DIY Delaunay

As we look forward to our visit to Tate Modern's Alexander Calder exhibition, with all its mobile-making, sculpture-building inspirational potential, I've been thinking back to one of last year's brilliant exhibitions and the great children's art opportunities it spawned. We were amidst the chaos of house moving when we visited Tate's Sonia Delaunay exhibition and I didn't get chance to write it up at the time. However, despite the exhibition being over, the follow-on project we created was one of our most enjoyable, and so I wanted to share it as a great project to do any time at home.

Tate Modern's exhibition itself was fabulous and extremely welcome. Not only did it cover a period I adore (the roaring 20s and beyond), feature a range of work from paintings to rotating textiles and handbags in fabulously vivid colours and exciting patterns, but it also showcased the creative genius of a female artist. If you google Delaunay, you get a variety of listings about Robert, her (perhaps better known) husband, but I've always had rather a penchant for the lady. I stumbled across her gorgeous textile designs during my degree and have adored her work ever since. Reading about the exhibition I also love that one of her inspirations was her children. Whilst, at times, mothers perhaps feel that as their caring responsibilities and tiredness increase, their own creativity and inner world decreases accordingly, but that need not always be the case. On my better days when the two worlds collide, creativity inspired by devotion can produce some of the most joyful results. Delaunay said:

"About 1911 I had the idea of making for my son, who had just been born, a blanket composed of bits of fabric like those I had seen in the houses of Russian peasants. When it was finished, the arrangement of the pieces of material seemed to me to evoke cubist conceptions and we then tried to apply the same process to other objects and paintings."

 Delaunay loved colour and described it as the skin of life. Her use of colour was intended to bring movement, light and musical qualities to her work and she experimented with juxtaposition - believing that colours would appear different depending on those surrounding them. This was known as Simultanism. Much of her work also features simple shapes and patterns. What better an activity to take to the exhibition then, than a packet of felt coloured shapes I made at home to play with, arrange and also spot in the artworks? The children were really engaged with this latter task, and played the game throughout several rooms. They also clearly sensed Delaunay's evocation of movement in her art. In the room dedicated to her her vast seven-metre murals Motor, Dashboard and Propeller, (happily empty at the time) the children felt compelled to zoom around as aeroplanes, clearly taking her colourful and dynamic images as invitation into her world.

Either side of the exhibition we read the beautiful book Madame Sonia Delaunay by Gerard Lo Monaco and published by Tate. With beautiful paper engineering and based on Delaunay's works, we were transported through solar systems, ocean waves, jungles and through clouds; spotting details in her art and even seeing a fashion show of theatrical costumes. As soon as this book arrived Culturebaby propped it up and used it as inspiration for some simple but effective abstract watercolour painting (watercolours are incidentally extremely easy for little people to use and are often our medium of choice).

For our main Delaunay-inspired project we continued with our exploration of fashion history by creating our own Delaunay-inspired costumes for our collection of dolls. Our Georgian project (here) had captured Culturebaby's imagination for weeks and a foray into the early years of the 20th Century was equally successful. The '20s style dress is a simple one to prepare in bulk with a hole for the head in the centre of a long rectangle (which could then be tied together with a low-slung ribbon). I cut out a selection of these templates in white fabric I had received in an off-cuts bag from the local material shop and provided felt tip pens, ribbon and foam shapes. The children looked through the Delaunay exhibition guide and chose an image of three dresses for inspiration. We propped it up and worked on our own designs. We also situated the style of the dresses we were producing in our beautiful timeline from Big Picture Press Shirts, Skirts and Shoes, illustrated by Sanna Mander. 
 
I was so impressed by the range of designs that the 3, 5 and 8 year olds created. The boy designed a colourful suit and the mummies had an extremely cathartic time indulging in a little geometric repetition.

It was one of those successful creative afternoons where the children really wanted to carry on playing with the theme. I had laid out a range of colour and shape activities to appeal to all, from toddler upwards.

Tesselating shapes

Home-made colour sorting activity

Colourful shape sorting and stacking

And we got the easel and tables out for some outdoor painting:

We loved this project. It was so simple but satisfying - and happily it also provided a whole new summer wardrobe for a grateful gang of vintage barbies. No more off-the-peg for them this year.

