment: The fast facts are about henna. The story for next week is "Tiger! Tiger!" We are going to be doing real actual henna in class next week. Please let me know if it is okay to henna your child. We will be doing a small tattoo on the back of one hand. It is a semi-permanent tattoo -- it will flake off with the stained skin cells, so how long it lasts depends on how much and how vigorously you wash your hands. So, if you have an event coming up for which they need untattooed hands, you can tell us to put it somewhere less noticeable. The henna paste will dry on the skin, and needs to stay on for as long as possible. It will feel like a dry scab and the kids will just brush it off when they don't want to wait any more.

I need your permission to use henna stain on your child -- if I don't hear from you that it's okay, we will do them with face paint again. I have two special guests coming to help me henna: Sarah's big sister Ashleigh and Miranda's mom Ms Deva. Should be fun!

Note: The children and I were disappointed that the Bhangra dancers did not make it to class to do their demo. I had an email when I got home from the troup leader's girlfriend saying he had gotten in a car accident that morning on the way to class, and was in the hospital. Please keep them in your thoughts and I will keep you updated as to how he is doing!

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Quiz:

Here is the quiz for this week. Which statements are true?

Himalaya Quiz
Circle the numbers that are true.

1. The word Himalaya means “Home of Snow.”
2. The Himalayan mountain range is contained entirely in the country of Nepal.
3. The Himalayas are the highest mountain range in the world, containing Mt. Rainier and Mt. Olympus.
4. The Himalayas are still growing higher.
5. The Himalayas are forbidden for Hindus because they are so cold, and all rivers go there to die.
6. Roman roads and now modern highways make it easy to travel the Himalayas and share culture and news across the mountains.
7. Renunciation means giving up all your material possessions, and your thoughts and desires in this world.
8. The goal of renunciation is enlightenment and liberation.
9. A sunnyasi spends half his time meditating, and half his time working the soil to grow food.
10. Char Dham is a group of holy sites where Indian people go to pray and receive salvation.

Story: For this week, we read the story "Mowgli's Brothers." In the enrichment class we spent some time talking about the plot points of the story so I could make sure the kids were understanding it and following along. They are doing great! Several mentioned they are supplementing with the pop-up book that I recommended. I was very impressed with how the little ones are picking up the details and subtler points of the story -- good job moms and dads reading at home!

Pen Pal:

As a class, we are going to be communicating with a pen pal in India. His name is Ved, he's seven years old, and his mother and I are friends via an internet list. I want the kids to get a sense of what things in India are similar to their own lives, but also appreciate the differences. Today we wrote letters and drew pictures for Ved. Some of the kids were at a loss for what to say -- I told them to ask questions, tell about themselves and about Virginia, etc. It was interesting what they came up with!

Song and Dance: This week we had more time to work on the songs and we were able to spend time on all of them. We will be learning one more India song next week, for a total of five. Some of the children have all of "Mandalay" and "If" memorized and that's awesome! I still like them to look at the words when we sing in class. I talked this week about how our brains work to memorize material -- hearing it, seeing it, and saying it at the same time is a powerful and effective combination. So, watching the words as we sing and hear each other sing, we're engaging our brains on many levels.

Assignment: The fast facts for next week involves identifying locations on a map of India. On your child's map you will find the following: New Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges River, Pakistan, Nepal, China, and Bangladesh. The story for next week is "Kaa's Hunting."

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Meditation Exercises:

Today we were joined by local writer and yoga teacher Grace Tazewell for some practice in meditating. First we discussed the story, "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat," and I introduced the Himalaya and Sunnyasi fast facts. Then Grace took us through several different short meditations. The first was a listening meditation, where we made ourselves very quiet and then paid attention to all sounds, far and near. Mostly, we heard the sounds of the co-op, but we also heard cars outside, seagulls, an airplane, and a little bit of our own sounds -- heartbeat, tummy rumbling, etc. The second meditation was about sensations we were feeling -- we paid attention to our clothes, to the floor under us, to our hair, the air in the room, anything we could feel with our bodies. Then it was time to examine our thoughts, as we tried to focus on what we were feeling and thinking inside.



