The Tabula

A couple of weeks ago H was set a project at school. The project had to be something do do with the Romans. H has until the 17th October to complete it.

As he does his homework on Saturday mornings he worked out how many Saturdays he had until then and what he had to do each week.

All credit to him he's stuck to his schedule, though his project has changed a little with time, which I told him was fine.

Originally he wanted to produce a project all about Roman art and mosaics. As part of this he decided to make a tabula (which Roman children wrote on in schools). He decorated it with mosaic over the past two Saturdays, having spent some time researching what patterns and materials they used and deciding that corrugated cardboard and paper would have to do for his project rather than terracotta and malachite!

The project has gradually morphed into what he's learned about the alphabet (his name is on the front of the tabula in moasic), and numbers (he put his age on too) and how time-consuming it all was, and how long it took to become a mosaic master. He's photographed the project in all it's stages and even included some of Noah, who wanted to make mosaics too, and a small piece of Noah's work (as an example of an apprentice mosaic student...H is the mosaic master of course ;-).

He still won't let me blip the design (yet) but he did let me blip his efforts today as he filled his tabula with beeswax (plasticine) and whittled himself a pen to write in it. The stick was cut from our apple tree.

I'm ordering his photos for him this evening and next Saturday he'll assemble them, and his written work and stick it all on to a large piece of card.

I think it's a really lovely project and he's learned lots about pacing himself and letting the project grow and take on its own form, and it's totally, uniquely his!