Disclaimer: We received copies of the two books mentioned in this post for review purposes. All other materials and ideas are our own. If you liked this post you can see more colour play ideas in a previous post here. 

Never Poles Apart: Popper, Penguins and the Persistence of Friendship...

The last few months were rather more Penguin themed than one might normally expect for a British summer, with Culture Uncle travelling half a world away to the Falkland Islands where, other than a whale skeleton and swathes of sand and snow, the majority of his pictures included a plethora of penguins in a variety of picturesque poses. Apparently they are also rather smelly, a fact that in no way seems to have deterred Mr Popper and his long suffering wife in a delightful new musical we were invited to sample at London's Cadogan Hall.

Mr Popper is singleminded in his Polar obsessions. He reads everything he can get his hands on, delights in learning facts and corresponding with current pioneers of arctic exploration. Then one day his cosy home in an English backwater is turned upside down by the arrival of a new pet, a gift from one of his explorer contacts; a genuine penguin. He christens his new lodger Captain Cook, and proceeds to introduce his (semi) lead trained pet to the neighbourhood.

Picture Courtesy of Cadogan Hall

This heartwarming story has a number of emotional twists and turns as his penguin gets sick - it transpires out of loneliness for his own kind... A mate and eight other miniature penguins follow and the Poppers find themselves letting the outside in to keep their brood as happy and at home as they can. Ultimately, the penguins must be occupied and find fame as a talented and spectacular attraction, before, as is always the case, the call of the wild finally beckons them home. But what will Mr Popper do without his friends? 

The danger of a show aimed at younger children is that it either becomes pantomimesque (I'm afraid I'm not a fan) or overly simplistic. Happily Mr Popper's Penguins lapsed into neither of these. The story was engaging and fast moving yet intelligent (with real facts about the arctic), the songs were both fun and had good parts and harmonies, the penguins were brought to life by clever puppetry. There were sadder moments in the story when I could see the audience was visibly moved. It was sweet, heartwarming and the children really enjoyed it (as did we). 

Culturebaby continued to sing the theme days after and talked about the show, so when I set up their seasonal Christmas play tray we included a family of penguins to play in the snow. These scenes are so simple to create and effective for imaginative play. I include a small Christmas tree for them to dress with miniature decorations; wooden and felt snowflakes, stars, reindeer, bells, and other items to collect, count and sort; themed clips for fine motor practice and various characters and models to bring to life.

 

We've also been re-acquainting ourselves with some of the loveliest Penguin themed literature in our collection. It appears that the titans of children's writing and illustration have also decided that the penguin shall be typecast as loyal and unusual companion and we have been reading a trio of heartstring-tugging tales of belonging and friendship.

First - Polly Dunbar's Penguin, a simple yet profound tale about the importance of patience and effort in the labours of love. Ben receives a present of an unusual pet penguin and his efforts to engage and entertain seem to go entirely unrewarded; Penguin remains silent... that is until Ben lands in trouble and his companion finds a voice. Every effort was worthwhile, and none of it was forgotten. For parents, this adorable tale also speaks to the patience of waiting for a toddler to find their true voice, and the unparalleled joy of that first "I love you Mummy".

Next, the classic Lost and Found from Oliver Jeffers. This time a boy finds a Penguin at his door, who looks sad and begins to follow him around. Unsure what else to do, the boy decides that the best solution is to return the little chap to his native South Pole. Together they voyage across land and sea; the boy tells stories and the penguin listens. Finally as they reach their destination and the boy deposits his charge, both realise that the true goal was the journey and their bond. Companionship was the solution all along and they return home united.