It was very interesting to listen as the children shared their experiences with this. The older children in the academic class spent a lot of time considering what they were supposed to be thinking, while the younger kids in the enrichment class were less self-aware. All of them came up with some really interesting thoughts though! The final meditation involved holding a grape in your mouth and then eating it very very very slowly, paying attention to each sensation, change in taste and feeling in your mouth. That was very cool! Grace spent some time answering the kids' questions about meditation too. In the end, we got a very small taste of what it was like for Purun Bhagat to spend so many years in quiet contemplation, doing nothing but thinking.

Song and Dance: We also sang our songs and managed to squeeze in a brief India Dance Party.

New Stuff: This week I'm going to tell the kids that any child who wants to choreograph a brief Bhangra dance either individually or with a group of friends can have time on the last day of class to perform it for the parents. We are also going to be taking on a collective "pen pal" in India, and this week we'll be writing an introductory letter to him.

Assignment: Study the fast facts and be ready for a quiz! Read "Mowgli's Brothers."

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Today we got right down to business because we had so much fun stuff to do with our Sharpie Saris. However, in the academic track class, we made the time to take our Punjab region quiz:

Quiz: Which one of the following statements are true?

1. The word Punjab comes from the Latin and means “The Eleven Diapers.”
2. The Indus Valley Civilization is largely a mystery because we don't understand their writing.
3. When Aryan people migrated to India and practiced an early version of the Hindu religion, that was the Vedic Civilization.
4. The most important idea for Punjabi people is peace and harmony for all.
5. The Punjab has been invaded by a lot of civilizations, like Greeks, Mongols, and the British.
6. Sikhism is a religion that was started in the Punjab and is still practiced there today.
7. The British Empire was never able to conquer the Punjab region, so they finally gave up and went home.
8. The Punjab is now fully contained in the modern country of Pakistan. None of it is left as part of India.
9. Bhangra dance is a folk dance from the Punjab.
10. Punjabi is the language of the Punjab.

Project: Sharpie Saris

Materials:
Each child needs a doll or stuffed animal.
Sharpies in all colors. Blue and red spread the best -- the "old school" blue and red colors, not the newfangled ones. Of course, we had a rainbow of newfangled colors on hand too.
Stretch poplin cut to fit different sized dolls and animals. The fabric I chose had a small percentage of spandex in it -- this really helps with the pleating and tucking and wrapping. Each piece should be long enough to reach from armpit to floor, and long enough to go around five times. More if you're going to do pleats at the waist. Some of the girls did American Girl saris, and for these I used 44 inches of fabric, the full width of the fabric on the bolt. The width of the strip was about 10 inches. For a Groovy Girls size doll or a Webkinz, you need about half as much length, 2/3 as much width.
Safety pins for pinning the sari at the back.
Rubbing alcohol.
A squirt bottle or spray bottle, or an eye dropper. Fill this with the alcohol.

Instructions:
Find a place outside on the sidewalk or inside with lots of ventilation and a protected surface.
First, decorate your blank sari with the Sharpies. You can do whatever designs you like, but try using some of the motifs we learned about in class -- tear drops, half-moons, stars. You could even decorate your sari with mandalas like this:



Or you could do stripes like this:



Next, making sure you're on a protected surface or one you can ruin, spray the alcohol all over your design. The colors will start to bleed together:



When you've doused it with alcohol, let it dry. Running around waving it in the sunshine is a good way to execute this part of the plan!

When it's dry, wrap the sari on your doll according to the instructions on this video:



Now your doll has a sari:


Here are some pictures from our sari making!







For more pictures, visit our Jungle Book Flickr photo set.

Homework: Because we were upstairs, downstairs, outside, and all around, I'm not sure everyone got the Himalaya and Sannyasi fast facts, or if they got them, I'm not sure they made it into the folders. For this reason, and also because we have a special guest coming next week, we will push the quiz on the Himalayas to the following week. So, there is no quiz this week, there is no reading assignment for this week, and on Tuesday I will make sure everyone has the facts. Also on Tuesday, we will start the Mowgli stories! Hooray!

