Mathematics This Week

Sorting odd and even numbers to 20.

Patterns on the garden fence.

Measurement!  We purchased these cool scales.  I hung them up where the kids can't miss them and the learning just came.  They've compared the weights of pretty much anything they could find and R (5) has started using the gram weights to measure.

Cloth Making

Last Sunday when we visited the leaf-plate making workshop we also took the opportunity to stop by a cloth making workshop.  I was really hoping to see the process of making cloth from the begging, but it seems to do that it would involve some travelling as the cotton growing and harvesting doesn't  take place around here.

Still we were able to see some of the procress.

The cotton is purchased from Navadwip.  I think it looks a little bit like this, but not yet coloured.  We'll have to go to Navadwip to check it out.  The cotton is then dyed and hung to dry like this.

The cotton is then spun on this simple machine (a chorka) and turned into fine thread.

In the workshop the thread is woven into cloth on these, less simple, machines!

The entire process you see here takes place without electricity.

I guess this has something to do with making the pattern designs in the cloth.

It takes from 1.5 hours to a day to complete a sari (5 meters of cloth) depending on the amount of detail in the design.

The final product.

Simple Living

There are many things one can learn by living or visiting a small village around here. One of those things would be simplicity.

This family make leaf plates for a business.  I can't remember the name of tree where these leaves come from.  The leaves come from another place called Bardhaman.  

First they use these thin sticks that come from a coconut tree and poke them through the leaves to form a basic plate shape.

Then they are sewn together with thread (this is done in private homes). 

Then the plates are pressed with hot weights.

The boys having a go.

These plates are then trimmed  to size...

and then packed.  The packing, unfortunately involves plastic.

And there you have it! Fully biodegradable environmentally friendly plates!

Training Oxen

We were invited recently to help train young oxen.  The kids had a great time, and so did I!

First, a quick play in the haystack.

It only takes 3 months to train oxen.  Their names are Rama and Lakon and they're adorable and cheeky.  

A beautiful walk through the sugarcane fields as the sun sets over the Jalangi. 

Painted Aprons

 The cloth we spray-painted in Playgroup last week was cut and made into little aprons.  The children this week traced their names with cloth paint on their aprons.  Painting on fabric was a new experience for them.

Chalk and Starch

Here’s another activity I found on Almost Unschoolers.  Something nice and simple and something different. This was our playgroup activity this week (the photos are not from playgroup).

All you need is some liquid starch, fabric and some colour chalk.

Dip the fabric in the starch and sqeeze out the excess liquid, then lay the fabric down on a flat surface (the flat surface prevents the cloth from moving).

The chalk marks on the starched cloth become ‘brighter’ and the cloth ‘stiff’ (new vocabulary for the little ones).  The starch we used also had a nice smell, so we can talk a little about the sense of smell and the nose.

Chalk into Paint

After some starched clothand chalk drawing, T’s mother suggested adding water to the chalk to make paint.  The children helped crush the paint and painted on some banana leaves that she had collected earlier.   

Leaves became pink!

Feet became purple!

Before we knew it the girls had prepared themselves for marriage .

Time for a shower!

Science in the Stairwell

We have had a bird sitting on a nest above the meters in the stairwell for quite some time now!  Today when we were climbing the stairs we found something new!  An empty shell!

We discussed how birds lay eggs and that sometimes baby birds hatch from these eggs.  

We’re hoping to see a baby soon.  We’re not sure if there's one hiding.  We'll have to wait and watch.

Natural Dyes

This was a neat activity, we used marigolds to dye cloth!  R (5) and I had tried using natural colours to dye cloth before, but were not very successful.  This time we thought we would try marigolds since we had many to spare.  We used a LOT of marigolds and a little water and let the water boil and simmer for over an hour.   It smelled sweet, like honey, as the dye was being prepared.

We prepared the cloth by soaking it in a plant fixative of 4 parts water to 1 part vinegar    This process took an hour. 

We used two pieces of cloth.  The first piece was smaller, we knotted it up and added it to the dye.

R predicted the cloth would turn an orange colour like the marigolds. 

It turned green!

Later we used a larger piece of cloth.  R helped tie knots.  This time, maybe because the knots were not so tight, we didn’t end up with the same effect.  The colour was also slightly different as we added a little more water to cover the cloth while it was being dyed.

We plan to make a kurta (top) with our newly coloured cloth. 

Click here for more information on natural dyes and fixatives.