A little bit of Red Green in all of us
So tonight I had to put together an "alternative response" to a novel I'd read. I'd chosen "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time", which is an absolutely fabulous novel that I highly recommend to everyone. It's written by Mark Haddon from the point of view of an autistic child who loves math and logic but has trouble with emotions.
An alternative response is a totally free creation in response to a piece of literature. I.e., it is not a book report, nor the boring diorama we all had to make. Rather, it's something that represents the book to us. For example, one could write a song, or bake some food that's discussed in the book, or make a poster or build a boat (e.g., for The Life of Pi). Anyhow, I chose to do up a math brainteaser that's discussed in the book (yes, I am a geek). Regardless of what I made, the point of this story is I decided to "fancify" it by gluing my printout onto construction paper so it would have a backing (I'm sure there's a fancy scrapbooking term for this). When I had previously helped make a poster (see here for a look at mine - here is a slideshow of all the class's work, in case you're really bored), this technique had made this look quite snappy.
This is when I realized the difference between girls and boys. I had done that project with a nice girl named Jen. She scrapbooks. She does crafts. She had stencils and glue and scissors and construction paper and stickers and glitter and markers and all sorts of odds and sods for us to make our poster. Tonight I discovered that I do not have any of those things. I have no stencils, no glue stick, no scissors, no construction paper or any of those other things...
...and this is where my Red Green came in. I took three file folders (nice bright red) down to the storage locker, opened my toolbox and pulled out my utility knife. And the set square. Cut the file folders in half to make the backings, then trimmed the printed pages so they were slightly smaller than the backings. Finally, I pulled out my industrial glue bottle (it glues tile, wood, metal and pretty much anything else it touches), carefully spread some on the paper and voila! Art. A couple of hole punches later and I had my project finished. Not bad for just a boy...but I'm thinking I should pick up some construction paper before next semester :-)
An alternative response is a totally free creation in response to a piece of literature. I.e., it is not a book report, nor the boring diorama we all had to make. Rather, it's something that represents the book to us. For example, one could write a song, or bake some food that's discussed in the book, or make a poster or build a boat (e.g., for The Life of Pi). Anyhow, I chose to do up a math brainteaser that's discussed in the book (yes, I am a geek). Regardless of what I made, the point of this story is I decided to "fancify" it by gluing my printout onto construction paper so it would have a backing (I'm sure there's a fancy scrapbooking term for this). When I had previously helped make a poster (see here for a look at mine - here is a slideshow of all the class's work, in case you're really bored), this technique had made this look quite snappy.
This is when I realized the difference between girls and boys. I had done that project with a nice girl named Jen. She scrapbooks. She does crafts. She had stencils and glue and scissors and construction paper and stickers and glitter and markers and all sorts of odds and sods for us to make our poster. Tonight I discovered that I do not have any of those things. I have no stencils, no glue stick, no scissors, no construction paper or any of those other things...
...and this is where my Red Green came in. I took three file folders (nice bright red) down to the storage locker, opened my toolbox and pulled out my utility knife. And the set square. Cut the file folders in half to make the backings, then trimmed the printed pages so they were slightly smaller than the backings. Finally, I pulled out my industrial glue bottle (it glues tile, wood, metal and pretty much anything else it touches), carefully spread some on the paper and voila! Art. A couple of hole punches later and I had my project finished. Not bad for just a boy...but I'm thinking I should pick up some construction paper before next semester :-)
posted by Mr. G. at 12:37 a.m.
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