Painted Mosaic Tiles

Today we used acrylic paints to colour our clay tiles. We gave them 3 layers. We needed to keep the paint fairly thin so as not to obliterate the fine details and textures. First we gave them a base colour and dried it with the heat gun. Next we mixed a darker shade and added lots of water so it would pool in the indentations. After this was dry we used a dry brush technique with undiluted metallic paint to highlight the raised areas. After everything was dry we gave them a coat of acrylic varnish.

We'll soon glue the tiles into a mosaic along with beads and commercial ceramic tiles.

Snacks

The children spent some time today making their snacks for next week. They cooked apricot and coconut balls (above) along with fruit jellies (below).

Mosaics

This week we used ceramic and mirror tiles to make a simple mosaic plaque. R's is on the left and L's on the right.

We also used air dry clay to make our own tiles for a bigger piece. We used lots of household objects, buttons and fabrics to imprint patterns on the clay. Now we'll let them dry before painting and varnishing.

Clay imprint tiles by R

Clay imprint tiles by L

What's Inside The Computer?

This week in IT lessons L was learning about the insides of the computer. Here they are all looking inside the PC.

Italy Lapbooks

Today we finally finished off our Italian week. The children assembled all the mini books they have been making into a fold out lapbook. You can download the lapbook free here.

Mini books inside the lap book

Some of the mini books opened up

We also looked at Italian national costume and dressed some paper dolls with styles from Italy.

By L

By R

Our final Italian meal was served up today. L (and the bread making machine) made us traditional pizza, whilst R made tiramisu.

Clay Creatures

These school holidays we went to a clay making class at Campbelltown Arts Centre. The theme was clay creatures. R finds this kind of work really hard as his fine motor skills are a little underdeveloped. However we all came away with a creature of some sort.

Monster mum and child by L

Alien creature by R

Mermaid by Mum

More Italian

Today the children were still working on Italy. They decorated these paper masks (available at craft stores) inspired by those worn to balls in Venice.

R cooked us up pasta with a tomato and basil sauce for lunch whilst L provided home-made ice-cream for dessert.

We also learnt some Italian words using Google Translate.

Italian Food and Architecture

Today's Italian cooking featured Siena cake (above) cooked by R. This cake is best served up with a cup of tea and a comprehensive dental insurance policy!!!

 

We went to the garden centre to look for some Italian herbs to plant. The children are obsessed with basil but its winter right now so we choose some seeds to plant up inside. Hopefully by the time they are big enough to plant out the frosts will be gone.

L was making pesto for lunch and we couldn't wait for the seeds to grow so here's one grown earlier by Aldi.

L used her home-made pesto to stuff some chicken breasts.

Later the children choose their favourite piece of Italian architecture to make these relief cut-outs. They don't photograph well but in real life they look pretty good with their 3D depth effect. We just printed out several copies of an image onto card and decided which parts would be on the front, middle and back layers. We cut out the appropriate parts and layered them with rigid pieces of card between to stop them flopping. We got the idea from Scholastic's "Country Reports Projects" e book.

Leaning tower of Pisa by R

Colosseum by L

Italian Week

Following on from ancient Rome we are now having an Italian week. First up we watched a travel DVD on Italy from our library.

We will be making a lapbook using this free download from Home School Share and information books gathered from the library along with internet searching.

We'll also be doing some arts and crafts, gardening and lots of cooking. The children got these cookery books from the library and have chosen 4 main meals and 4 deserts/cakes to make.

Today R cooked us tagliatelle with tomato and Parma ham sauce.

L made this torta al cioccolato which doesn't look amazing but is one of the best cakes we've ever tasted. Made from chocolate, sugar, egg whites, butter and a tiny amount of flour, it's really light. The recipe is in "My Very First Italian Cookbook" pictured above.