Sunday Projects - Animation Edition

Inspired by the animation workshop, Lily and I decided to take our camera use to a whole new level. Gabor took Ernest to visit te neighbours while we got to work (Ernest leaving was necessary because he kept squashing our actors).

It's pretty impressive what you can do with a camera blue-tacked to a table and some free software.

In which we consider moving to Denmark - 365

Sunday (19th February - oh dear, I am about 3 weeks behind)

Full animations can bee seen here 

Monday - Frozen clothes Animation Workshop - Day 5 - Editing

Tuesday  

Wednesday

  Oulu International Children's Theatre Festival

Friday (please ignore the missing Thursday - I'm bored of the FAIL picture)

 I think I mentioned recently that the cold weather is twisting my mind into finding long johns and woolen socks sexy.

Saturday

                                       Terje Isungset - Composition and Percussion
                                       Mari Kvien Brunvoll - Voice
                                       Eric Mutel - Instuments/Sculpture and Lighting

                                       On BBC World News

A backlog - 365

... or maybe a better way of posting. A week in photos anyway.

Friday - White II

Saturday  - Relief

Pyjamaday  - suitible for ages 2 - 122 (sometimes Gabor and I play with it once the kids have gone to bed)

Monday - no camera

Tuesday - This is what minus 32 degrees looks like. Is it how you imagined it.

Wednesday - Halfway home

Thursday - Light Reading

Constuction - 365

The Magic of Science - 356

Lily goes to school for about 4 hours each day, sleeps for about 11 hours and for the other 9 hours (you could say) she is unschooled. Some days, like today, we just skip the school part and make Wizard Potions instead.

* Ok, so it is only I have bent the rules already, I am doing the 365 project to try to improve my picture taking but in sem ways I am a bit of a prefectionist. I didn't get the shot I wanted that captured the drama of the foam and the expressions of the kids. Even with the 3 pictures I don't think  have managed to show how engaged and excited both kids were.

Maybe this one:

        ...but I had hoped to get one of Lily, since it was her experiment. If you have any tips for photographing active kids I would be really greatful.

A bad day is a good day for something new.

We got a new camera. We got it for Yule. It arrived yesterday. Yesterday was not Yule. Yesterday was Monday.

I had a New Year Project planned, a 365 day (well 366) photo blog, but it has transformed into a 17th January project which is even better. The 17th January is known as Blue Monday* - well at least it was last year, this year Blue Monday is on the 23rd, but I can't wait that long so I will go with last years date even though it is Tuesday today - anyway, it is said to be the most depressing day of the year (I guess among countries in the Northern Hemisphere that celebrate Christmas) which to me makes it a good day for something new**.

So, I shall start. Introductions are a good start.

This Ernest who doesn't like to have his picture taken.

This is Lily who does.

This is Gábor who tolerates my photographing of him - at least for now (this is only day 1 after all).

These people will likely feature often.

It seems only fair that there should be a picture of me included here in this introduction round so...

This is me.

It's not a big picture because it wasn't taken by me or with my pretty new camera (rather it is of me with my new camera). It is also small because I don't like photos of me, I definetly have a prefered side of the camera. My face will not feature here often.

What a treat you*** have had with this first post. You got 3 (+1) photos today. From now on there will be but one photo each day (unless I change my mind).

Done.

*Blue Monday is not real, I mean it isn't really the most depressing day of the year. It was created by Sky Travel in order to sell holidats to people who believe it when someone tells them their life is crap and that you can make it better with a trip to the Canary Islands.

**Yes, I just completely made up some "just because" justification for starting today when really the reason is just that my camera arrived yesterday.

***I say you as though I am actually a bit full of myself and writing to an audience but this project is more for me but you can view/read along too if you like. You are welcome.

Chasing Tractors

    

We have lived in Finland for 3 years but until now we haven't seen much of it other than Oulu, however, thanks to Kitty, we are able to venture a little further afield and experience a bit more of Finland than "city" life. Sari invited us to help with the potato harvest at her grandparents place. I was so excited about it, I'm not really sure why though, after all we were going to bend over and dig around in a muddy field...and the weather forecast was predicting rain. But I was right to be excited, it was a great day. Four generations of people working together, being welcomed as part of the family; working and feasting. It was a wonderful taste of the life I want for my family's future.

The kids had a great time, Lily and Sari's niece were I think 2 of the fasters potato pickers in Finland and Ernest spent most of the time riding in the tractor on Sari's grandpa's lap. It was quite a special experience for him; my children will never know my grandparents and they don't often see their own grandparent so it was very sweet to watch my toddler make friends with this gentle old man.

"Homework is more important than playing with your friends!"... umm... are you sure about that?

One of the problems with studying education is that you start to for some serious opinions (and arguments) about what the purpose of school is and what school should be. It becomes impossible to find a school that matches exactly with your educational philosophy. One of the things that we like about Waldorf-Steiner education is the importance it gives to play and imagination; play and imagination are intrinsic to a child’s development (yes, we went with the Steiner school – the story of that will come soon).