Finally, one of our favourite author and illustrators, Petr Horacek, has produced a new and stunningly beautiful book Blue Penguin about the sadness, challenge and joy of finding a place to belong and the journey towards being both accepted and comfortable in ones own skin. Penguin feels like a penguin and acts like a penguin but he is blue. " "...you're not like us" said the other penguins and they wandered away." Poor blue penguin was lonely and sad and he dreamt at night that a beautiful white whale would come and rescue him. He sang and sang, and slowly another penguin heard and came closer and closer. She begged blue penguin to teach her this beautiful song, which was so magical that it captivated the other penguins too. Finally when the whale arrived to answer the call, Penguin finally realised that he was valued and accepted and no longer needed to be rescued. He was loved for who he was. Petr's Penguins are so extremely cute and his signature use of colour is luminescent and beautifully bold. Culturebaby wanted this book again and again. It is definitely my favourite of his (many fabulous) works to date and carries a crucial message for our little people about tolerance and the value of authenticity.

Mr Popper's Penguins is currently on tour (at the Lowry in Salford until January and then on to Kingston) - dates can be found here.

Disclaimer: We were invited along to Cadogan Hall to review the new musical Mr Popper's Penguins. We were also given a copy of Peter Horacek's Blue Penguin by the fabulous Walker Books for review purposes. This new book was published in November. All other materials are our own.

Montessori Moment: 5 Simple DIY letter and Number Games

From around 3 Culturebaby became really interested in letters and we began to learn to read simple words. At just four she has plunged headfirst into her sensitive period for writing (currently any time she can get hold of a pen and paper... or cloudy bus window) and numbers. She wants to count everything and, rather surprisingly, chose maths worksheets over bedtime stories last night. Over the last year, I've developed a few resources to help bring the alphabet alive, and I've recently started to add some number games. I thought I'd share five simple to produce ones here.


1.Letter Games with Movable Alphabet

We have a retro set of wooden Galt letter stencils and these serve as a versatile 'movable alphabet'. Montessori schools often use sandpaper letters for their sensory/tactile qualities, but I find the slightly rough wood does a similar job. We have lower and upper case (with the exception of a h lost somewhere in the 1980s... I've replaced...) and with many thanks to our wonderful Suzuki violin lessons where Culturebaby was encouraged to line up A - G and then play a game to work out which had been swapped whilst her back was turned, this became a game she has asked to play again and again. It has helped her to not only recognise A - G in upper and lower case and reorder in any scenario, but we've also used it to build up the rest of the alphabet. She likes to spot when letters within a case have been reordered and to spot mixed up cases. Culturebaby also enjoys trying to fill a basket with the letters she can identify. I must confess, this fascination with such simple games was a complete surprise, but we've run with it...

2. Writing in Sand

This is such a simple one. Take a tray of sand or salt, give the child a letter, and encourage them to practice drawing it into the sand. I've seen this also written about very successfully with washable markers or flat marbles on a non-breakable mirror. This photograph is the aftermath of one of these trays, when Culturebaby decided to try imprinting some of the letters to create patterns.

 3. Letter and Item Matching and Ordering Game

This basket was fun to make. I gathered a set of Melissa and Doug coloured lower case letters and matched each one to a well known item - making sure I used easily recognisable things or small models and added these all to a basket. I used a basket divided into five to make the game simpler so that each set of letters could be worked out separately if desired.

I first created this when Culturebaby was around three and it served as an enjoyable game we could do together. Now I've just got it back out and suspect she will be able to do most of it alone.

4. Number Sequence Games - Given the success of the letter sequencing and reorganisation games we have applied the same principle to numbers. During the house move I uncovered a brilliant Galt puzzle from the 1970s where numbers 0 - 9 are each created from the number of components that their numeral represents. Both girls love this jigsaw and work on it together. Culturetot gets as excited as Culturebaby at the prospect of hiding whilst the numbers are rearranged. Any set of movable numerals will do for the second part of this activity.

  

5. Festive Counting and Addition game

I'm always on the look out for interesting sets of mini identical items that can serve as counters and was pleased to see that Christmas is the great provider. I've created a counting and addition basket from a set of 24 advent pegs and a selection of 24 miniature mushrooms and a set of tiny bells. Culturebaby can either simply play a game of counting the correct numbers of items into the central box as indicated by a changing number clip. Or we will work together to add one number of mushrooms to another number of bells and find the clip together with the corresponding total. I find that working together on tactile and sorting games such as this helps her to remember what she is learning and she goes on to use the materials to sort and play as much as she likes.