The World's Smallest Joey Scout

This week L became a Joey Scout. Here she is in her new uniform (the smallest size available!).

RFS Headquarters

This weekend the children joined their Joey Scout mob for a trip to the Rural Fire Service headquarters. This is the place where all the operations are coordinated from. Dad wanted one of these monitor banks to take home!

I Am Six

L is six! Here she is opening some of her presents. R got a little present too. She decided to spend the day at the Playmaze indoor play gym followed by dinner at the Italian restaurant.

Now L is six she is officially of "school age". We had our registration inspection a few weeks ago and just received our certificate for another two years. Hurrah!

Endangered Species Competition

Today the children have been working on their entries to our council's endangered species art competition. The art work must feature plants or animals that are rare or endangered in the local area. They used watercolours and Sharpie markers.

Koalas and Swift parrot by L

Eastern Pygmy Possum by R

Crazy Paving Mosaics

This week we used our handmade tiles (see previous posts), beads and mosaic tiles to make a crazy paving mosaic. Trying to grout the different sized pieces proved quite challenging. Here are the final designs.

By R

By L

One Gallery - Five Exhibitions

Today we went to the Art Gallery of NSW to see 5 different exhibitions.

First up was Theatre of Dreams, Theatre of Play. This exhibition showcased masks and costumes from Japanese theatre. We found out that there are 5 types of masks:

1. Old man
2. Demon
3. Young man
4. Young Woman
5. Ghost

The children made some sketches of their favourite objects. As usual the drawings made in the gallery had a really nice quality to them that we don't seem to get when drawing at home.

Next up we looked at the Plumes and Pearlshells - art from the New Guinea Highlands. This was our favourite exhibition and had many objects, all made from natural materials, including masks, weapons, shields, body adornment and figurines. The children took the free activity trail around the gallery and also made some sketches. 

After a sunny picnic lunch in the Domain we took in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes. 

The Archibald prize is for portraits. The children took another free gallery trail around the exhibition. Here are some of our favourite pictures.

The Wynne prize is for landscape paintings or figure sculptures. See image at top for R's favourite.

The Sulman prize is for best Subject painting. Here are our favourites.