When I had heard the Lily's teacher had told her today that doing her homework was more important then playing with her friends I got seriously pissed off. Personally, I don't agree with homework (I will discuss exactly why in some other post sometime) but wither you are with giving homework or not, the question of which is more important, homework or play, is a separate issue entirely. Her homework was to write out a line each of the letters "d", "e" and "f"; repetition of work already done in school. If we compare only the "learning experience" of playing with her friends, there is a (as far as I am concerned) a clear winner when it comes to "importance".

Last week Lily spent an afternoon playing at her friend Milla's home.  Milla is an old friend of Lily's from daycare; she’s a shy, quiet girl and when they play together Lily tends to take the lead. Lily didn’t speak a word of Finnish (despite understanding almost everything after only a few months) which meant that whenever she was playing she always just joined in or followed along.  She rarely challenged the “rules of the game” or initiated play. “Following” remained Lily’s way of playing even once she started to speak Finnish and when we were in Hungary so playing with Milla helps her to develop initiative, it makes her feel comfortable and learn how to express her wishes and ideas.

Aside from character development, taking the lead means that she is generating speech in Finnish, and a lot of it.  While Steiner school (in theory) puts an emphasis on play, the classroom activities are mainly teacher led – listening, which is a whole different cognitive process to speech production.  Lily didn’t use Finnish at all last year (and forgot almost all of the language) and we don’t use Finnish at home so she is kind of “playing catch-up” with the other kids in terms of vocabulary and complexity of language use.  Any chance for her to be in an environment where she is using Finnish will be of a huge benefit to her when it comes to being in a Finnish classroom.

It isn’t even just the Finnish language that Lily gains from being in a Finnish home but also Finnish norms. In any culture (and its institutions) there are certain things that are just done or just are, that need no explanation. However when you are not fully living within that culture sometimes these things just don’t make sense and do need to be explained. Spending time in more “typically Finnish” environments help Lily (and us) to understand why some things in her school are as they are.

This is only one afternoon with one friend. How about when she plays in the playground in front of our apartment? The 3 kids she plays with most are all native German speakers with limited Finnish and/or English – Did I mention that German is one of the languages they are learning in school? Where do you think she will learn more German? School or the playground?

What about what others can lean through Lily. Also last week we had one of the neighbours’ kids at our place for the whole afternoon. The child’s father is a supporters of Perussuomalaiset (True Finns (or The Finns – they recently changed their English name)), a far right/ anti-immigration party, yet the child is now playing in the home of immigrants, building a friendship with an immigrant child. And through Lily we are making connections with the whole family. We are making an effort to try to understand their perspective and we are challenging their perceptions of “the immigrant” or “the other”.

So what do you thing Lily learns more from? Which is more important?

But then all this rant of mine is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what she learns or which teaches her more. Frankly the simple argument is. She is a child. There is nothing more important for children than play.

Trippin' - 20th June

Aggtelek to...some lake in Eastern Slovakia that I can't remember the name of right now

We were in no rush to leave Aggtelek, we were only planning on driving a few hours to a lakeside in Slovakia and although the weather had improved it wasn't exactly swimming weather, so we had a relaxed morning and took a walk over the hills (rather than into them like the day before).

I don't know if the trail had a name but surely it should be called "Butterfly walk" (or something more imaginative but butterfly related). I have never seen so many butterflies in their natural habitat before; we had to watch where we stepped - they where everywhere. The photos don't show it so well, like I said yesterday, the zoom was playing up.

The abundance of butterflies probably had something to do with the abundance of wild flowers.

Gábor tends to avoid using the camera, but sensing that it was coming to the end of its life, he took up the challenge and took up the camera (meaning that for once I feature in the pictures...my friend Gail has a fear that if something were to happen to her there would be no pictures of her with her son, as time passes and I have so few pictures of me with my kids I start to understand her fear...maybe I told this before...I have a very bad memory and tend to repeat myself...or ramble; I ramble a lot too, like now for example...sorry).

Frankly I think he did great.

Perhaps he could do with a little praise from people to encourage him to do it more often...well maybe it will take more than praise, a new camera might be necessary since later that day the camera gave up on us.  

Before we set out I made Lily an explorers utility belt, complete with, sketch book, crayon (for rubbing), pencil, magnifying glass, pocket knife, matches (yes, I put a knife and matches in the hand of my 7 year old) and colour scavenger hunt cards (might do a crafty post on the bely and cards at some point).

After our walk it was time to leave Hungary after spending a year there and head to Slovakia, adding a new country to the list of countries I've visited. I will save the tales of Slovakia for tomorrows installment and leave you with one image of the lake there...one of the very last taken with our camera.

From this point on all pictures are from Gábor's phone or Lily's mp4 player.

Gábor's blog of the day as always has more pictures, more videos and more languages (his blog is in booth English and Hungarian).