Labels: crafts, how to, india, junglebook, sari

Namaste.

We may have started the enrichment track class with an India dance party. We may have also ended it that way. The academic class, however, started with a very serious quiz. And ended with an Indian dance party. Rawr!

Quiz: Which one of the following statements are true?

1. The word “mandala” comes from the Sanskrit word for “circle.”
2. A circle shape only appears in manmade forms like dinner plates and bike tires.
3. People look at mandalas to give them great ideas for wallpaper designs.
4. People make mandalas to release their inner creativity.
5. Ether is a mixture of the other four elements.
6. Fire is represented by a droplet shape.
7. After making a sand mandala, the artists sweep it all away.
8. Concentric circles share a center.
9. A motif is a small, pear-flavored pastry found in bakeries in Lahore.
10. A symmetrical design is the same on both sides.

Bonus #1: Name one place where a circle with a radiating design appears in nature.

Bonus #2: Draw the shapes that represent water, air and ether.

Presentations: Ben presented on wolves, and Shira presented on horses. Both gave short talks, included jokes, held everyone's attention well, and used props. Ben showed a picture of red wolves, and Shira had some grooming brushes to show. Great job to both!

Songs: We worked on all four of our songs. I am asking the academic class to help me rearrange the verses of the "Beaches of Lukannon" song so they can feel they have a little ownership in the way the song is put together. The younger group is not going to be working on that song for now -- I may bring it back in when we have the other three more solid.

Punjab Region: The story "The Undertakers" takes place in the Punjab. It was very very hard to reduce the history and culture of this region to ten "fast facts" for the quiz! The most important thing is that I want the students to get a sense of how complicated and multi-textured the culture of the region is. This is a product of all of the invasions and the many times the region has been conquered by different empires. One of these empires was the Sassanid Empire (remember them, Arabian Nights parents?) and one was the Mughal Empire, which we are reading about in the Salman Rushdie novel. So, in some ways the region is a mad pastiche of many different cultures, but it has also developed a strong identity of its own -- its own religion, its own language, art, dance. Next week we'll be moving across the North of the country from the Punjab toward the Himalayas in "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat."

Sari: I demonstrated draping a sari with a piece of fabric I brought, to give them the idea of what one might look like. Next week we will be making saris for dolls or stuffed animals. I will bring the sari fabric and the decorating materials. Your child should bring a doll or stuffed animal to dress. American Girl dolls would be perfect, regular size WebKinz would be perfect. It would be more difficult to drape a sari on a stuffed dolphin or worm or something without shoulders or arms, but we will work with whatever you bring! I mentioned to the girls that if they have enough yardage at home to make a sari for themselves, they can bring that, but this is not mandatory or expected. It takes at least three yards. Want to practice at home? Here is a helpful video:



Little Babaji: The enrichment track heard the story Little Babaji. This is a folk tale from India that you might have heard long ago as "Little Black Sambo." When I was little we used to go to a restaurant in Detroit that was named after this story. This title was a racist way to label what is essentially an Indian story. The British referred to Indian people as "blacks" and "Sambo" was an insultingly reductive name -- obviously not a name that originated in India. The story itself is charming, though, and has been retold by Helen Bannerman with proper Indian names. They really enjoyed it and the illustrations showed some examples of native dress which worked well with our sari discussion.

Bhangra Dance: Bhangra began as the folk dance of the Punjab region, then became pop, blended with some elements of hip hop, reggae, and became more mainstream. Some has a faster, more pop beat:



Some is more comparable to reggae. I'll be making some music tracks available to those who are enrolled in the class. Ask your kids to show them some of their moves! We're excited to be visited by the Bhangra Maniacs from ODU sometime in November, but for now they're stuck with me!

Bonus links for next week:

Bhangra dancers on stage. Note the Sikh headgear.

Kids doing a Bhangra dance. You can find tons more Bhangra videos including how to, demos, and even a Bhangra exercise video.

A few barasingha deer with their huge antlers, like Purun Bhagat befriended in the story.

