Rainbow Lion

We tried another drawing lesson from Drawing With Children by Mona Brookes. Here is R's rainbow lion.

Lion by R. Markers and watercolour pencils

Nepean Belle

Today we joined our home education friends for a trip down the river on the Nepean Belle paddle steamer. Our captain sang to us and told us about the river as we cruised along.

Nepean Belle

Everyone waits to board - you can really see how sociable home educators are!

Our captain

Inside the boat

The bar

R, L and their friends have a snack on board

The narrow gap

R drives the boat

R at the wheel

2011 Archibald Prize

We decide to visit the Art Gallery of NSW to look at the portraits in the Archibald Prize exhibition. We are working on a project on "ourselves" and we will soon have a go at painting our own portraits. Here are some of our favorite portraits from the exhibition.

DA - by Amanda Marburg

Mother (a portrait of Cate) by Del Kathryn Barton

Ted Robinson - by Susanna De Berenger

The heart of things (portrait of Cassandra Golds) - by Sonia Kretschmar

We also timed our visit to coincide with a demonstration of portrait drawing by children's book illustrator David Legge.

David Legge shows us how to draw portraits

David Legge shows us how to draw portraits

We had time spare to look around other galleries including the new contemporary galleries and outdoor sculptures. The children had a wonderful time and were chattering away constantly about what they saw. It was lovely for me to enjoy a child's perspective on the art works.

Tikka Fish Kebabs

This week we actually managed to cook something fairly healthy. L chose these tikka fish kebabs with coconut topping.

Investigating Capacity

R had some investigations to do in this Targeting Maths book about capacity. He had to choose whether to use a cup or a spoon to find out how much water different containers can hold . L helped too.



They decided to use a spoon for filling a small container



They used a cup to fill a large jug

R predicted how much the containers would hold and then ordered the containers from the one that held the least water to the one that held the most.

Tipi

We have made our own tipi as part of our study on Native Americans. I loosely based the design on one from Sew, Mama, Sew. However I used bamboo poles which are already attached together in a tipi shape, available from Bunnings DIY store. We just cut out a section of pole to form the door. In order to keep the poles splayed out I attached them to a hula-hoop with elastic bands.

Canes attached to a hoop with elastics

The fabric was cut in a semi-circle, sewn together at the top and part way down to the door way. It's attached to the poles by cords at the top.

Native Americans use decorations on their tipi to represent their families. We decided to use our hand prints. I drew around the children's hands onto the paper side of some Bondaweb and then roughly cut the hand shapes out.

First draw around hands onto the paper (smooth) side of some Bondaweb



First draw around hands onto the paper (smooth) side of some Bondaweb



Cut the bondaweb hands out roughly

Next iron the hand shape onto fabric scraps. You should use some baking paper between your ironing board and the fabric and between the iron and the Bondaweb - but if you have already ruined your iron (like me) why bother!!! Then cut the hand out.


Iron the hands onto the fabric (fabric right side down, Bondaweb paper side up), then cut out



Lots of Bondaweb backed hands ready to go

Peel off the backing paper from the hands

Iron the hands onto the tipi fabric

R irons a hand onto the tipi

You too can create a mess like this

The children made their headdresses during their culture class at their home education group. Every family in the group is making their own tipis. At the end of term we will set up a tipi camp and celebrate Native American culture. Head back soon to see it.

  

Birds In A Tree

Here are the results from our second lesson from Drawing With Children by Mona Brookes. After we had tackled a bird the first lesson we decided to try a whole group of birds. R is really producing some great work compared to his usual scribbles.

Birds in a tree by R (age 4.5)