Visual Thinking Redux

I've been so busy, between two (consecutive, non-concurrent) weeks when (some, not all) of my kids were on vacation; two (consecutive, not full-family) trips; Passover; finals for my other two classes, and my blasted web site for this class, that I've been unable to post on the really important stuff.

Here's another topographical map by GP#2:

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This one is of the lake on which my parents have a little house. The three sections represent the three sections of the lake, which are indeed laid out in just this way; the wood across the lower end represents the beaver dam that really does extend in just that place.

Here's a self portrait he did with the bottle tops:a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsVsnY__CrLAXWFDGe6D6aYDXUbUvCoMwM21AaNbKZcp1PhNk-HYN2fS65OiFcw4LgPYD26KPUDXOdfypFzB0-d0WncS9MQyf1EyM1twtxk6cHGUyY520zwpPTbJq__8S3Y-xMlueZHywW/s1600-h/self+portrait1.JPG">

It's himself, dancing; inside his head, he's thinking about multicultural friendship and world peace.  (See the different colored people, holding hands?  They're standing on an orange beach, by the shore of a great blue ocean.)

This is himself, loving himself.  ("Sometimes I really like me.")

Those bottlecaps occupied him for at least three hours.

As a point of comparison, this model dragon in a book he wanted to get held him for all of three minutes:

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" 

And this project, that I actually thought was well conceived, by the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst to explore positive and negative space:

held his interest for about thirty minutes.

When we got home, he asked if I could please let him have a collection of bottlecaps here, at home.

I said yes.  Sigh.

GP#3 asked me to take a picture of her doing a tableaux of Degas' Little Dancer (she is absolutely obsessed with Laurence Anholt's book):

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I'm not sure if the term "tableaux" really covers "re-enacting a children's book about a sculpture of a dancer" but, there it is.

Visual Thinking

Guinea Pig #2 has been busy.

This is...

A topographical and historical  map of the island of Manhattan.

Made of (in case it isn't clear from the photo) plastic bottle tops.

Which my mother saves for him.  As is clear from the photo, she's been saving them for him for... a long time.

At my request, we keep the collection at her house.

Anyway, that's the landscape view.  

Here's a closeup (all photos taken by the Pig):

The blue represents the water, over which the Dutch traveled, to establish the New Amsterdam colony.

The red represents are the lowlands upon which the Dutch came (already inhabited, Guinea Pig #2 points out, by Native Americans).

The white represents the time after the colony was purchased by the British. 

The tall green ones are the trees alongside what is now Morningside Heights.

Here's the Pig's favorite vantage point.

(Dunno why, really.)

And the tall, multicolored columns are today's skyscrapers.

It's all very vivid in his mind.

And it brings vividly to mind a passage in Learning Outside the Lines, in which Jonathan Mooney describes how he uses color -- color highlighters, colored post-it notes, colored index cards, and ultimately colored LEGOS -- to organize his thoughts before writing.

I can't, honestly, say that I get it.

But... vive la difference.