Purun Dass becomes a Hindu monk, a Sunnyasin, as seen here. Here's a Hindu monk meditating, with a begging cup.

Here is a mountaintop shrine to Kali. Another smaller shrine.

Some pictures from the Indian Himalayas: 1. 2. Lots of Indian Himalaya pictures. More Himalayan pictures.

A village built on a hill in the Himalayas. A village building after a mudslide.

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Today we had so much to do that we immediately launched into the quiz. The quiz was a blank version of the Fast Facts map, which the children had to fill in, matching the name with the ten locations we learned from Kotick's travels.

Quiz: Do you know these places?

1. St. Paul's Island
2. Juan Fernandez Islands
3. Kerguelen Island
4. Galapagos Islands
5. Georgia Islands
6. Orkney Islands
7. Cape of Good Hope
8. Emerald Island
9. Gough's Island
10. Pacific Ocean

Songs: After the quiz, we sang our songs. We now have four: Mandalay, If, The Beaches of Lukannon, and Jungle Book TV Theme Song. We are getting Mandalay and If memorized, holla! Almost everyone has the first verse down, most people have the second verse down too, and we're working on the third verses now.

Story: I didn't have a whole lot to say about the story this week. Its main purpose was to show the seal hunting from the other side of the harpoon, to illustrate the need that the Aleut people had for seals, and to think about the fact that Kipling could show both sides of this killing with such dispassionate detail.

Mandalas: We learned about the five elements in Indian art: earth, air, fire, water, and ether. We learned how they are represented by motifs: square, half-moon, triangle, circle, and teardrop. Ether is the most interesting element -- ask your child what it is! Ether is the empty space wherein all the other elements exist -- it's coldness, absence, space, openness. We learned how people make mandalas as a mental exercise, and how they focus on mandalas during meditation to help them clear their minds. We also talked about how mandalas are transient. I described sand mandalas to them, but it would really be helpful if they could see a few videos:



Project:

Materials: thick watercolor paper with black circles outlined in Sharpie. Liquid watercolors in gold, silver, black, and a variety of other colors. Paint brushes, plastic egg cartons for colors and mixing. Have plenty of extra "blanks" in case some children want to start over or make multiple mandalas. Plan to have 3 sheets of watercolor paper per child at least.

Directions: First, quiet your mind and look at your mandala. It is not empty! It is full of ether. This means it holds infinite possibilities. Try and let your mandala tell you what it wants in it before you begin to paint. Then paint whatever you like. There is no wrong way to do it, and no right way to do it. Whatever is in your mind can come out in your mandala. (In the academic class, Evan led us in a few "om" chants while we were gazing at our mandalas that were full of possibilities).





Assignment: The story for next week is The Undertakers. We are going to be learning about the Punjab region this week. The story is a little rough to get through, a lot of dialogue and not a lot of action. Skipping ahead a bit for the little ones is perfectly fine. Here are some links for them to look at regarding crocodiles, the Punjab region, and adjutant cranes:

A page about Indian crocodiles.

Photo of a big old Indian crocodile.

Video footage of the Adjutant crane (stork).

Video of local people feeding wild jackals in India.

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Today to warm up, we practiced our Johar greeting. We're getting fast, but I know we can be faster. I attribute our slowness to extreme giggling caused by people calling each other the wrong name. Which never fails to amuse.

Quiz:

1. Hindus believe in one god, which means they are polytheists.

2. The Greeks had a pantheon, the Romans had a pantheon, and the Hindus have a pantheon.

3. A trinity is a type of drink popular in Goa, a coastal city of Southern India.

4. Brahma is the creator, Ganesha is the preserver, and Zeus is the destroyer.

5. Even though there are many gods in the pantheon, many Hindus believe they are all different manifestations of the same idea of god.

6. An avatar is a divine incarnation, which means a part of god that appears on earth.

7. Devas are people who think they are very important to a religion, and act bossy and rude, mostly found in New York and Los Angeles.

8. Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of overcoming obstacles, is one of the most popular gods in the pantheon.

