NYCHEA History Fair 2012

We had an awesome turnout for our homeschool group's annual history fair. It is one of the best events we do every year, and my son looks forward to it. He is already thinking about who to present on next year!



Some kids opt to do a more traditional talk, but most do a series of clues, and give the audience a chance to guess what historical personage they are pretending to be. Some wear costumes (Mikro doesn't, because he thinks it makes it too easy to guess who you are if you dress up, and he enjoys trying to balance revealing biographical information against phrasing things cryptically enough to stump the audience). Some make posters, models or projects. All the kids did a terrific job and got some valuable public speaking experience. My hammy kiddo hasn't got a shy bone in his body and only reluctantly relinquished the microphone when he was done. He had a great time.



Can you guess who Mikro chose to present on? Here are his clues:

I was born in the Netherlands in 1898.
I was left handed.
I hated school .
Drawing was my favorite subject.
My parents wanted me to study architecture, but my teacher thought I would make a better graphic artist.
I made woodcuts and linoleum cuts. I liked them because using just black and white allows you to express ideas clearly.
I was inspired by listening to organ music, especially Bach.
After I graduated from art school, I moved to Italy.
I did many drawings and prints of italian landscapes.
Sometimes I did commercial artwork such as postage stamps and wrapping paper.
It took over 30 years for me to be able to make a living from my artwork, but in the meantime, my dad gave me an allowance.
I visited a castle in Spain called Alhambra and was inspired by the intricate geometric designs I saw there.
I started to read about crystallography, the study of crystals, because I was interested in the shapes and patterns involved.
In addition to prints, I also carved wooden spheres.
After studying crystals and math, I came up with my Theory of Regular Plane Division, which I used in creating my art.
I am known for playing with perspective and creating impossible structures and pieces featuring repeating patterns.
I was interested in the contrast between order and chaos.
I played with distorting images, such as by doing a self portrait of myself reflected in a glass ball and in a water drop.
I was fascinated by tessellation (regularly repeated pattern pieces that fit together perfectly without leaving spaces).
One of my famous works involves lizards which morph from a drawing on the page into live reptiles.
Another of my famous works is called “Hands Drawing Hands”.
Some of my tessellations involve animal and human figures.
Sometimes the pattern pieces change and evolve across the piece. I did several pieces on the theme of “Metamorphosis”.
My nickname was “Mauk.”
I died in 1972.

And as a last clue, here is an art project he did, in the style of his subject:



I'll give the answer tomorrow... and post a how to for the art project, and some links...

Thank you to our wonderful organizer and master of ceremonies!

Chip of the Old Bookworm Block

When I was a kid, I always had my face in a book. (Heh, still do, at every opportunity...) In fact, I even had teachers take books away from me in the name of "socialization", which I still think was an incredibly anti-intellectual and ridiculous thing for an educator to do, especially since I had close friends and socialized plenty within a small core group of "the smart kids" who also loved books and science and stories and art. I had, in many ways, an idyllic Brooklyn street kid childhood, and spent all my afternoons and summers playing skelsie, wiffleball, handball, stoopball, box ball, cops and robbers, space explorers, etc. on the street with my friends, supervised from afar by assorted moms and grammas, but pretty much left to our own devices to be creative, have fun, and work things out amongst ourselves. However, if I was immersed in a good story, I wanted to finish it, not be told in a condescending tone by an adult with no clue as to the foregoing that I should "run along and play". I knew would see my pals after school in the neighborhood, after I finished my book.

Mikro is even more social than his dad or I ever were. He's confident and outgoing (almost to a fault), and he surprised a lot of people at Clearwater Festival by approaching Pete Seeger and talking to him on his own, without a parent smoothing the way. He is comfortable with people of all ages. He loves to sing and tell stories. He has friends in the neighborhood and friends who homeschool, and his fondest wish is to find a stage and an audience that will adore him. My kid is the furthest thing from shy or withdrawn or socially awkward (except to the extent that attempting to dominate a room is socially akward...)

Anyway, yesterday, Mikro plunked himself on the couch and read 125 pages in the first How to Train Your Dragon book by Cressida Cowell.

I am beyond thrilled that no one will ever snatch a book from his hands and tell him it would be better to go play.