Ode to a Grecian MOC?

After going to Brickfair last week, Alli is insistent that she's going to exhibit her MOC (my own creation) at the next one, so she is gradually turning our living room into a series of scenes from Ancient Greece.

So, here are some of the early pieces. Yes, I admit that I participated in some of the building, too :)


Odysseus on Circe's Island

 Hercules vs the Hydra

 The Delphic Oracle and the temple of the Oracle

 Hades and the Underworld

 Mount Olympus under siege by Titans

 

Gods and Goddesses

 Zeus and Athena

 Aphrodite, Apollo, and Poseidon

 Hercules vs the Hydra

I think Theseus and the Minotaur are under construction, although that may just be an excuse to buy the series 6 Minifigs in an effort to get the Minotaur minifig.

Anyway, we're having fun at Mount Parnassus!

Brickfair 2012

We went to the "public day" for Brickfair 2012 in Birmingham yesterday. It was a good experience, although very, very crowded. Apparently a lot of people have kids who love legos and who enjoy seeing what other people created.

Brickfair, for those who aren't familiar with it, is as AFOL-Adult Fan of Lego-event, where people bring their best/favorite creations built out of Lego bricks and pieces to share. These range from robots (R2-D2, Wall-E and the cute little Android mascot all were there to compete in Robot challenges, along with quite a few unnamed, but I'm sure quite effective bots), Mindstorms and technics (including a Mindstorm that could solve a rubix cube), Rube-Goldberg type apparatus which were controlled via Lego soccer balls, and lots of lego dioramas and scenes. While most of the MOCs (My own Creations-anything that is built from legos that doesn't come from instructions) were built by adults, there were several 14-16 yr olds who had very impressive creations, and the youngest builder represented was 5 years old according to the tag on their creation. For many families, building with legos and showing their creations is a family affair. And I'm half convinced that one of my favorites, a very detailed monastery with moving Monks controlled by technics and hidden magnets, with a Viking ship sailing around it, was actually being shown by Santa and Mrs. Claus under an assumed name-especially since they stated their address as "Canada".

Alli's favorite was a huge city scene, including a parade in full costume, leading to DragonCon-so Legos, meet Sci-fi/Fantasy conventions. And this isn't an odd combination at all-when she was chatting with one of the creators about his castle, he suggested that we should come down in May for their local sci-fi/fantasy/gaming con-which will also include a lego room.


One of my favorites was essentially I-Spy, made with legos. Another complicated city scene, including a skate park, stores, restaurants, houses, a carnival with merry-go round and carousel, and even a Village People concert (complete with a hidden speaker that, when triggered, played YMCA) came with a list of things to find. It was a popular stop.
 


All in all, it was a fun day. I do believe that the next time we go, we'll pay the higher fee for the full convention instead of the public day, though-both because it would avoid many of the crowds to be able to see everyone's creations when it's just the builders there, and because Alli started planning out what MOC she wants to enter next year before we even got the van out of the parking lot on the way home.


And now, some pictures!

Help a great kid out!

Logan is one of my daughter's homeschool "Classmates" in our local group, and is a finalist in the Jif Most Creative Peanut Butter Sandwich contest. If he is one of the top 5 vote recipients, he will get the chance to go to New York City for the finals, and the overall winner wins $25,000 for college. Please click on the link and vote for a great kid. You can vote once a day.

http://www.jif.com/promotions/most-creative-peanut-butter/castvote

Lessons from a children's book-for music teachers, unschoolers, and everyone in between.

We found The last holiday concert  by Andrew Clements at a used bookstore recently. Alli loves Andrew Clements, and I wanted to pre-read it-and found myself just overwhelmed. It's a kid's book, but there's a lot there.

The main storyline is this- After a school choir teacher finds out that his job has been eliminated at the end of the semester5, he gets frustrated with his middle school choir and their lack of attentiveness (choir, as is so often the case, has been used as a dumping ground for the kids who needed an elective, so a lot of the kids have NO desire to be there), and tells them that he's through-that it's up to THEM to put on the Christmas concert, and if they want to stand there for 30 minutes and look like fools, that's fine with him-expecting that the kids will ASK him to come back.

Instead, a popular goof-off takes over, and working together, the kids go from total chaos to putting on a show, getting help and support from the teacher and parents as needed. And the results are truly magical.

This was a good time for me, because I'm in a transition in a lot of ways. Because of a combination of financial and personal reasons, I won't be teaching this Spring. The University music school has gone in a different direction, and I haven't always found homeschooling compatible with teaching, and especially not with managing, a Kindermusik program. So, like the teacher in this book, I'm facing leaving behind my kids, not knowing whether they'll even BE in a music class next semester, and hoping they'll find their wings. Seeing these 6th graders-even fictional ones-manage to do so is very validating for me as a teacher.

And having been around homeschooled kids, I realize that what Clements is describing isn't really that unusual. I see my daughter take that kind of initiative on a smaller scale almost daily, and I see it happen when the kids are in groups frequently. True, making elaborate stories about Movie monsters and vampires might not be on the same scale as putting on a show-but I suspect that if you threw that gauntlet in front of our homeschool group, you'd get some great results.

So, as a parent and teacher, the lesson for me is that,sometimes the best thing you can do is let go, step back, and not give help until they ASK for it. It's not easy-but it CAN work.

More Mount Parnassus

Since "Mount Parnassus", our extremely small private school, has been a hit, and Alli liked the idea of having a uniform to wear for field trips (and has loved school stuff), I took advantage of Vistaprint freebies and discounts available and got a bunch of assorted items. They were running a "free shipping on any purchase over X", and since the polos got us over that minimum, it meant everything that was on the "Freebies" list really was free. The one downside is that Vistaprint doesn't do child-sized T-shirts or polos, and while they tend to run small on polos, Alli's "Adult small" would make a decent dress on her. I'm hoping it shrinks a bit. Michael and I have them, too.  Now, to find the perfect skirt!


Uniform polo

School tote bag, car magnet, and writing journal (all free-we had the graphic printed 4x on a big magnet, and have cut it apart to make smaller ones)

Free stationary items

A tasty math lesson

Or...what do you get when you put a degreed math major, a 7 yr old, and 7 assorted flavors of candy at home on a vacation day?

And, the results

They're educational, right?

Alli has caught the lego bug, so for the last couple of years EVERY gift giving occasion has been filled with boxes that rattle. Since Michael is also an AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) and really enjoys them, he's tended to encourage this, and we've ended up with a LOT of legos. So, the playroom has become Lego central-and I decided that it was time to repurpose some of the storage/organization we had for other toys, which weren't played with much, and use them for legos.

Without further ado, I present our own private Legoland :)

I'm pretty pleased with it :) And hoping it stays this way for awhile!