9. Mother goddesses are important to Hindus. Some major ones are Lakshmi, Parvati, and Kali.

10. There is only one version of Hindu. Anyone practicing a variation has to be reincarnated as a pickle.

If you want the answers, ask your child. I'll give you a hint: The pickle one is FALSE.

Songs: After the quiz, we sang our songs, "If," "Mandalay," and "Jungle Book TV Theme." The enrichment class boogied like it was their job.

The White Seal: We had three teaching points today.

1. Point of view. The White Seal is in the point of view of the animals again, like Rikki Tikki Tavi. I asked the children why Kipling chose to write from this perspective, and we talked about how the story illuminates this secret world of seals, which could never have been narrated from the perspective of humans. I introduced the idea that will become much more important later in the Mowgli stories, that Kipling adds layers of law and order over a "society" that is generally seen as lawless and therefore inferior. So where we see a bunch of unruly seals rolling around on the beach, Kipling sees these rich relationships full of culture and tradition. This will relate later to imperialist attitudes toward native populations.

I asked the kids whether the Aleuts who killed the seals were wrong to do it. They all said yes. Then I asked them to imagine the same scene told from the perspective of the humans. For the younger class, I started to tell a story about a boy living in the harsh environment of this Alaskan island, fighting for survival, trying to get clothes, blankets, and tents for his family, oil to burn in their lamps, food to eat, life from these seals. Would that boy be wrong to kill seals to save his family? So, it gets murky. One child asked, "Why can't they just kill and eat the fish?" I asked if they could imagine a story told from the point of view of fish, that would make a reader think that killing fish was wrong. They said no, but I pointed out Finding Nemo and reminded them of the scene at the end with the fishing boat and the "Swim down together!" They started to get my point!

2. The power of fiction. The lesson of The White Seal is not so much about seals and Aleuts and saving your people and arctic adventure and more about how fiction works to make us *feel* about an issue, rather than thinking about it. I asked the children to tell me how the seal killing made them feel: sad, bad, worried, afraid, etc. Creating feelings in a reader by telling the story of a character the reader cares about can be a much more direct route to a reader's opinion than a non-fiction essay that invites argument. We talked about different works of fiction that were written to make a point, and one child brought up Misty of Chincoteague, which is a great example of changing readers' minds with fiction on a massive scale that could never be accomplished (in my opinion) without a character and a narrative.

3. Is killing seals wrong? We talked around the question for a while, and different children talked about their different levels of vegetarianism or veganism. For me, as usual, it's less about the issue and more about the literary artifice, and teaching the children how changing the point of view can radically affect the story's message, and how authors make these decisions based on what they want to make the reader feel. Identifying and evaluating the point of view is one of the first steps in becoming a conscious reader. Have you guessed that our next story is about seal hunting from the point of view of an Aleutian boy?

New Song: We learned "Lukannon," which Kipling says is the seal national anthem. It's a sad, angry song... this will be the last poem we memorize this semester.

Assignment: The fast facts for this week are all over a map of the world. I made a map of ten of the places Kotick travelled in his search for the island without men. On the map your child brought home, you'll see ten locations labelled, which we went over in class. Next week's quiz will be a blank map, and they'll fill in the numbers for me. The reading assignment for next week is "Quiquern."

Links:

A map of the Aleutian Islands.

A cool volcano in the Aleutian Islands.

A picture of Aleut clothing.

Aleuts in a kayak hunting whale.

Dog sled pictures: 1. 2. 3.

Labels: junglebook

Namaste.

Decorated Elephants Art Project. Because our project was so involved and I wanted the children to have the maximum amount of time possible to work on it, we started right away.

Each student started with a blank elephant outlined on a half sheet of black posterboard in gel marker:


Materials:

Blank elephants on black posterboard
Gel markers
Chalk
Colored rhinestones
Fabric flowers
Shimmery shapes
Wooden tiles
Cardboard tiles
Sequins of all shapes and sizes
Bottles of Tacky glue

The only instructions: Outline with markers. Color with chalk. Use glue in dots only. No big piles of glue, no glue lines, no puddles, no glops. Dots only. Demonstrate. Dots of glue is the secret of success with this project!

