The Magic Drawing

Monday (29/03/2010)

a) Graphite.
* When the English found the graphite mine in 1564, people started making pencil lead and pencils. Pencil leads are made from graphite, a type of stone or mineral from the Earth core. It looks similar to coals and can be used to write.
Foo Soon: Teacher, we can also write using the joss stick.
* That’s true. Then, we took a look at Zhe Qing’s collection of different pencils. There kids saw the letters HB and 2B before I introduced to them. We shaded on a paper and 2B pencils have darker lead colours whereas HB are lighter. There was 8B which had thicker lead of darker colour. They were more suitable for drawing and sketching. There was a hexagon shaped pencil to give the user a better grip or for people who have writing difficulty.

b) Analysing the lead experiment.
Then, we analsyed our lead experiment:
* The normal pencil leads dissolved in the water and produced dark grey colour in the clear water. That was because they were grey pencil leads. However, the coloured pencil leads produced more colourful water. Both bottles consist of mud at the bottom of the bottle. I opened one bottle and Wei Jeen suggested that I pour the water out. They smelled and realized that it was smelly. Shi Jie said it was because of the chemical used to make the pencil leads. We would only analyse the mud that sank at the bottom of the bottle today because we need a filter.

c) Leonardo da Vinci.
Teacher: What did you learn last Friday?
Yun Wen: The painter.
* Yes, we were talking about Leonardo da Vinci last week. He was a famous painter, also a scientist and inventor. He always carried a short pencil with a notebook wherever he goes. Whenever he thinks of an idea, he would jot down them and start sketching down with his pencil. However, his famous painting was Mona Lisa which until today, no painter could paint as well as him! J
* There were a few reasons why Mona Lisa painting won the hearts of many painters. One of the reasons was how the late Leonardo painted the eyes. “The eyes would look into yours wherever you stand”. This was a technique that not many could do. Today’s IT skill could do this feature easily. The kids got excited and walked to the left and right, front and back and true enough, “Teacher, the eyes are watching us!”… J Now, they can remember Mona Lisa.

d) Tracing: The magic drawing.
* The kids learnt about tracing paper. It could be used to trace any picture they like especially the ones difficult to draw. They can also make many copies from the tracing paper.
* First, they chose a drawing from any book. Then they traced. Next, they shaded the back page of the picture. Then, they can draw on the lines of the picture (front page). After that, they can see some light trace on their A4 paper. They are suppose to trace that again. Then, the kids exchanged with some of their friends for their pictures. Some kids found it fun, some found it difficult. Devin thought that it is easier and more fun to draw straight onto the paper. However, Yun Wen thought that it was magical and fun!