Here are some examples of our finished work:




Here is a link to tons more images of my adorable students and their work.

Songs. While we did our projects, we sang our songs, and many of the students have memorized the first verse of If and the first verse of Mandalay. This is exciting! We moved on to working on the second verses.

Quiz. Here it is -- see how you do! Which of these statements are true?

1. The white man in charge of the elephant capture operation is called a mahout.

2. An elephant works with many mahouts in the course of his life, because it’s dangerous for an animal to become attached to one person.

3. A mahout can communicate orders to an elephant with a word or a touch.

4. The difficult terrain in Northeast India makes it necessary to use elephants for work.

5. Elephants cannot be used to carry guns because they have a strong pacifist ethic and will not move forward carrying weapons.

6. If you were a king or a celebrity in India, you would probably ride an elephant in a parade.

7. Elephants in parades are decorated with black shawls, black yarn wigs, and coal dust, to remind everyone of night.

8. During a khedda capture, elephants are driven into large pools of warm milk, which makes them sleepy and easy to work with.

9. Tame elephants are used to calm down wild elephants that are being captured to tame.

10. Ganesha is a Hindu god with an elephant head.

If you want the answers, ask your child.

Toomai of the Elephants: We had three teaching points today.

1. Point of view. The story "Rikki Tikki Tavi" was in the point of view of the animals, and we could hear the animals talking and see the world from their perspective. "Toomai of the Elephants" is in the point of view of the humans, and we see the elephants from the outside. I asked the students why they thought this might be, and they came up with some interesting thoughts. For example, Sarah pointed out that if we heard from the elephants POV, we would know that the dance was real from the beginning. I asked them why they thought Kala Nag came back to the camp, after the dance was over. To me, this is one of the big mysteries of the story, and one of the most important elements. If we heard from Kala Nag, if we could hear him talk, we would know the answer definitively, but without that perspective, we have to guess. Several of the children thought Kala Nag might be coming back to return Little Toomai -- I thought that was interesting. Others suggested that he was afraid to be free in the forest after being a tame elephant all his life.

2. I asked the students if they could think of ways that Toomai and Kala Nag were similar. The answer I was looking for was the fact that they both drummed to express themselves and communicate with the world -- Toomai on his tom-tom and Kala Nag in the elephant dance. They did give me that answer, but Abigail also pointed out that Toomai and Kala Nag were both kind of caught in their circumstances, servants and enslaved -- the elephant in his ropes and pickets and Toomai by his station in life. I thought this was very insightful and it was exactly what I was getting to with my line of questioning.

3. I told the children that there were was a line in the story that bothered me: "Native children have no nerves to speak of." We discussed what that line might mean, and I told them I found it wrong and sad: All children have nerves. We talked about the fact that in colonizing another country, the dominant culture has to define the dominated culture as less important, less valuable than themselves, to allow themselves to use them and oppress them. We looked at this line as an example of the British "Sahib" making it possible to treat these children poorly. We can absolutely see this as wrong, but we have to ask where this sentiment is coming from. Is it the character's sentiment or is it the author's sentiment? I told them that I wasn't sure whether this was Kipling's idea or Sahib Petersen's idea, and that this was a question we would look into further as we went deeper into the book.

Assignment: The fast facts for this week cover the Hindu pantheon. The reading assignment for next week is "The White Seal."

Links:

A fur seal rookery.

A northern fur seal, showing its sharp teeth.

In case anyone is interested in some serious information about fur seals, here is some.

Fur seals on Enchanted Learning.

More fur seals with a big bull in the front and center.

Video of a female seal finding her pup in a group, just like Kotick and his mom.

Baby fur seal and his mom.

The White Seal animated movie (by Chuck Jones) Part I
The White Seal animated movie Part II
The White Seal animated movie Part III

Warning: Do NOT let your child search around on YouTube or Google for fur seal links without you. There are extremely disturbing images and videos of seal culls, and the fur trade. Not appropriate for children AT ALL. Like, nightmares for life type stuff.

Labels: junglebook

Labels: junglebook